The Linux version of Google’s Chrome web browser is not ready yet. Don’t boot up Windows, if you’re interested in testing it out it’s possible to do so by running Chrome under Wine.

Wine 1.1.4 has been released, and includes fixes for running Chrome. I’ll update this post once I give it a try.

You’ll need to have an up-to-date version of Wine, I tested it with version 1.1.3. See #8 in this blog post on how to install the latest Wine versions. If you’re not sure, run this command to check your Wine version:
wine --version

Google’s net-installer for Chrome doesn’t work in Wine. Instead, use the standalone installer. Download it from here:
http://gpdl.google.com/chrome/install/149.27/chrome_installer.exe

Open a terminal to and change to the directory you downloaded the installer to. Run the installer with Wine:
wine chrome_installer.exe

The installation should complete very quickly. Click Start Google Chrome and the Chrome window should open, but will appear to be broken. Close Chrome for now.

Let’s use a script called winetricks to automate downloading and setting up some required DLLs. Download winetricks, make the script executable, and run it:
wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
chmod +x winetricks
./winetricks riched20 riched30 flash


Run Chome with the–new-http and –in-process-plugins options to make it work (the command below is all one line):
wine ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/profiles/$USER/Local\ Settings/Application\ Data/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe --new-http --in-process-plugins

Use the previous command whenever you want to start Chrome. At this point Chrome is working fine, but the fonts look awful. The fonts can be improved by using winetricks again (I didn’t use the allfonts command because the Liberation fonts seem to be gone and cause winetricks to get stuck):
./winetricks corefonts tahoma

Chrome runs pretty well in WINE. The largest problem is that HTTPS addresses will cause an error. Minor issues include the status bar appearing above other windows and the lack of font anti-aliasing for small text.

This post is based on the instructions from the Ubuntu forums, posted here. More information about Chrome on Linux is available on the Wine AppDB page.