[HN Gopher] Google Chrome goes native for Windows on Arm
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Google Chrome goes native for Windows on Arm
Author : doener
Score : 67 points
Date : 2024-01-28 11:25 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| jsheard wrote:
| They didn't already have a Windows ARM build? I know that
| ecosystem is immature but jeez, barely having Chrome on board >4
| years after launching it is a dire state of affairs.
| brycewray wrote:
| Yes, but it currently self-identifies as "32-bit emulated."
| pavlov wrote:
| It's obvious that Google intentionally withholds their software
| from platforms that could compete with their Android and
| ChromeOS devices (which are of course ARM-based).
|
| They did the same to Windows Phone back in the day. Not having
| apps like YouTube left the platform at a clear disadvantage
| because they can't be credibly replaced by third party clients
| (YouTube doesn't tolerate them and will try to break them).
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Did every other developer also withhold apps from Windows
| Phone intentionally to prevent competition with _their_
| operating systems?
| vdaea wrote:
| Besides Google and Snapchat most other platforms had apps
| (of varying levels of quality, though)
| kotaKat wrote:
| Yep, enjoyed getting banned from Snapchat for using a
| third party client on Windows Phone.
| IcyWindows wrote:
| Snapchat would not allow a port no matter how much money
| Microsoft offered them.
| jsheard wrote:
| Is Microsoft also intentionally withholding software from
| Windows ARM? They only just shipped a fully native Visual
| Studio for ARM in December, four years after releasing the
| ARM-based Surface Pro X, and a decade after their earlier ARM
| push with the Tegra-based Surfaces.
| my123 wrote:
| Visual Studio had to wait for .NET Framework (not .NET
| Core) to be ported to ARM64 native.
|
| Quite a part of Microsoft wanted to avoid doing that
| outright, so it took quite a while to happen.
| jsheard wrote:
| I see https://imgur.com/XLuaF0h is as relevant as ever.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Google has supported ARM Chromebooks for years; if MS was
| shipping software for Darwin on Apple silicon or Linux on
| ARM then yeah that would be a weird look
| zamadatix wrote:
| Microsoft does ship ARM64 software for macOS and Linux
| though. E.g. .net core, PowerShell, and VS Code come to
| mind. Some of the Office suite ships ARM64 on macOS only
| as well (Teams, Word, Excel, Outlook, etc) and, back to
| the topic of browsers, Edge too of course.
| bla3 wrote:
| How many people are there on windows arm? It doesn't seem super
| popular.
|
| If anything, this looks like Google thinking that that might be
| changing.
|
| Does anyone know if there are new windows arm products that
| might make it more popular?
| jsheard wrote:
| It's not really happening _yet_ but there 's a renewed push
| to make it happen, with MS partnering with Qualcomm on a high
| performance mobile SOC that's meant to compete with Apples
| M-series SOCs, but it remains to be seen if OEMs will bite or
| just keep using the tried and true x86 parts. This isn't the
| first time MS has tried to make Windows ARM a thing.
| kyriakos wrote:
| I assume Microsoft will release a Surface or two with the
| new soc. Lenovo probably too since they released with the
| older qualcomm mobile SoCs. It all boils down to the actual
| real world performance of the new Soc, battery life etc.
|
| Personally most software I run today would run fine on arm
| or it's web based so if the reviews look good I'm probably
| buying one.
| neodymiumphish wrote:
| I'm a very technical user, but my personal travel device is
| the Robo & Kala Surface alternative (bought for around $650
| with detachable keyboard). Runs on ARM and handles emulation
| surprisingly well. What's super nice is that ARM Android apps
| runs seamlessly via Subsystem for Android, making travel easy
| since I can use the Android app for whatever service I want
| (Disney, Netflix, etc) and sync/download content in advance.
| I remote into more capable devices if I need additional
| horsepower, but it really is completely usable already.
