Google Chrome for Linux is finally ready for beta. Like the Windows version, it's fast, secure, stable, simple, extensible, and embraces open standards like HTML5.

But bringing Google Chrome to Linux wasn't just a straight port -- it was a labor of love. Google Chrome works well with both Gnome and KDE, and is updated via the normal system package manager. It has also been developed as a true open source project, using public mailing lists, IRC channels, bug tracker, code repository, and continuous build and test farm -- following in large part the trail blazed by Mozilla. Where we noticed problems in system libraries, we pushed fixes upstream and filed bugs. This open approach to development seems to be working: so far, about 50 developers outside Google have contributed code (for instance, thanks to Ibrar and Paweł for our FTP stack), and several Linux distributions even maintain preliminary open source builds of Google Chromium.

In short, we really love Google Chrome for Linux, and we think you will, too. Please try it and let us know what you think.

(One more thing: if you've already installed the dev channel version, you may need to uninstall that before installing the beta version -- we tried to make that work smoothly, but a few rough edges remain.)

Posted by Dan Kegel and Evan Martin, Software Engineers