Google Desktop, Google Chrome and Google Gadgets in Ubuntu

.com How To Ubuntu
Saturday, August 1st 2009, 15:39
1 Comment

Looking to see if Google Desktop is now available for Linux I have discovered some Google goodies. Not only that they have ported this nice desktop companion software to Linux, they have also included in their repositories Google Gadgets (using both GTK and Qt, but it is a little buggy as some of the widgets work, others don’t and the application might not be responsive from time to time) and – much awaited in the Linux world – Google Chrome.

To install all the goodies, follow these steps:

  1. run these commands as root (using sudo):
    2. wget -q https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub -O- | sudo apt-key add -
  2. add this to your software list (/etc/apt/sources.list):
    3. # Google software repository
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable non-free main
  3. update your software list:
    4. sudo apt-get update
  4. install whatever Google packages you want

To enable flash support in Google Chrome you must create the folder plugins in /opt/google/chrome and then copy libflashplayer.so in it from /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/. Afterwards you must launch Chrome using --enable-plugins option. That can be handled at the menu level. Just go to System – Preferences – Main Menu, in the left list click on Internet, click on Google Chrome on the right, click on Properties and in the Command text field add the --enable-plugins options to the end.

One thing that I have noticed is that Chrome in Linux is very fast, way faster than on Windows (do not ask me why) and even faster than Firefox (at least 3.0.12 version). A small problem that I have encountered is that the Home and End buttons have no effect in text fields, but I am sure that this will be fixed in future releases.

Keep in mind though that Chrome is still a developer build on Linux and that it might not be stable. The idea behind the current status of the project is to offer you a glimpse of what the developers have reached to.

What’s your favorite Google app in Linux?

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1 Comment

  • Florin June 6th, 2010 at 23:00

    Favorite app on Linux: same as on Windows: Opera. Besides being way better than Chrome (comparably fast, maybe just slightly slower, but way more standards compliant), it also comes with desktop widgets, even with a completely free kit to make your own widgets (using only web technologies, but also having limited access to the filesystem).

    Reply

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