On 13.1, Xfce, Chrome 32 fails to start with
stan@linux-ttm8:~> google-chrome
[0129/204817:ERROR:nacl_helper_linux.cc(236)] NaCl helper process running without a sandbox!
Most likely you need to configure your SUID sandbox correctly
According to this thread:
http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/493676-Flash-problems-(what-else-is-new-)
It’s a problem with flash on old Athlon XP processors. The workaround there involves downgrading Chrome and installing older version of flash.
I don’t care about flash on this machine, is there a way to run latest Chrome without it?
Also, shouldn’t there be a warning or disclaimer of some sorts when software in repositories does not work on some hardware? I can’t get Midori browser to work either. And no flash.
Yes. Flash-player 11.x does not work on Athlon XPs. You could install flash-player 10.3 from here though:
http://software.opensuse.org/download.html?project=home%3Acornelisbb&package=flash-player
That one should work.
I don’t care about flash on this machine, is there a way to run latest Chrome without it?
Use chromium instead. That one doesn’t include flash, as long as you don’t install chromium-pepper-flash as well.
I think it uses the system’s plugin though if available
Also, shouldn’t there be a warning or disclaimer of some sorts when software in repositories does not work on some hardware?
And how should this be done?
You would need a disclaimer then for every package I guess.
Yes, that’s what I thought.
Is there any way to disable flash on Chrome so that it doesn’t stop the rest of the browser from operating? There’s
google-chrome --disable-setuid-sandbox
option that allows Chrome to start but it won’t display any pages, including “Settings”.
About warning - I guess it would need extra features in package managers, both in zypper and Yast, plus minimum system requirements included with packages themselves like they do on Google Play for Android.
No idea.
But AFAIUI chromium (the open source version of chrome) is the same as chrome without some proprietary add-ons like flash built-in.
From Wikipedia:
Chromium is similar to Chrome, but lacks built-in automatic updates, built-in PDF reader and built-in Flash player, as well as Google branding and has a blue-colored logo instead of the multicolored Google logo.[50]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#cite_note-GoogleComparison-51)[51]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#cite_note-52) Chromium does not implement user RLZ tracking.
So, why not just use chromium instead?
It is included in the distribution, and you will get updates via the standard update repo (so the missing built-in automatic updates doesn’t matter anyway 
).
About warning - I guess it would need extra features in package managers, both in zypper and Yast, plus minimum system requirements included with packages themselves like they do on Google Play for Android.
And who would determine all hardware requirements of every package?
Anyway, if you want to have something like that, you should request it at http://fate.opensuse.org/.
I AM using Chromium, I even set the same icon as Chrome for it so that guests on this machine know what to click on. Chrome, however, has been forked from Chromium and Google is now using it’s own Blink engine. it’s possible that in the future some features will not work in Chromium as intended. I didn’t expect that one day Chrome would stop working here either.
I’ve just tried another webkit browser, Arora, it’s advertised as being lightweight but it doesn’t feel so and while it can open google+ it doesn’t work on the site properly, I guess it doesn’t have the same javascript engine.
I usually use Opera for browsing but on many google sites it’s slow as molasses, hence occasional need for Chrome. Firefox also works but it takes like two minutes to load, Chrome loads its libraries on start up so it appears to start faster.
And who would determine all hardware requirements of every package?
Same people who determine software dependencies, I guess. Those can be very complicated but package managers solve them very fast and offer all kinds of workarounds. Theoretically, one can go through all the trouble of downgrading or changing vendors only to discover that once installed the program won’t run because of hardware limitations.
Flash, for example, keeps getting installed and regularly updated even though Adobe announced that it doesn’t support old Athlons. Had I tried to install it on Windows it would probably refuse to do so. And I learned that it won’t work on this CPU only by accident, maybe it says so in their license agreement but who reads those. However, if it does say there than it’s conceivable that package managers should throw an error.
This is probably not openSUSE domain, however, it’s rpm packaging itself.