Google chrome for CentOS ??

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nikunjbadjatya
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Google chrome for CentOS ??

Post by nikunjbadjatya » 2009/12/11 05:08:51

Hi,
I am using CentOS 5.4
I recently downloaded the rpm package for chrome browser. when trying to install it i get the following :

# rpm -i google-chrome-beta_current_i386.rpm
warning: google-chrome-beta_current_i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 7fac5991
error: Failed dependencies:
lsb >= 3.2 is needed by google-chrome-beta-4.0.249.30-33928.i386


i checked with yum list *lsb* , found that lsb 3.1 is installed and no update is available for it..!!!

Does it mean CentOS users cant use Google Chrome browser..??

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toracat
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Re: Google chrome for CentOS ??

Post by toracat » 2009/12/11 07:46:23

[quote]
Does it mean CentOS users cant use Google Chrome browser..??[/quote]
Unfortunately, that is correct at this moment.

rklrkl
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Re: Google chrome for CentOS ??

Post by rklrkl » 2009/12/11 11:03:38

Sadly, the Google folks have failed to build an Google Chrome RPM that's compatible with RHEL 5 or CentOS 5, which is quite poor of them. I did get it to work on Fedora 12, but CentOS 5 has problems even if you ignore the lsb issue (i.e. install with "rpm -Uvh --nodeps"). It looks like later versions of expat and libstc++ are needed to run Google Chrome.

With Google Chrome being partially closed source, there's no .src.rpm's to match the binary RPMs and even the fully open source Chromium .src.rpm's (for Fedora 10) don't build on CentOS 5 either. It's a shame Google missed out on making the Chrome browser work on the most popular commercial Linux distro (RHEL 5 which CentOS 5 is a clone of) and they don't supply a plain .tar.gz either which is equally poor. At least Mozilla Firefox's .tar.gz works on pretty well all Linux distros I've tried it on, including CentOS 5, so really the Google team should pull their fingers out and get Chrome working on CentOS 5!

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Re: Google chrome for CentOS ??

Post by scottro » 2009/12/11 12:10:29

There is a bug on it. Basically, the google chrome folks said, "Can't be bothered."

In fairness, it doesn't work on Win2K either.

The bug is here, but you'll note that they immediately closed it the date it was filed, though the rest of us muttered to ourselves on it.

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=15984

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Re: Google chrome for CentOS ??

Post by pschaff » 2009/12/11 15:05:40

Guess we'll have to wait for CentOS-6 to play with Chrome.

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Re: Google chrome for CentOS ??

Post by pjwelsh » 2009/12/11 16:32:18

Could always try "wine chrome".

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Re: Google chrome for CentOS ??

Post by rklrkl » 2009/12/11 16:48:15

[quote]
scottro wrote:
There is a bug on it. Basically, the google chrome folks said, "Can't be bothered."

In fairness, it doesn't work on Win2K either.
[/quote]
However, RHEL 5(.4) (and by extension CentOS 5(.4)) is the latest version of the world's most popular commercial Linux distribution, something that can't be said of Win2K in the Windows arena (it's now 2 major versions behind - Windows Server 2003 and 2008 have long since deprecated it).

The attitude of thestig@chromium.org in that bug URL you quoted is nothing short of astonishing. Because RHEL 5.0 came out in 2007, it's apparently "too old" (claims that 5.4 is just 5.0 plus fixes is a lie as well, new features have come in various 5.X releases), ignoring the fact that RHEL 5.4 came out only just before Windows 7 did.

I think the problem here is that Google are "version chasing" the very latest home desktop Linux distro releases and using functions/features in the packages shipped with those releases. This means that you either have to follow their lead (which I admittedly do on my home desktop where I don't mind if things break a bit) or just give up in exasperation (which I have to do for our CentOS 5.4 work desktops and so will anyone else using an "enterprise" or "long term release" distro...which will be anyone with Linux work desktops).

Clearly, Google have made the wrong choice because the Mozilla folks ship Linux binaries for Firefox, Thunderbird and Seamonkey that all work perfectly on CentOS 5 (as well Fedora releases going back several years). If Mozilla can do it properly, why can't Google? The answer is that they lack competence, pure and simple. Basically, Google Chrome is dead in the water for work Linux desktops and Google should be ashamed that they've given up that area (albeit a very small one) completely it seems.

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Re: Google chrome for CentOS ??

Post by michaelnel » 2009/12/11 18:00:21

CentOS and RHEL are positioned as enterprise OSs, and in the vast majority of cases they are installed on headless servers that have no need of gui apps.

If I were in charge of Chrome development I wouldn't waste time on a market segment as small as CentOS either.

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Re: Google chrome for CentOS ??

Post by scottro » 2009/12/11 18:19:00

Without arguing the rightness or wrongness (I use CentOS as my main desktop at home, but realize that there are often inconveniences in doing so), the Google developers always seemed Debian, or possibly Ubuntu oriented. I remember the earlier source code required symlinking a bunch of libraries to .d because, apparently they'd only built them on Debian (or Ubuntu, which I believe is an African word, roughly translated as, "I can't configured Debian" <oooooohhh, shame on me, but I saw that line somewhere, and found it funny--I should add that I have many, VERY knowledgeable friends who do use Ubuntu).

I can sympathize with both of the above points of view. It's actually even more suprising that they don't support WIn2k, as I suspect there's plenty of Windows 2000 servers and desktops still in service, and even on the server end, Windows uses a GUI.

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Re: Google chrome for CentOS ??

Post by pschaff » 2009/12/11 20:30:48

[quote]
michaelnel wrote:
CentOS and RHEL are positioned as enterprise OSs, and in the vast majority of cases they are installed on headless servers that have no need of gui apps.
[/quote]
Not to be argumentative, and we are wandering OT here, but can you quantify "vast majority"? The default install will still give you a GUI.

Anecdotally:
I grew up as a command-line guy (actually back to punch cards, but that's way OT) and do much server management management that way remotely, but the GUI tools have their uses too.
We have a number of CentOS systems at work, desktops/workstations and laptops, as well as compute, file, and web servers.
None of my servers are actually headless (not counting those on KVM switches as headless) and most have the GUI installed, if not active.
At home my wife and I both use CentOS for daily use at home, as well has having it on a couple of laptops. The kids have even been known to use it for web browsing, music, myspace, etc.
There are a lot of forum and ML posts that indicate people are using CentOS for daily desktop use and multimedia. Relatively few posts explicitly address headless systems.

[quote]
If I were in charge of Chrome development I wouldn't waste time on a market segment as small as CentOS either.[/quote]
I might not either, but that might depend on how easy it was to do. If the older package versions made it difficult, admittedly probably would not put in a great effort.

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