| baq wrote:
| When arm64 native build... could use the cost reduction on AWS
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Just use chromium?
| mherrmann wrote:
| > the choice of a native Arm browser on Windows is effectively
| just Edge
|
| This is incorrect. Brave also has native Arm support, including
| Widevine.
| widerporst wrote:
| And Firefox as well if I'm not mistaken. On their download
| page, I can choose "Windows ARM64/AArch64" as platform:
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/
| lynguist wrote:
| ??
|
| Firefox on ARM64 Windows exists for years and I assume most who
| use Parallels on a Mac know and use it.
| Erratic6576 wrote:
| This is the only valid way of using windows, I guess
| goosedragons wrote:
| There's also been a port of Chromium for years in addition to
| the Firefox port others have mentioned.
| andix wrote:
| Both are probably better options than Google Chrome, which sole
| purpose seems to be tracking your browsing activity ;).
| zamadatix wrote:
| Based on the last time I opened Edge I'd say Microsoft is
| somehow beating Google on that count.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Not just you: https://www.zdnet.com/article/brave-deemed-
| most-private-brow...
| bhouston wrote:
| I believe on MacOS the Chrome browser is also native ARM so I
| suspect this wasn't a massive amount of additional work.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| WebKit (Safari) diverged from Blink (Chromium) over a decade
| ago. The two codebase are very different now.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| What does this have to do with WebKit or Safari? Chrome uses
| its own engine on both macOS and Windows regardless of CPU
| architecture, as well as all other supported operating
| systems except iOS and iPadOS.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| Sorry I didn't read your post correctly; I thought you said
| Safari.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| Wasn't my post, but ok, misreadings happen, no worries.
| MikusR wrote:
| As I understand then Chromium has had Windows arm version for 4
| years and electron for 3
| karmakaze wrote:
| The article title is "Surprise! Google Chrome goes native for
| Windows on Arm".
|
| This is a non-story. For something as critically used as a web
| browser, being non-native would be the surprise, especially on
| the expected many lower-powered devices running the architecture.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Well that's the thing, it HAS been a surprise for many years at
| this point. Chrome has long supported ARM for Linux and
| supported ARM for macOS for a few years now but, while Chromium
| and derivatives have supported ARM on Windows for many years as
| well, Chrome itself did not leaving confusion or complication
| about how to deal with things like auto-updating, Widevine, and
| sync vs inefficiency via the x86 version.
|
| The story is this has finally changed and that is more than a
| nothingburger headline.
| vetinari wrote:
| > Chrome has long supported ARM for Linux
|
| Really? Where we can downnload ARM build for Linux?
|
| AFAIK, until now, only MacOS had arm64 build.
|
| (Chromium is a different matter).
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I don't know about "normal" desktop Linux, but there have
| been ARM Chromebooks for years
| zamadatix wrote:
| You won't find a generic .deb/rpm release (that I know of)
| if that's what you mean. Only the lacros-chrome version for
| Linux based ChromeOS.
| Incipient wrote:
| It just shows how much of a disaster/uphill battle/impossible
| experiment (take your pick of which) "windows on arm" is.
|
| A absolutely core piece of technology (I personally use edge/ff
| because I like to support the smaller options) but chrome is core
| on Windows.
| zamadatix wrote:
| It seems like support is finally actually getting fully there for
| Windows on ARM. Native apps you have Chrome, Firefox, Edge,
| Brave, Photoshop and Lightroom, the Office suite, LibreOffice,
| Dropbox, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, .NET, VLC, Spotify,
| 7zip, Zoom... so many names, many of which are very recent to the
| list.
|
| Of course there is still software missing native support
| (WhatsApp, Steam/most games, Slack, Adobe PDF reader) but the
| emulated support of both 32 bit and 64 bit x86 is there now so,
| so long as it doesn't have a kernel component (e.g. game anti-
| cheats), it'll actually at least run instead of "well, what
| version of x86 was that app?".
