64-Bit Chrome for Windows

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2014/06/64-bit-chrome-for-windows.html

by Garbage • 12 years ago

81 83 12 years ago

googlesystem.blogspot.com

scrollaway6• 12 years ago

As a Linux enthusiast, I cringe every time I read "year of the Linux desktop". (Bear with me, this is on-topic)

Linux is a very usable OS today. Windows, comparatively, is a much less usable OS. USB drivers that need 3 minutes to set up every time I plug my mouse in a different port. More issues with sound than there are with Pulseaudio. And, yes, this is a huge peeve of mine: Only a tiny fraction of windows software is ever ported to 64 bit. WTF?

Almost all linux software is readily available on 64 bit, as 64 bit; this includes Chrome/Chromium from the very, very early days. So now, a major web browser was released as 64 bit on Windows. Congratulations. Maybe 2014 will be the year of the Windows desktop.

stinos• 12 years ago

Windows, comparatively, is a much less usable

I wouldn't call it much less usable, depends on what you're used to I guess.. Actively using both, each for their own task, I find them on par with each other. But I don't expect Windows too give me a super easy to setup server with a mighty commandline, and I don't expect Linux to give me a super smooth Desktop UI that can be used as a digital audio/video workstation, for instance. Cause they both suck at those tasks equally as it's far from their target experience. And I also don't have the WTF feeling you have as I never had the problems you talk about: three minutes? Really? More issues than Pulseaudio? Almost sounds like you try to run Windows 7 on an old pentium with crap drivers :P

scrollaway6• 12 years ago

I'm running Windows 7 on a current top of the line box.

Speaking of that, when I swapped out my old motherboard for a new one, Windows refused to boot, giving me a bluescreen every time. I googled around and found that this was, in fact, a very common issue and the only solution is a full reinstall. Woah.

More issues than Pulseaudio, yes. In fact, I have zero issues with Pulseaudio and plenty of issues with Windows. Not like stuttering, but devices not being recognized and a terribly confusing UI when it comes to, for example, switching sound playback devices (getting sound to work on my TV has been an awful experience).

Every time I have to boot into it it's an awful, awful experience. Here is just ONE reason why: https://superuser.com/questions/33142/ctrlbackspace-inserts-...

WorldWideWayne• 12 years ago

I always thought that Windows gave me a super easy to setup server too because of the fact that I don't have to use the command line.

With Linux server setup, if I haven't done something in a while - I must go and hunt down the information on what files I need to configure and commands that I need to run. Sometimes it takes hours of reading. With Windows I can usually take a look at the standard management interface provided with the server software and just figure it out or be guided through it.

quotient• 12 years ago

Your use of the fact that "almost all Linux software is readily available on 64 bit" (to imply that Windows developers are doing a bad job of porting software to 64bit) is misleading: there is far, far more software for Windows than there is for Linux. Of course it's not all ported to 64bit. Windows developers also seem to generally respect the notion of backwards compatibility, so I am prepared to cut them some slack.

I think you're being a little bit unfair. (My personal preferences are not flowing into this assessment: I am a Linux enthusiast and in the past two years have only ever used Windows to play video games.)

JetSpiegel• 12 years ago

Of course it's not all ported to 64bit.

Pretty much none is ported to 64bits, including software that is available on Linux 64 bits since ever.

pjmlp2• 12 years ago

So when will GNU/Linux work properly with hibernation on Laptops?

What about energy friendly scheduling and hardware resource management with application level APIs like Mac OS X and Windows do?

monochr3• 12 years ago

In 2009 or so.

insky2• 12 years ago

Ah well, I have issues with all the major OSs.

I was surprised after I installed Windows 8 (64 pro or business or whatever it's called), and found Firefox and Chrome to both be 32bit, haven't checked Internet Explorer yet. Now I'm not sure if it even that is even an issue or not? It bugged me anyway.

I've been running a 64bit Linux OS for years now, and the most irritating thing about it was Flash plugin support. Some people deem an OS that can't play iPlayer or some such, as unusable. Anyway flash support is reasonable for me under Chrome these days (didn't Adobe say they'd abandon 64bit support on Linux?)

