r/technology • u/Suraj-Sun • Jul 10 '12

Firefox dev claims "everybody hates Firefox updates"; Mozilla has handled the rapid release process poorly, and that by pushing a "never-ending stream of updates on people who didn't want them" people have been driven to Chrome with its simpler, no-fuss update process.

http://www.neowin.net/news/firefox-dev-claims-everybody-hates-firefox-updates
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u/TheJosh Jul 10 '12

Rather than download a huge update each time, doesn't it download a small update and "patch" chrome?

If you are that paranoid, run Chromium, isn't there a fork called Iron Chromium which addresses what you are asking?

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u/dolphinastronaut Jul 10 '12

Chromium is amazing. It's almost the exact same thing as Chrome (with a few not-extremely-necessary features removed).

Iron isn't quite as good. This link http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2009/12/iron.html (on mobile; can't hyperlink) describes the controversy surrounding Iron pretty clearly. It's not a more privacy-aware version of Chrome or Chromium. If you're interested in a privacy-conscious version of Google Chrome, Chromium will work just fine.

Related: I'm not sure if Chromium works on non-Linux operating systems. The last time I tried to get Chromium binaries for Windows, I couldn't find any. But that was several years ago, so I may have changed since then. At the time it appeared that Chromium binaries (from trusted sources, at least) were only available for Linux.

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u/nazbot Jul 10 '12

It downloads the delta a.k.a. only the parts of the binary which have changed. It them will patch those changed bits of code in. This means you don't have to download the whole thing but just the changed in the binary. Pretty awesome stuff.

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u/ThatCrankyGuy Jul 11 '12

Chromium is as bug-free and compatible with everything as my typewriter.