Google Chrome on KDE4.2 – Why not?
I’ve been playing with this idea for a while now and wanted to share it with you guys.
While I think that Konqueror is a great browser there is sadly no real KDE 4 support for my favorite browser, Firefox, except the Nokia beta Qt4 port or the theme, so I’ve been thinking:
lots of people have been telling me that they find the Google Chrome browser to offer a great web experience – I’ve tried it out myself and I also think that it’s not too shabby at all, although it needs some polishing
And I’m no Google fanboy, I just believe their browser is OK and that making a Qt4 user interface for Chromium could make Chrome a viable choice or alternative to Konqueror, thus enabling more users to switch from Gnome to the excellent KDE 4(.2).
Codeweavers have already made a WINE-wrapped port a while ago but we need a real user interface and since Firefox still isn’t coming to QT4 for some time, maybe some people would like to use Chrome instead of Konqueror or another QT4 browser alternative.
What do you think? Do you like Chrome? Would you use it on KDE4?
A browser is an important piece of software for most desktop users, we spend a lot of time in the browser. The user experience must be on-par, and I believe a Chromium port could offer this.
Related articles by Zemanta
- KDE hopes to fill boots with 4.2 release (theregister.co.uk)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=d50f4a2a-3ac3-42c8-95e6-08780ca36156)
You might want to think about the technical challenges
http://benjamin-meyer.blogspot.com/2009/02/chromium-on-linux-part-2.html
I already use Chrome extensively when I do occasionally use Windows, it’s surpassed Firefox as my browser of choice, except for when I download something (can’t beat DownThemAll! for big downloads), so I’d quite happily use Chrome in KDE4. I’d still keep Konqueror around though – it’s hands down my favourite file manager.
There already are viable alternatives to Konq that use QT, such as Arora, although it is probably not the selection of browsers that are keeping people from moving to KDE.
I’ve been speaking to segphault and he told me about Arora, but my argument is that Chrome will probably have a bigger dev community (more updates) and may stay active for a longer amount of time.
How big is the current Linux chrome dev team compared to the Arora dev team or the Mozilla dev team? The problem with Chrome is that since it currently does not run on Linux, it can’t be made to work better, it first needs to be made to work. Had Google decided to make Chrome multiplatform from the start, this wouldn’t be an issue.
It would be far more productive to port the already working Firefox browser to a QT interface, than to create a completely new interface for non-working browser.
Arora development is not very active
Krome – the chromatic dragon
- a hypothetical merge between chrome and konqueror.
Instead of replacing konqueror with chrome, perhaps one could take all the good bits out of it and include in Konqueror, for example make WebKit the default rather than KHTML and perhaps the V8 java engine (that does have a lot of other stuff that are pretty neat).
Since KDE4 is X-platform by default, it could also become a popular browser in non-*nix environments like Mac and Win.
Segphault from ArsTechnica said to me that Konqueror is going to switch to WebKit in the near future
It’s ok to have a comment.
Yes, the support to choose between KHTML and WebKit is coming. I think the biggest showstopper for KDE 4.2 was that it should work also with Qt 4.4 (4.5 aren’t yet released) which has poor WebKit support (no support for nsplugins which means no Flash Player, etc). KDE 4.3 will require Qt 4.5 which has a more up to date WebKit version. The support has been in playground for some time now and I think it will make it into 4.3.
I tried QtWebKit part – you can build it from KDE trunk – it’s working already but slower than in Arora. Both suffers missing nsplugin support. So I’m looking forward for Qt 4.5. But latest KHTML is really fast too!
That’s a great idea. The browser (chrome) based on the browser (safari) that is based on the kde browser (konqueror) ported to kde again.
I think the code has been improved a lot since the beginning and as KDE is already running on Windows, OS X and Linux, it’s an idea that Google probably could have followed from the beginning.
IMHO Google should the very least do everything to help the KDE community to achieve that port, as without them and KHTML they would never have come this far as quickly.
I like this idea, Webkit and V8 is better than KHTML (Konqueror) and Firefox seems slow and too much memory consuming to me. I would prefer “Krome” than porting Firefox from GTK.
[...] Google Chrome on KDE4.2 – Why not? (internetling.com) [...]
Thanks for the mention of CrossOver Chrome–we appreciate it! We, too, are looking forward to a native Linux version.
Cheers,
-jon parshall-
COO
http://www.codeweavers.com
[...] Google Chrome on KDE4.2 – Why not? (internetling.com) [...]
good to read.
chrome is a nice option.but all of the browsers in linux are very slow comparing to their windows version.for eg,ff 3.1 in linux is having the speed of ff 2 in windows.there is a great difference in speed in same browsers in linux and windows .This need to be changed.FF should consider linux more.
What’s up with Arora development?
Konqueror is a great browser, it’s awesome. Opera looks good too. But I love how Konqueror looks.
Hey Buddy, I don’t know what KDE 4.2 is like but I have been using the latest firefox on KDE 4.3 and it works great. You could approach it’s installation in two ways. KDE has an installer that you could access from the Menu (didn’t work that well for me) or you can get it from KPackageKit. You can get flash from the web or from the the package manager.
For reasons that are too complex to elaborate and not really of any interest to you guys, I installed the Beta version of Chrome. It leaves much to be desired and integrates very badly into KDE.
To be honest, it’s a joke compared to the maturity of the Firefox project. I understand that its in development but there are some very valid reasons why you guys may want to opt away from google technology: they are huge and they control everything and we may be setting ourselves up for a nasty suprise if they decide to use all the control we’ve given them against us. Think about it: everyone uses them for access the web through their search engines, they have a very agressive emailing service, they control youtube, the blogs, people entrust their documents, contacts and calendars to their servers. If they want, they can leave backdoors to access all that information.
They are introducing GoogleVoice (a free phone service which among other things has the capacity to turn voice into text and record conversations – I understand that this is being offered as a service to the user but it can be turned against the user at any time if they see it fit. They come off as very nice (which they may or may not be) but we are intrusting them with alot alot alot of power. They seem to promote an open source like approach to development but they ARE NOT OPEN SOURCE organization! They are company that is consolidating all our access to information and Chrome is just another building block in their strategy. Mozilla is open source,