title: A new default browser link: https://onemoretech.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/a-new-default-browser/ author: lembobro description: post_id: 1050 created: 2011/09/19 20:07:44 created_gmt: 2011/09/20 00:07:44 comment_status: closed post_name: a-new-default-browser status: publish post_type: post

A new default browser

After dancing around the issue for awhile I've finally begun to use Google Chrome as the default web browser on my machines. Well, Chrome and Chromium to be exact. The latest version of Chrome installs and runs nicely on Windows and Scientific (RHEL or CentOS) Linux 6. But on CentOS/RHEL 5? Not so much. For that the answer is Ryoji Kamei's rpms of Chromium and its dependencies for CentOS/RHEL 5. To make installing it all easier, Ryoji has also created yum repo packages for various architectures (see his main Chromium page for these). Although I doubt anyone reading this blog needs to hear a reason for running Chrome, I'll give one anyway: it's wicked fast. For me there's another, even more practical one. If Chrome is fated to become the most used browser in the universe it makes sense to get to know it well. Real well. That's what I intend to do over the next few months. Postscript: Of course there are still some annoyances I've run into running either Chromium and Chrome for Linux. The main one is that, unlike Firefox, the Linux version of these browsers can't be configured to open rather than save common document types like .pdf, .doc, .xls, etc. Instead they insist on saving them (except for .pdf, which on some versions will open with Google's own viewer). To me that's really lame and the main reason I've switched back to the latest Firefox on all my desktops.

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