Google Gears in 64-bit Linux
From it’s official website, Google Gears is a plug-in that extends your browser to create a richer platform for web applications. Web applications currently making use of Google Gears includes Google Reader, Google Docs, Zoho, Remember the milk, Picasa Web Album, Myspace, and recently the latest version of the popular blogging application Wordpress.
Google Gears is known for being able to make offline browsing of supported sites possible, though that’s actually just part of it’s aim of "enabling more powerful web application, by adding new features to your web browser".
As per the time of writing, Google Gears is not available for 64 bit Linux. As it is open sourced, some smart people at it’s user group has been able to create an unofficial patch to fix the problem and released the binary for it.
The following step is on how to install it in Linux.
- Download the latest binary being made available at http://tinyurl.com/gears64
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~swolchok/gears/http://freelosofia.org/2008/12/28/google-gears-0570-x86_64-64bit/
- Open the downloaded file using Firefox
- Click Install Now when prompted
- Restart Firefox
The installation process is illustrated by the screenshots below;
19 Responses to Google Gears in 64-bit Linux
Article: Google Gears in 64 bit Linux
September 5th, 2008 at 11:58 am
[...] managed to find a solution for it (through Google of course), and wrote an article of it at Techrecipes. Please read and report if it doesn’t work for you, or if it just works [...]
Mark
September 5th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Doesn’t work on Opensuse 11 64-bit
admin
September 5th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Too bad for you. I tried it on Ubuntu 8.04.1 (Hardy) 64-bit. What’s the error?
Dave
September 19th, 2008 at 2:44 am
Hmm, just tried the linked gears-linux-opt-0.4.9.0.xpi
on Kubuntu 8.10, 64-bit, on Firefox 3.0.1
It gave me an error message saying the plugin was incompatible with the architecture (Linux/64-bit), however the plugin was not disabled, and restarting the browser didn’t give me any errors. Everything seems to be working fine as well! Strange.
Mike
September 29th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
Hey, despite the same error message upon x64 Firefox 3.03’s restart, it works on OpenSUSE 11 with Gnome. Yay. If this guy can get a 64-bit version running, what gives, Google? 64-bit, like Google and online/offline Web apps, is the future.
things to look at (September 20th - October 26th) | stimulant - changing things around. . .
October 27th, 2008 at 4:01 am
[...] Google Gears in 64-bit Linux [...]
aliencam dot net blog. » Blog Archive » Adobe Flash 10 and Google Gears on Firefox in 64-bit Ubuntu!
November 2nd, 2008 at 2:20 am
[...] According to the official Google Gears FAQ, there are two ways to install gears in a 64-bit edition of firefox. The first one is using “nspluginwrapper” (which makes little to no sense because gears is an addon, not a plugin and as such cannot be wrapped), and the second option is to use a patch documented on the google groups. The problem with the patch is that most people don’t know how to patch and build source. However, some nice person has patched version 0.4.9.0 (which is a recent version) and posted the compiled addons on their website. All you have to do is go to www-personal.umich.edu/~swolchok/gears/ and download the most recent file anywhere, then in firefox go to File > Open File and select the .xpi file. Firefox will then install the addon and the only issue will be that every once in awhile you get an error message saying that firefox cannot update the extension because your browser is 64-bit. Just ignore it and check that website to see if a new version has been posted, it does not interfere with any of the other extensions from being updated. This guide was taken from HERE. [...]
hafidz.nasruddin » Google Gears untuk Linux 64-bit
December 4th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
[...] Jumpa cara untuk memasang Google Gear di TechRecipes [...]
Frank Daley
December 29th, 2008 at 7:21 am
I installed version 0.4.9.0 from the web site http://www-personal.umich.edu/~swolchok/gears/gears-linux-opt-0.4.9.0.xpi on Fedora 10 (64-bit).
It shows in list of add-ons, but I receive an error message >
“”Google Gears” could not be installed because it is not compatible with your Firefox build type (Linux_x86_64-gcc3). Please contact the author of this item about the problem.”
Any body know a fix?
admin
December 29th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Regardless of the error, the plug-in actually works.
ivanhoe
January 8th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
You can find a new release of 64 bit google gears here:
http://freelosofia.org/2008/12/28/google-gears-0570-x86_64-64bit/
admin
January 9th, 2009 at 10:37 am
@ivanhoe: I’ve updated the post above with your given link
CHrigi
January 16th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Sadly it does not work for me
I installed the xpi from the updated link on my FF 3.0.5 (Ubuntu 8.10 x64) without any issues but I can’t access the gears preferences and when I try to enable Turbo in WP in just redirects me to the Google Gears install page and the Google Reader does not display the green arrow…
However the “Gears Preferences” show up in the Tools menu and the Addon appears active in the Addon Manager.
What went wrong? I hope you can help me.
switching to ubuntu / Google Gears in Firefox x64 for Wordpress 2.7
January 20th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
[...] a quick search and found a TechRecipes post which has everything you need. Already having burned myself once, I checked to see what [...]
Luke Faraone
January 28th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
Unfortunately for me, it seems the newest version is incompatible with Gmail’s gears.
Cyberdog
January 29th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
I installed the 64 Bit of gears (New version 0.5.7.0) and it installed with no errors, but Google did not pick it up. I un-installed gears plugin, and installed the older 64 bit version of gears, as given in one of the previous posts (http://www-personal.umich.edu/~swolchok/gears/gears-linux-opt-0.4.9.0.xpi) and it works perfectly.
Niels
February 2nd, 2009 at 5:01 pm
I’ve compiled an updated version myself and uploaded it here: http://tinyurl.com/gears64
Tested with Kubuntu 8.10 Intrepid / Firefox 3.0.5 and Offline Gmail and Wordpress.
James Duncan
February 4th, 2009 at 1:32 am
I have the new build and all previous builds for download here:
http://www.jaduncan.com/2009/02/gears-on-64-bit-gnulinux.html
Kyle
March 22nd, 2009 at 6:10 am
Forgot to swing back by here after finding version 5.1.3 available, posted about it here: http://yokohead.com/2009/01/google-gears-in-firefox-x64-for-wordpress-27/