14 DAY TRIAL // Google developers have big plans for the Chromium project and they are considering replacing the old GTK+ with their own stack called Aura.
Chromium has changed a lot over the years, and its developers have replaced a lot of the main parts with other ones. For example, Webkit has been replaced with Blink, and now GTK+ will be replaced with Aura.
You might be wondering why this is necessary, but the answer is pretty simple and comes in two parts. There are, in fact, two reasons why Chromium developers would choose to replace a proven and stable component like GTK+ with something new.
First of all, it's possible that GTK+ is not capable of implementing some type of functionality required by the developers. Secondly, if the component is not yours (GTK+ is built by a completely different group of people), it would be hard to make the necessary adjustments.
Getting your own project ensures that everything you need will be implemented in time, without having to submit patches to another project and waiting for them to be implemented.
The same kind of decision has been reached by Canonical when it developed its own displayer server, Mir. Devs didn't feel that Wayland would get them what they needed and they really couldn't control its development.
“We aim to launch the Aura graphics stack on Linux in M35. Aura is a cross-platform graphics system, and the Aura frontend will replace the current GTK+ frontend.
“We aim for Chromium to be the best browser across all platforms. While we’ve previously not launched features on all platforms simultaneously, shipping the same graphics stack and UI code on Windows, ChromiumOS and Linux should make it significantly easier to ship features simultaneously on all those platforms, without having to duplicate effort by having to write a separate Linux and Windows version of the feature,” said Google Chrome developer Elliot Glaysher.
Getting rid of GTK+ would also provide a performance boost for Google Chrome because the browser would use one OpenGL context per window, instead of one OpenGL context per tab, which in turn will drastically reduce GPU resource consumption.
This is why Google Chrome is asking the Linux users to start trying the Alpha channel of Google Chrome and to test it. If you are an Ubuntu or Debian user, you can install the development version with this command:
sudo apt-get install google-chrome-unstable
If you remember correctly, Canonical has already announced that it has successfully ported Chromium to Mir, so this is either fortuitous or it had prior knowledge.