The missus has Windows 8 on her lappy, and both Chrome and Firefox frequently crap out, she has just gotten used to it.

Spittie• 12 years ago

didn't Adobe say they'd abandon 64bit support on Linux?

No, Adobe abandoned NPAPI Flash, the one used by Firefox. Flash on Chrome uses PPAPI, which is still officially supported (my guess is that it's maintained/developed mostly by the Chrome guys, but it's just a guess).

jacquesm8• 12 years ago

I'd really hesitate to mention pulseaudio as a good thing. It's the first thing to go after I install a new machine.

stephen_g• 12 years ago

What is this, 2008? PulseAudio was quite unstable when Ubuntu shipped it by default before it was fully-baked, but it's been stable for years now.

ancarda2• 12 years ago

Linux is completely unusable for me. For instance, I've never found a good replacement for Calendar on OS X. The nicest calendar program I used on Linux had no CalDAV support (WTF?) and required me to use increment/decrement buttons to input the start/end times of my events. On top of that, it lacked any organisational features such as colour coding or a 5/7 day week view. It felt like a toy.

On OS X, I spend a significant amount of time in the command line but the occasional times I need a GUI, Linux just isn't usable. Most graphical programs lack even the most basic functionality or consideration for user experience. Linux is great for headless environments but it's awful when I occasionally need a GUI.

dbg31415• 12 years ago

I've never found a good replacement for Calendar on OS X

It's funny because iCal is like the shittiest calendar out there. Use Outlook or even Google Calendar.

Let's say you want to do something simple like... find out if your team members are busy before sending a meeting. Oh, in Outlook I just click the Invite tab and find a time, but in iCal they've simplified it so all I have to do is email the entire team to ask if the time is acceptable and then hope nobody re-books during the time it takes to pick a time. "Insanely inefficient!"

Or let's say I want to manage multiple calendars, one with read, one with write access... wait, Mac users (and I'm one of them) don't do businessy things... hipsters don't have jobs!

Want a bonus? If your Mac crashes repeatedly due to kernel panic and you take it in to the "geniuses" at the istore... they tell you to uninstall all 3rd party software. Seriously that's their solution here. "Oh I see you're running 3rd party software, you need to uninstall this." I was at a loss for words. It wasn't, "Hey Office causes some issues..." it was, "You're running 3rd party software," said with a serious sneer. That guy needs to join the ranks of the unemployed. Mac used to be really great, now they just have good hardware.

But no, Outlook has hands down the best calendar tools out there. No question. Everything else is a poor copy.

reidrac• 12 years ago

Chromium blog (the actual source) explains why 64-bit windows version is interesting: http://blog.chromium.org/2014/06/try-out-new-64-bit-windows-...

TL;DR: This version improves on speed (processor optimizations related), security (windows features only available in 64-bit) and stability (they don't say why, could be related to windows itself).

userbinator2• 12 years ago

crash rates for the the renderer process (i.e. web content process) are almost half that of 32-bit Chrome

I wonder how many of those crashes are due to running out of memory, because it otherwise seems quite odd that the 32-bit version would "crash more", unless they (accidentally?) fixed some bugs in the porting process.

Realistically, this means a browser that can use more than ~3GB of RAM, and that has its advantages and disadvantages.

Already__Taken2• 12 years ago

The real advantage is that is the address space randomisation that goes on for security has a way higher pool of address' to use or not use. Actually then using more ram is a bonus.

jacquesm8• 12 years ago

If you can actually measure something like a 'crash rate' then you're doing something terribly wrong.

wfunction• 12 years ago

How is NaCl going to fare in the 64-bit version, given that segmentation isn't available in x64 mode?

sanxiyn2• 12 years ago

They wrote a paper about that in 2010.

http://research.google.com/pubs/pub35649.html

leorocky• 12 years ago

Why is segmentation important to Native Client?

sanxiyn2• 12 years ago

Native Client uses segmentation on x86 32-bit. Quoting from the paper: http://research.google.com/pubs/pub34913.html

"The main contributions of this work are: ... using x86 segments for ... reduced overhead."

justinschuh4• 12 years ago

Actually, segmentation isn't available on 64-bit Windows kernels (rather than just in x64 mode). So, NaCl already used a different type of sandbox model, where the validator enforces read/write masking.

cyounkins• 12 years ago

I thought the main problem with porting software to 64-bit was the bad practice of developers assuming the sizes of types. Since this was Google and the project is relatively recent, I'm assuming that is not the reason.

