CodeWeavers Ports Chromium to Linux and Mac OS X

We've written about the folks at CodeWeavers before. They make a customized, commercial version of Wine called CrossOverLinux. and have been major contributors to Wine. (Wine allows Linux users to run Windows applications.) This post from the CodeWeavers blog details how the company has succesfully ported versions of Chromium--the open source core of Google's Chrome browser--for Mac and Linux. The ports are free and available here. You won't want to run these ports as your main browser, but as proof-of-concept for cross-platform versions of Chrome, this is good news.

You can read more about the ported versions--dubbed CrossOver Chromium--here. "CrossOver Chromium is a technology proof-of-concept to demonstrate Wine’s capabilities for rapidly migrating Windows software to new marketplaces, such as Linux and Mac," says the CodeWeavers post.

Check out this screenshot of CrossOver Chromium running on Mac OS X. And, check out this version of CrossOver Chromium running on Ubuntu.

I've been predicting that the official versions of Chrome will show up for the Mac and Linux by the end of the year, and this makes me more confident that we'll see that. As we've noted, there is already a developer page for the upcoming Linux version of Chrome. It's good to see energy and ingenuity going on for this new open source browser.