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Chrome is nice for using on Netbooks and alike, however it is annoying to have the thumbnails to show up when it starts.

This can be fixed by setting the startup option to show the

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Chrome and Linux

I have tried a free browsers such as Firefox, Opera and now Chrome on my Linux laptop (old R40e P4 Celeron 2.0GHz, 1GB), and must say Chrome is the best browser for resources. I like my Firefox for its wealth of extensions, but it often grinds my little laptop to halt for pages littered with excessive Javascripts and Flash adverts. Flash can be dealt with Flash Blocker, but Javascript is a bit hard. With so call Web 2.0, most "modern" websites are using AJAX (J = Javascripts), and turning off Javascript means useless websites. Unfortunately, this is the landscape of current WWW if is not worsen.

I have not scientifically test Chrome against other browsers, but Chrome does handle these websites where others may fail a lot better. However, it isn't without any problems. Firstly, it seems ever stuck to its BETA label, and its updates are more often than the others. You may argue this is good as updates keeps it current, but it is a pain with slow or metered connections, e.g. mobile network. Secondly, Chrome is still relatively new, web programmers are still targeting their sites to IE and Firefox, Webkit based browsers such as Safari, Chrome and others still taking the second seat if not the third. Thirdly, Chrome's link with Google. I don't know if Chrome's search/title bar is still linking to its parent company. It is a bit annoying to know all things you typed are going to be collected and sent back to the bee hive. Last but not the least, Chrome's convenience features. History search may be a good thing for many, but not for myself. I don't like my descriptions of my previous browsed popped up automatically when I typed a new URL. This can be a disaster if you certain types of websites get displayed while you are doing a presentation in front of a large audience. This is also not so good if you are security cautiousness. Personally, I would like to see Chrome more forgetful like Firefox. For example, I would like it to have an option to forget things when it is closed (history, cookies and temp files)

Nevertheless, if you are running Linux on a slow machine and is looking for a full feature browsers, Chrome is a decent choice.

Chrome

Since Chrome is now available on Linux, I decided to give a trial. I have tried the Window version before, but I don't like it such to its "lack" of security features. With Firefox, you can set it up to delete privacy information on exit. However, there isn't anything remotely close in Chrome. It is minimal and far too minimal for my taste.

For my date to date browser, I will still do it on Firefox as there is nothing come close to its plug-in ecosystem. However, Chrome has its places for certain "application" where tabs needed to open and close constantly. With Firefox, activities of such would gradually degrade its performance due to memory issues. If Chrome can manage memory as it advertise, it should handle this type of situation much better with its process base tabs. Well, time will tell.