Why couldn't you take the chromium source (and dependencies) and compile them for x64 months ago?

spatz• 12 years ago

As the blog post says, the linux version has been 64-bit since 2009. So the problem must be windows API, not type sizes.

lloeki• 12 years ago

A bit of history: osx [0] and windows [1]

IIRC most issues revolve around plugins and performance (notably V8), possibly not directly because of type sizes but similar low level stuff that hampers JS-to-the-metal optimisations.

Still waiting on OSX though.

[0] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=8606

[1] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=18323

rsynnott• 12 years ago

Linux, MacOS, and nearly all other Unix-y things use LP64 (int is 32bit, long is 64bit). Windows x86_64 uses LLP64 (int is 32bit, long is 32bit). This can make porting a pain.

higherpurpose2• 12 years ago

I'm guessing they finally did it now because ARMv8 hardware is coming, and they wanted to have Chrome for Android with 64-bit support for the improvement in performance and crash rate. So they decided they might as well do it for all operating systems now.

justinschuh4• 12 years ago

There were numerous factors, but that wasn't one of them. The biggest delays were things like the build toolchain and logistics. For example, Microsoft's toolchain couldn't even build a working, optimized, 64-bit Chrome binary until sometime last year.

unexistance• 12 years ago

offline version URL, DEV

https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/index.html?extra=devch...

ComputerGuru• 12 years ago

Nitpick correction for many of the comments here: if I'm not mistaken, Chrome already does/can use more than 3 GiB of RAM with the 32-bit binaries in Windows. Because of how its process sandboxing feature works, it is each helper process (ie tab) that is restricted to 3 GiB, plus the master process that manages (but does not render) them. That's why they've been able to get away with not making the jump to 64-bit for all these years.

wil421• 12 years ago

Very interesting, I wonder what kind of tab could be 3GB?

Do you know why they had a 64-bit Chrome for Linux since 2009? Why wouldnt they want to switch for Windows/Mac sooner. I bet the user base is greater.

Igglyboo• 12 years ago

The only thing I can think of is something that's doing heavy WebGL rendering, or some sort of js memory leak.

pornel• 12 years ago

1. It's not always single tab. JS heap may need to be shared between multiple tabs due to sharing of objects via `window.opener` and other leaky cross-frame hacks.

2. The process will sooner run out of addresses in the 3GB space rather than actual memory. After running for a while a process may end up with objects allocated all over the address space, so that there isn't enough contiguous address space free for new allocations, even though there's still plenty of free memory in small chunks between live objects.

bhouston• 12 years ago

This is huge for us. Desktop 3D applications were one of the first to move to 64 bit. We have been suffering with 32 bit limitations with http://Clara.io and while it works, getting access to more than 1 GB of ram for JavaScript would be amazing.

euank• 12 years ago

What would be great is if Google supported other 64-bit browsers on windows. Mozilla doesn't really officially support it, but they've provided 64-bit nightly builds for quite a while now. For example, the current nighly 64-bit can be found here: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/late...

Flash, Java, Silverlight, and so on all have 64-bit variants which work, but there's just no way to get the Google Talk and Hangouts plugin to work on those builds of Firefox.

Seeing the title gave me a bit of hope until I thought "No, of course, Google just bundles the plugin anyways... not like they'll publish a download link for a 64-bit build". I wouldn't even care if you had to click through several "Other system / Select custom download" links, if only it were available at all.

I feel like we have a chicken-egg problem. Firefox isn't offering 64-bit prominently because plugins have terrible support for it, and plugins don't support it because it doesn't exist yet... But, unlike Firefox, plugins can offer 64-bit compatible versions without angering a large number of users. Really, the ball should be in their court, Google included, to provide the options.

ulfw• 12 years ago

Kind of ridiculous how late this comes. Also with Chrome not working well with Windows' HiDPI settings, I am not sure why folks on Windows would go with Chrome over Firefox frankly.

64-Bit Chrome for Windows

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