Google Chrome comes to Mac, Linux…sort of

Codeweavers, the company behind Crossover office, the software package that lets users run Windows applications on Mac and Linux as if they were native applications (ie without needing a Windows install or virtual machine) has released CrossOver Chromium bringing Google Chrome to Mac and Linux users for the first time.

Crossover Chromium uses the Chromium open source code base used for Google Chrome to deliver an all in one package. Unlike Crossover Office, Crossover Chromium is free. Installation is quick and easy, and the end result is Chrome where you didn’t have it before.

I’ve played briefly with Chrome on a Windows machine recently, and I was very impressed with the package. Although Crossover Chromium delivers a similar feature set, by not being a truly native Mac application, it suffers from an issue you occasionally see in Linux installs: font issues. The Inquisitr in Crossover Chromium is unreadable as the screenshot left shows. Other sites aren’t as badly affected, but certainly some of the leading tech blogs I visited look like they’ve been hit with the ugly stick font wise in Crossover Chromium. Obviously very high up my list today will be to find a fallback font that works with it because I’m betting this is going to be popular, but it shouldn’t be a case of pandering to one browser because it’s doesn’t do its job properly (and I’d note, I didn’t see similar issues on the Windows machine, so this is unique to Crossover Chromium).

You can grab the download here if you want to check it out. Long term though, Google needs to get its act together and give us an official version of Chrome.

(via Louis Gray)