Vertical space on linux? That's simply not true. Exhibit 1: The default firefox and chromium running on my linux (ubuntu, i3wm). http://i.imgur.com/paE173H.png . 6 pixels by default in favour of firefox.
The real problem though is chrome's interface really is completely inflexible. I like a thinner browser than either of those. Hence, my firefox setup: http://i.imgur.com/XAyc8Tu.png .. 17 pixels more space than chrome can be gained easily (firefox with only the extension 'pentadactyl'). And further more, since firefox's appearence is all just XUL it can be styled to be as thin or thick as I like.
So yeah, firefox you can change the ui to be vertically thin. It's simply impossible to do that with chrome.
When I start up Firefox on Ubuntu running Gnome 3.6 classic or whatever they call it, I got the traditional firefox and definitely no tabs in the title bar, a bunch of vertical space used for the menus, address field and search field and the list goes on. I was able to customize the bars in order to move everything onto one line but couldn't make it the same line as the menu, and could only find bugzilla entries about not being able to move tabs to the title bar on Linux.
The real problem though is chrome's interface really is completely inflexible. I like a thinner browser than either of those. Hence, my firefox setup: http://i.imgur.com/XAyc8Tu.png .. 17 pixels more space than chrome can be gained easily (firefox with only the extension 'pentadactyl'). And further more, since firefox's appearence is all just XUL it can be styled to be as thin or thick as I like.
So yeah, firefox you can change the ui to be vertically thin. It's simply impossible to do that with chrome.