Following the bug tracking for the Linux version of Google's Chrome browser, "Chromium" , it turns out Chromium requires a CPU supporting the SSE2 extensions to IA-32.
Oh.
I've been trying the daily updates of the Chromium browser for linux with no success. It crashes instantly on startup. The output says something isn't implemented. It appears that it isn't the browser code that isn't implementing, it's my PC(s).I have several AMD athlon XP systems and none of them qualify for Chromium. There also doesn't appear to be any to extend the CPU function in software.
The list (Wikipaedia) of supported CPUs is:
- AMD K8-based CPUs (Athlon 64, Sempron 64, Turion 64, etc)
- AMD Phenom CPUs
- Intel NetBurst-based CPUs (Pentium 4, Xeon, Celeron, Celeron D, etc)
- Intel Pentium M and Celeron M
- Intel Core-based CPUs (Core Duo, Core Solo, etc)
- Intel Core 2-based CPUs (Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, etc)
- Intel Atom
- Transmeta Efficeon
- VIA C7
- VIA Nano
- AMD CPUs prior to Athlon 64, including all Socket A-based CPUs
- Intel CPUs prior to Pentium 4
- Via C3
- Transmeta Crusoe
Ooooh......all right then. Guess I'll stop downloading those Chromium packages every morning, though maybe it will work on my AMD Opteron 64-bit system via IA32 support....and SSE2.
UPDATE 3/4/09: Installed the Chromium browser on my AMD Opteron system. Th
e first screen warns you that it is pre-alpha and full of holes and asks you not to talk too much about it as it is very much incomplete. As I understand it, "chrome" (used by Safari and Google Chrome) has no Linux equivalent and 'Chromium' is the project trying to create that. So it isn't just about the browser. It's about the platform of APIs the browser needs to exist. Non-trivial! So if you get a window up at all and create additional tabs (see screen shot of today's build) is something of a triumph, even it crashes before you're actually able to access any web sites. It does seem to work well with the Chromium developer pages if you click on the links on the warning page. There is promise here.
We only need SSE2 for development. Actual release builds will not have this restriction.
ReplyDeleteHave a look at Midori (for GTK+) and Arora (for QT4). They both use WebKit (which is what Chrome / Chromium is based on), so you should get nearly the same speed benefits using them. And they are in the repositories of most distros. You can also be a bit more adventerous and try the Epiphany WebKit backend or the Kazahakase WebKit backend.
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