Generally when a stable version of a software is released , it is assumed that the product will be stable and will have less crashes. My Google Chrome stable v5 on Ubuntu 10.04 seemed to behave otherwise. Eversince I installed the stable package, the flash plugin kept crashing without any warning. It would crash on any website running flash. Also, sometimes, pages would get stuck and take ages to load, forcing me to kill the browser.
Fed up with the crashes, I went back to my google-chrome-unstable build from the development branch and viola! No crashes! I am a happy user of Google Chrome (unstable) now.
I am surprised to see this. Did Google declare the wrong build as stable? Or is it my system? Did any of the Google Chrome users have this problem? Would love to know.
I too had experienced all these things you’re talking about in Linux Mint 10.04… I’ve more or less just put up with em since I prefer Chrome over FF. Especially annoying is the performance of flash video: its utterly unwatchable most of the time, unless its from youtube
While I understand that this will not help you feel any better about the stability issues you had with the “stable” version of Google Chrome, I DO happen to know where the confusion comes from. You and I tend to think of the word “stable” as referring to the stability of the software regarding running it without (or with minimal) crashing. When a software project uses the word “stable” they don’t generally use it in that way at all. What THEY are referring to (most often) when they say “stable” is the application programming interface (API) which outside developers use to develop extensions and such is considered “stable” (meaning it isn’t likely to change in any significant way so outside programmers can rely on it for their extension and addon programming). This does NOT necessarily mean the program itself is unlikely to crash. THAT kind of stability gets addressed in bugfix releases. UNstable releases on the other hand could change ANY detail internally and tend to have VERY frequent changes to internal features which can break addon functions. These so-called “unstable” versions can be MORE crash-prone, or LESS. They are generally NOT guaranteed to STAY “stable” either in API nor regarding tendency to crash (or not). Hopefully that clarifies things a bit for anyone else having this same confusion.
Thanks for the loveley description of a stable software . But I would like to say that when a software is released to the public, it generally means that a layman can use it without getting harassed by slow, unresponsive and crash prone product , especially when it is version 5 not 1. The end user doesn’t care about the api , it cares about the usability of the end product