You can download the old Google Chrome 34 version from Softpedia

May 28, 2014 08:40 GMT  ·  By

Google considers that GTK+ is no longer meeting its requirements and decided to push its own solution for Google Chrome, in the form of Aura. The heralded GTK+x replacement for the Chrome browser has a downside for the Linux users, which are now forced to downgrade to an older version.

When Google decided to replace GTK+ with Aura, the immediate consequences were not obvious from the start. Now that users have adopted the new Google Chrome 35, people have started to discover that Java no longer works in the browser. This is true only for the Linux platform.

Along with the GTK+ 2 support, Google has also removed the support for the NPAPI plugins, which also includes Java, and it doesn't matter if it's the Oracle version or OpenJDK. As you can imagine, there are many websites that need Java, so this is likely to become a major problem for the Linux users.

The problem is a little bit more serious than previously thought, and a Linux user has exemplified why this is the case on askubuntu.com. He explained that the bug entry he opened with the Chromium devs has been marked as “won't fix,” which means that Google will not do anything to repair the issue, at least not in the foreseeable future.

“The IcedTea Java Plugin is not shown at all with 35.x. Browsing a site requiring Java will show the missing plugin bar on top. I've installed chrome 34.0.1847.116 (stable) and 35.0.1916.27 (beta) side-by side on my system. The former recognizes the plugin flawlessly, the latter doesn't. Did this work before? Yes 34.0.1847.116,” reads the bug report.

The Google developers have more or less ignored the problem and it's very likely that it won't get solved too soon. Basically, if you want Java functionality with your browser, you will need to downgrade to version 34.

We uploaded the Google Chrome 34 version for Linux on our servers and you can download the appropriate version from there. All you need to do now is to remove the Google Chrome 35 version, if you have it, and to disable the Google repositories in the software sources. This way you won't update the application by mistake during the regular update process.

The only way the Java functionality will be returned to Google Chrome is with a patch, but if people don't report this issue, the developers won't know that it's a pressing problem.

Also, commenting in the bug reports for this problem, saying that you shouldn't use websites that have Java embedded, is not a solution.

Google has been doing some strange things lately. It ditched WebKit for Blink (which is just a fork), and now it gave up on GTK+ and replaced it with Aura. We'll just have to wait and see what their next “victim” will be.