João Morais

Google Chrome Web Browser Installation on Linux

Wrote on August 5th, 2009 under Papers, Software, Xubuntu

Tired of the slowness of Mozilla Firefox and curious with the acclaimed performance of Google Chrome (or Chromium, if you prefer), today I’ve decided to give it a try.

Although it is still an alpha version it already allows you to perform the regular navigation activities that you are used to with an incredible speed.

It’s layout is also a bit different of what we are used to, in my opinion it is great, KISS principle all the way.  I also like the new functionalities like the task manager which allows you to take control over the used memory with each tab/window and the browser itself.

With all this in mind I expect a great browser to arise from Google in the next months. Below are the steps that I needed to perform to install Chromium on Xubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid).

First of all you need to edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file:

$ sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following two lines at the bottom of the file:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main

Now save/close the file and add the GPG key using the following command:

--rev-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0xfbef0d696de1c72ba5a835fe5a9bf3bb4e5e17b5

Next we will update the source list and install the browser:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

If you want you can also enable flash support by copying (or linking) your previously installed flash library into browser plugins directory:

$ sudo cp /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/chromium-browser/plugins

And you are done, next time you run it you will only need to specify the plugins usage with following command:

$ chromium-browser --enable-plugins