Google has finally announced that its increasingly popular lightweight Chrome web-browser is available for Linux and Mac OS-based systems, as well as Windows.

As reported over on the Google Chrome blog - via All Things Digital - the team has finally managed to port the open-source browser to non-Windows operating systems, which is sure to please Google fans.

While an unofficial port for Linux and Mac OS based on the Chrome source code - known as Chromium - has been around almost as long as the source code itself, this most recent announcement marks the first official beta release of Google's own Chrome for non-Windows operating systems.

It seemed likely that Google would make this move pretty soon - with the launch of the open-source version of the Linux-based Chrome OS already heavily reliant on a Linux port of the Chrome browser, the hard work was clearly already completed - but to get a working build before the year is out is sure to please those who want to try out the new browser without the use of Windows and with full support from Google.

Product manager for Google Chrome Brian Rakowski gives the open source community credit for a lot of the hard work with the Linux version, claiming to have had "50 open source contributors [working] on Chromium [who have] been especially helpful on delivering our Linux version of Google Chrome."

The browser is still in beta on both platforms, and some functionality is missing - while the Linux version has extension support, for example, the Mac will have to wait a while - but should bring a smile to those who have been waiting patiently for so long since the Windows release.

The Mac build is available from a page entitled huzzah.html on Google's site, and the Linux from a similarly-joyous w00t.html.

Are you pleased to see an official Chrome build for Mac and Linux, or has Google simply taken Chromium and renamed it to appease demand? Share your thoughts over in the forums.