Technical Tips & Tricks

Google has been working on a 64-bit version of the Chrome browser for some time now, and with the release of Chrome 37 today, a stable build of the 64-bit browser has been released into the wild. For those of you on a compatible 64-bit system, the 64-bit version will offer performance improvements as well as security and stability enhancements.

Through the use of a more modern instruction set and the latest optimizations, the 64-bit version of Chrome is especially speedy in media and graphics workloads. Google is reporting that VP9 video decoding, for example, is 15% faster on 64-bit Chrome than on the 32-bit variant.

Chrome's security systems have been improved in the switch to 64-bit thanks to having access to a larger pool of memory. By randomizing the location of items in memory, bug exploits are difficult to create, and with more memory to work with, the process becomes even harder.

Stability has also been improved, according to Google engineer Will Harris. In their testing of beta versions of Chrome 64-bit, the development team discovered that the browser crashes around half as often as the 32-bit version when processing web content.

Chrome 37 also finally brings the stable release of DirectWrite graphics in the browser. This means that on Windows machines fonts will now render in more attractive fashion, reducing aliasing and blurriness in many situations.

The update to Chrome 37 will happen automatically for most users, however if you want to get the 64-bit version, you'll have to manually download the variant from the browser's website.

Live Linux environments work just like a typical operating system but run entirely from a CD or USB stick -- the latter being the most common choice these days. Since nothing is written to the host computer’s local storage, when you’re done all you need to do is remove the media, reboot, and everything will be exactly as it was.

There are a number of uses to this, from simply test driving Linux to troubleshooting a Windows PC, or work on the go from someone else’s computer but running your own OS securely with all your personal files and settings.

There are basically two options when it comes to running Linux from a USB drive: from within Windows using virtualization software such as VirtualBox, or creating a boot disk. This quick guide details both methods in a few easy steps.

This option will come in handy if you want to run a Live Linux environment but need to retain access to Windows. Perhaps you just want to do something real quick without rebooting, or want to be able to hide the virtualized Linux instance. Our preferred weapon of choice here is a little tool called LinuxLive USB Creator.

It’s free, open-source software, and it has a built-in virtualization feature that lets you run a self contained version of VirtualBox from the USB drive. This means the host computer you’ll run Linux from doesn’t need to have VirtualBox installed.

Here's what you'll need to do:

Download and transfer the ISO image of your preferred Linux distribution to a USB drive.
Download and install LinuxLive USB Creator.

Launch LiLi USB Creator and follow the straightforward steps guiding you through the process.



You will need and internet connection to complete the process -- mainly to download VirtualBox if you don’t have it installed. Once the process is finished, open your USB key in Windows Explorer and you should see a folder called VirtualBox containing two executable files: VirtualizeThisKey.exe and VirtualBox.exe.

Running VirtualizeThisKey.exe will launch your Linux distribution in Windows (inside VirtualBox), whereas VirtualBox.exe opens the full VirtualBox interface.

Boot Linux from a USB drive

If you’d rather load Linux without going through Windows first this is the way to go. There are a few different tools for creating bootable USB drives around the web but one I’m particularly fond of is YUMI -- short for Your Universal Multiboot Installer.

This is the successor to our MultibootISO and can be used to install more than one distribution to run from your USB. It’s extremely simple to use, and all files from each Linux distribution are stored within the Multiboot folder, making for a nicely organized Multiboot Drive that can still be used for other storage purposes.

Download the ISO image of your preferred Linux distribution.

Download and install YUMI.

Launch YUMI and follow three simple steps guiding you through the process.



Once YUMI is done you’re all set. To boot into Linux just plug the USB drive into the host computer, reboot, and press the required key during this process to enter the Boot Menu (usually F10). After choosing your USB drive you should see the YUMI boot menu where you can pick the desired Linux distribution in Live mode.

You can run YUMI's boot drive creator again to add More ISOs/distributions to your drive as needed and they'll all show up in this menu during boot.