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Although Google has not yet released a Mac or Linux version of its Chrome browser, software developer Codeweavers has made a ported version available.
Called Chromium, the Windows-only browser uses Wine to run on the Mac, Linux platforms.
CodeWeaver's CEO, Jeremy White, writes on his blog that the company was looking for a way to "show off Wine's new maturity, particularly for porting applications. What we needed was a freely redistributable application; one that didn't exist on Mac or Linux, but one that was readily understandable. We thought about Firefox; that was perfect, but sadly, there were Mac and Linux builds."
The entire process took just 11 days, says White.
Installing Chromium is easy enough. You can download a copy for Mac OS X and Linux systems from the Codeweavers Chromium page.
The Wine project, which allows Windows applications to be run on other platforms, recently released version 1.0 of the software after 15 years of development. Other projects that use Wine to run on Linux include the TurboCash accounting application.
- INDEPENDENT SA
