That Google Toolbar sure looks usable, with the enhanced search box, safe browsing and spell checking. Unfortunately for me, my computer doesn’t meet the system requirements:
• Windows XP/2000 SP3+, Mac OS X 10.2+, or Red Hat Linux 8.0+
• Firefox 1.5+ (Internet Explorer version available here)
I’m using Ubuntu 6.06. What a shame.
On an unrelated notice, I’m back from a week’s vacation on the Azores. I’ll blog more about that later (and post pictures when they’re ready), but I can say right now it was a wonderful week!
by Tom Moitie
07 Sep 2006 at 23:28
What the hell? They decide not to support the most popular desktop distro around, and instead offer support to a distro that is practically only used in enterprise? They use Ubuntu on site. Am I missing something?
by Jay K
08 Sep 2006 at 00:22
The thinking is that they can’t officially support unix/linux generically, so they decide to only support the biggest/most popular/most well-known distro… redhat. I haven’t tried, but I’d be willing to guess it works just fine on anything… it’s just a firefox extension, right?
This is the same thinking that causes people/companies to declare that their website only works on IE or Netscape (Netscape? yes, I still see that regularly)…
Compare it to going to buy a new car and the window sticker saying “Air Conditioning, Automatic Locks and Windows, Leather Interior, Compatible with Roads built by Microsoft or Apple.” … no thanks.
by reed
08 Sep 2006 at 00:23
Why use the Google Toolbar at all? Firefox 2.0 contains everything it does already (enhanced search box, safe browsing and spell checking). Download Firefox 2 Beta 2 from http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bonecho/ and check it out.
by matthijs
08 Sep 2006 at 01:34
The Google toolbar for Firefox is working fine on Ubuntu 6.06.1. And on Suse. Maybe the text is just aimed more on American users, who will probably know Red Hat (and Fedora) better than the European Suse and African Ubuntu. (By now this will have changed in favor of Ubuntu I think).
by Dave
08 Sep 2006 at 09:18
Of course it’ll work in ubuntu, they really should have only listed Firefox as a requirement not a specific OS.
One thing I like about the Google toolbar is that it fully supports the Firefox toolbar customisation so the first thing I do is customise the toolbars, move what I want off the google toolbar onto the main toolbar and then hide the rest of the google toolbar
by David Tenser
08 Sep 2006 at 12:08
Obviously (or so I thought), I was using irony to make a point: Google Toolbar for Firefox works in any recent Linux distro, not just “Red Hat Linux 8.0+”. Here’s making it obvious:
by Mike Hearn
11 Sep 2006 at 13:26
It’d be nice if you could make downloads that worked “on Linux” but too many distribution developers feel that co-operating with each other to provide binary compatibility is not useful. So it can be done but only with a lot of effort/expertise. Easier to just support Red Hat 8. Sad but true.