|
| Combine that with the upcoming Snapdragon X Elite hardware and,
| supposedly, opening up to more than just Qualcomm and that it's
| an ARM Windows device won't necessarily have to be a bad thing
| anymore. The one last nut to crack is (ironically, for Windows)
| games. Until things like Fortnite are published with the ARM
| anti-cheat that'll be a big last snag which takes a while to
| clean itself up.
| math_dandy wrote:
| This should also help with the performance of Electron apps
| like Slack and Discord since their Chromium-based, right?
| zamadatix wrote:
| Chromium and Electron have long supported ARM, since late
| 2019 or so IIRC. Google just hadn't published an official
| version of Chrome itself (which includes the branding, sync,
| widevine, etc). This is why Edge/Brave have had their own
| official ARM64 versions for years - the Chromium base already
| supported it.
|
| Slack and Discord just choose to not publish ARM64 versions
| of their Electron apps.
| Gazoche wrote:
| I just hope this won't eventually be the death of true device
| ownership. For all its cruft and flaws, x86 has served well as
| a standard platform for hackability and for alternative OSes
| like Linux to flourish on. Switching to ARM would give
| Microsoft and manufacturers an excuse to do away with all that.
|
| I don't know what's the state of UEFI on ARM these days, but in
| a decade we could easily find ourselves in the same dire
| situation as phones, with a jungle of OEM-specific images,
| walled garden software and a boot chain cryptographically
| locked down.
| brynet wrote:
| All WoA (Windows 10/11 on ARM) devices based on the Qualcomm
| Snapdragon 7/8cx Gen 3 seem to allow disabling UEFI
| SecureBoot, AFAIK earlier SoCs did as well.
|
| OpenBSD/arm64 runs on the Microsoft Dev Kit 2023 and Lenovo
| ThinkPad x13s machines, out of the box. OpenBSD supported
| booting/installing on these even before Linux, although Linux
| support has improved.
|
| https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html
| Gazoche wrote:
| That's good news, as long as disabling Secure Boot doesn't
| put your device in a "no fun allowed" zone where it's cut
| off from banking, Netflix, etc. Like SafetyNet on Android.
| brynet wrote:
| I'm not aware of anything that depends on the SecureBoot
| status of a device, except possibly Widevine DRM for
| video streaming, but I don't see how that would be unique
| to ARM, disabling SecureBoot is also usually required on
| x86 for running alternative OSes without Microsoft's
| signed shim bootloader.
|
| There is no Widevine support for OpenBSD anyway, so it's
| never been possible to watch Netflix. Fortunately, there
| are solutions for that...
|
| Incidentally, Fedora Asahi Linux for Apple Silicon (ARM)
| got Widevine (hence, Netflix) working without any form of
| SecureBoot, they wrote about it recently on their blog.
| NekkoDroid wrote:
| One thing I know is the most invasive anti-cheat of them
| all: Vanguard. When you are running Windows 11 it
| requires secure boot to be enabled (IIRC this isn't the
| case for when running Windows 10).
|
| On a different note, I actually learned a bit ago, that
| setting up secure boot with your own keys is not too hard
| if you are running a UKI, with only needing to sign
| systemd-boot and the kernel.
| vetinari wrote:
| With your own keys, you mean adding your MOK (machine
| owner key), or going the entire way, with the Microsoft
| ones removed?
|
| The first one is easy, the second one seems to be more
| complicated, especially if you have Option ROMs signed by
| the keys you would like to remove.
| someonehere wrote:
| CrowdStrike also has an ARM version now. I recall reaching out
| to their support back when Apple M1 chips were out and finally
| get Windows 11 ARM virtualized and asking if they planned on an
| ARM client. At the time there was no demand but yes, it seems
| like ARM on Windows is headed in the right direction.
|
| Can't resist the urge to think Microsoft has their own silicon
| in the works.
| loyukfai wrote:
| Printer driver?
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