Chromium, the open source software project behind Google's Chrome Web browser, has gained native compatibility for 64-bit systems. This reflects the growing maturity of the Linux port and demonstrates the extent of Google's commitment to make Chrome a first-class citizen on the platform.

In a message posted to the Chromium developer list late last week, Google software engineer Dean McNamee revealed that 64-bit compatibility had been achieved and that official builds could be coming soon. He also posted a link to a page at the Chromium wiki which provides simple compilation instructions.

"The v8 team did some amazing work this quarter building a working 64-bit port. After a handful of changes on the Chromium side, I've had Chromium Linux building on 64-bit for the last few weeks," he wrote. "I believe mmoss or tony is going to get a buildbot running, and working on packaging."

McNamee also points out that unofficial 64-bit Chromium builds are available for Ubuntu users in the Chromium Daily Build Personal Package Archive (PPA) which is maintained by Ubuntu contributor Fabien Tassin. Users can add that PPA to their APT sources list to get Chromium packages that are updated daily from the latest code.

The daily builds are highly experimental and are obviously not intended for regular users, but they provide a very convenient and effective way to keep track of the latest improvements to the browser. On 64-bit Ubuntu systems, the Chromium packages previously depended on ia32-libs. Now that the browser can be built natively for 64-bit systems, it no longer has that requirement.

Chromium popularity on Linux

Canonical External Developer Relations manager Jorge Castro (a former Ars contributor) recently posted a blog entry about the growing popularity of Ubuntu daily builds. He points to the statistics generated by the Ubuntu Popularity Contest (Popcon) which indicate that over 10,000 Ubuntu users have installed the Chromium package. It's important to note that Popcon is an optional opt-in service, so the total number could actually be far in excess of 10,000 users.

Google's Web browser has clearly attracted a significant amount of attention in the Linux community despite the fact that the Linux port is still a work in progress and isn't ready for mainstream use yet. Google's strong effort to make Chrome shine on Linux is being recognized by the community, and the browser is increasingly viewed as a compelling competitor to Firefox, the dominant Linux Web browser.