FireFox vs Chrome

[zianuray]

I've been using FireFox, but I'm hearing things about good things about Google Chrome too.

Anyone have a good reason I should or should not try Chrome?  Will I even notice a difference, really?



Along that line, I'm thinking about changing the OS on my oldest laptop to Linux t try that out.  Suggestions/caveats, or am I totally not getting the point?  (Keep in mind, IF I do that, I'll be having a pro take all the old data off and back it up, then strip and redo the ... thingy.  System.  Whatever.)  And the data is currently on an external HD as well, but...I don't necessarily trust them little electrons.

Comments

[theslice.livejournal.com]

I've switched from Firefox to Chrome. Chrome is simply the fastest browser out there, hands-down. Plus, Chrome (as well as IE8 and IE9) open every window/tab in a new process so an errant page cannot bring down the whole browser process. Chrome used to not support plug-in extensions, but it's got quite enough to be very useful.

[rebeccafiddler.livejournal.com]

Chrome is good - very good. The only thing keeping me from adopting it as a default across the board is that, at this time, none of the state education processes (including all of the yearly tests) have been certified on it. (Not from lack of us tech people asking; all they will say is that it takes time...) And I have to be able to maintain those processes, so I use Firefox and keep it as updated as possible.

On my home computer, I alternate between Chrome and Firefox. Chrome is definitely faster and, as theslice noted, it keeps things in tight little boxes, which helps keep a browser crash from taking an entire system down.

As for Linux, talk to Riley - his laptop has been running Ubuntu for years. The only downside I can see is that you cannot run Windows games on it; there are programs out there that can create Windows emulation for Linux (specifically for using games), but they require more resources than he currently has available on that laptop.

[verminiusrex.livejournal.com]

I'm switching to Chrome from Safari (which I switched to after Firefox), because the old browser keeps crashing without reason. The only downside is that I have to move bookmarks over, but I use it as an opportunity to clean out old irrelevant bookmarks.

[reynai.livejournal.com]

One thing I do know is that there are some payment processing things that don't work with Chrome -- and Firefox's addons, if you use any of them, I don't believe any of them translate over. If you care about neither of those things, there's no real reason to stick with FF unless you won't to.

[torakiyoshi.livejournal.com]

Join the Grid: get Chrome.
http://www.veoh.com/collection/think1/watch/v463753Xsz4k2fP

It took me a long time to get gmail because of this video, created in, I believe, 2005. Since then, I've begun to see that the Google search engine is slowly moving towards EPIC. It's an idea which horrifies me for the very reasons the narrator says: "At it's worst... it's merely a collection of trivia, most of them false."

[lorac-black.livejournal.com]

Firefox was always buggy and crashing on me when I switched to Win 7, so I went to Chrome and I've never looked back.

[sneezythesquid.livejournal.com]

Chrome is very fast and sleek. My only issues with it are that it doesn't have any toolbar support (I live and die by my Google Toolbar) and there are some sites that don't work well with it yet, having been designed for FF/IE. If those things don't bother ya, then give it a shot.

I can't tell you squat about Linux, sorry.

[strife-caecus.livejournal.com]

RE: Firefox vs. Chrome
I use Firefox and Chrome--simultaneously. I guess I'm a power user like that [shrugs]. Chrome is no doubt fast and with its Extensions makes it even more useful. As other people mentioned above, Chrome likes to run each tab/page in a separate process so bringing down all of Chrome when one page screws up is harder. However...

I'm a Firefox extensions "whore" and I definitely taken advantage of that. On my Firefox setup, I use...
Yoono - Keeps track of Facebook and Twitter updates at-a-glance on the left side. (Of course, I can hear people saying, "Well, I just use TweetDeck." TweetDeck is more for the hardcore Twitter/Facebook users. Just ask the Twitter/Skype role players... At-a-glance is what I desire.)
LiveJournal Addons - Allows me to know when and who my f-list updates without me having to manually check all the time.
Forecastbar Enhanced - Weather at a glance, plus radar!
I haven't seen the kind of extensions I want for Chrome quite yet. However, more and more Chrome extensions are being added or ported over from Firefox all the time. Here are three that are found on both browsers that I use...
AdBlock - Why, oh why, should you EVER put up with ads on a web page?
Lazarus: Form Recovery - Ever typed a long comment (like this one) and either accidentally close the page, crash the browser, or click "Post/Submit" and it screws up? This remembers what you typed in that box so you can easily refill the text box with that info. Awesome extension!
Xmarks - You can sync your bookmarks, history, tabs and web page passwords across different browsers (IE, FF, Chrome, Safari) and different computers with this! No one comes quite close enough to Xmark's ability to sync like this. To think, they almost shut down a few months ago before the world went, "NOOOOOO!" They quickly got the sponsorship needed to stay running.

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RE: Linux
Linux can be quite awesome for an aging laptop. If the only thing you're going to be doing is surfing the Internet in Chrome or Firefox, then Linux shouldn't be a problem. Of course, you can do other everyday things in Linux too. Just keep in mind, there are several subtle "everyday user" differences between Windows and Linux. The biggest being, "Under normal circumstances, Windows applications won't run under Linux."

Sure, you can use emulators like Wine or run a virtual environment of Windows inside of Linux using VirtualBox (as an example). However, that requires (much) more computer savvy and resources than the old machine can handle.

In my laptop's setup, I run a dual-boot installation of Windows 7 and Ubuntu Linux. Whenever, I turn on my laptop, I can choose whether to enter Windows 7 or Ubuntu Linux. I tend to use Windows 7 more than 95% of the time because that's where most of my business occurs. However, I keep Ubuntu around to learn and use it for more specific applications...such as file backup and recovery and wireless network breaching.

Ubuntu Netbook Remix works great on my spare netbook I keep as a backup computer!