21 thoughts on - Google Chrome Future / CentOS 7

• Ouch I don’t know. Awhile back I was successfully running midori on CentOS but I stopped because it was a PITA to keep porting Fedora spec files to CentOS to get it to work, as Fedora diverged more and more.

  Maybe there should be a SIG or whatever to maintain webkit browsers for CentOS for those who don’t like FireFox.

• Current midori builds in mock, I just tried, but the BuildRequires appear to be wrong because not all the extensions are built resulting in not all extensions found in %files section being there.

  I’ll look at the build log and maybe see if there is a way to make it work and file bug report with fix + EPEL build request if I can get it to work.

  I know it’s not chrome, but it is webkit and is wicked fast at rendering. And it uses gstreamer for html5 which is nice.

• Nevermind, it wasn’t an extensions issue.

  The issue looks to be related to the spec file thinking I was running Fedora < 19 Given fedora < 19 is EOL removing those conditionals may fix it. Oh and sorry for the top posting, is there a way in Thunderbird for CentOS to change that default?

• I can confirm that I see this on RHEL7 as well, with all the latest updates.

  It looks like Google doesn’t think RHEL7/CentOS7 is “new” enough to run Chrome.

  I suggest providing feedback to Google, perhaps they might consider dropping RHEL7/CentOS7 support if they get enough feedback, although I
  suspect they really couldn’t care less about RPM-based distros, most of their code seems to be all ubuntu-based.

• Err… I mean consider *NOT* dropping RHEL7/CentOS support.

• On the linked-to help page:

  <https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95346>

  they show fedora-21[+] as supported. If I remember correctly, RHEL/CentOS-7 is based against fedora-19.

• Alice Wonder wrote:
  

  That’s odd, Alice – my t-bird at work, and at home, both set me for bottom posting. Even in the config editor, I don’t seen anything that looks like that setting to top post.

  mark

• seeing as how they don’t seem to give a hoot about Ubuntu either
  (based on the gymnastics users need to go thru to get Google Earth to work on Ubuntu) I’m not sure they care much about non-chrome Linux distros anyway.

• How not surprising. $$$ is their only concern and has always been. Disrespecting open source [everything] whereas benefiting from open source themselves could be one of their mottos.

  This really helps to appreciate companies like RedHat even more…

  Valeri

  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
  Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

• true. every release of GE has the same broken RPM that won’t install without hassles, and when installed doesn’t work without further hassles. thank goodness there’s someone who posts regularly to the GE forums who has figured all this out and posted recipes, in some cases has even built fixed libraries for ubuntu.

  as I posted just yesterday he’s also posted a recipe for fixing the broken installation and then making the result work for some older Fedora, which also happens to work great on C7.

  How true, how true!

• Actually, in two places on that page they say:

  “Ubuntu 12.04+, Debian 7+, OpenSuSE 13.1+, or Fedora Linux 21”

  No plus (+) after the 21.

  I assume it must be a typo, since f21 left support on the 1st of this month. The fact that their documentation is poorly maintained is just another bit of evidence that no one seems to care. Either that, or Google doesn’t support Chrome on any supported version of RHEL or Fedora. I guess I have to switch to OpenSuSE.

• Right. I put the “+” in square brackets because, knowing that fedora-21 is EOL, I assumed that they meant to include more recent releases too (as they indicated with the “+” on the other linux spins).

  I am curious as to what’s in FC21+, but not in ~FC19, that might be about to cause things to break. I looked through the various discussions linked from:

  <http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2015/12/beta-channel-update.html>

  but didn’t see anything obvious, but it may be too early for the changes to be mentioned.

• it could also be an indictment of Fedora itself, in effect saying ‘well, it worked on 21, but we have no idea WTF batcrap craziness will be coming out of them next… so. good luck with that.’

• 
  I guess we all are divided into two categories

  1. If google [something] doesn’t work on the operating system of my choice, the hell with that crap (and google itself).

  2. If google [something] doesn’t work on the operating system of my choice, I’ll use whatever mighty google orders me (even if it is MS
  Windows ? ).

  Valeri

  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
  Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

• Maybe its possible that one works someplace that has all its email/collaboration/calendars in a Google Apps environment, and has a central IT org saying to use Chrome for services? Also, having Chrome on EL7 was nice because then I didn’t have to also track Flash Plugin updates.

  Last I checked, Google also didn’t support the Extended Support Release of firefox but only the last two releases, which also causes problems.

  My concern isn’t really for my personal use of the browser. Its that I support classroom and instructional workstations, and not having a supported browser is just another excuse for management to get rid of Linux workstations and make everyone use Windows.

• Yes, I know. This is why I overcame my laziness and did use “sarcasm” tags
  ;-)

  
  Indeed, the first thing that happens, UNIX IT heads of institution are being replaced with Windows brew ones. Then, most of the central services are outsourced to external companies. Then all central IT everything is converted to be using google everything. Then finally, on your UNIX
  servers you are forced to figure out what to do with darn winmail.dat crap… you, who considered even html composed e-mail an offense. But what I’m complaining about? Even logs on our UNIX machines (sorry, Linux, not UNIX, that slip was purposeful of course) are not plain ASCII but XML
  garbage wrapped…
  

  Valeri

  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
  Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

• (3) If its Google, apart from the search engine, I will not use it because its the biggest intelligence gathering operation on the entire planet.

  :-)

• Very accurate. +1.

• Valeri Galtsev wrote:

  Yep. There IS NO REASON for *any* logfile (or configuration file, for that matter) to be XML. Logs – if your machine is borked, cat or more may work, when no other way to view it does. Configuration… XML is for GUI. If the GUI’s already hiding stuff, why not have it write out to *text* files?

  Just because something is K3WL and NEW!!! doesn’t mean you *have* to use it. That there’s a screw, don’t use your hammer on it.

  mark

• This item, which I opened, seems to be getting *way* off-topic. Can we either refocus on whether “someone in the know” can tell if/what the issue will likely be with chrome (seemingly likely with ~49), and if there’s potential for mitigation, or close this discussion.

  It may just be best to wait until 49 hits their beta release stage and look at it in more detail at that time.

  Thanks.

  – Richard

• XML for configuration is very handy when the configuration file may be modified by software, as you can read it into a DOM tree and validate before writing back to file.

  It also allows you to do things like use an XSLT for displaying the configuration is a user friendly way.

  Not saying it is always the best way to do things, but it certainly has its uses.

  sitemap.xml is an excellent example of a configuration file that probably should be XML for what it does and how it is used.

  Logs, well, I don’t have a pro XML argument for those.