[MAQeia] Google Chrome / Chromium web browsers
Posted: Mar 11th, '12, 18:13This post provides the Most Asked Questions (and answers) for Mageia users for Google Chrome / Chromium web browsers.
It is a summary of all the numerous discussions in the forum.
If you have some suggestions or if you find a mistake please post your suggestions here in the thread.
---
First things first, an introduction and disambiguation about Chrome / Chromium:
Chromium is one part of the Chromium projects, which include Chromium and Chromium OS, the open-source projects behind the Google Chrome browser and Google Chrome OS, respectively. Chromium is open source, and only available as source code from Google.
Google Chrome is a freeware web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. In general, Chrome/Chromium are renowned for fast rendering and the fastest page load times of all browsers (default settings). Chrome also contains a bundled copy of the Flash Player plugin, so no need to install it manually if you only use Chrome. Additionally Chrome / Chromium provides a really good integration of Google Tranlslate, and automatically asks you if it should translate a page into your language, which happens in-place, and is really comfortable.
Chrome / Chromium is also able to use Plugins (called Extensions) but there are not that many as f.ex. for Firefox.
For a detailed rundown of differences between Chrome and chromium, please see http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/ ... ogleChrome
IMPORTANT NOTE
If you want to know something about the privacy policies related to Chrome / Chromium:
http://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy
https://support.google.com/chrome/bin/a ... wer=114836
Also, mostly everything can be configured/disabled if you don't want that.
Using chromium-browser from the Mageia repositories
The recommended way is to use the Mageia packages for chromium. If you attempt to install
the chromium-browser package (which is actually empty, and only pulls in one of the flavours, this is called a meta-package)
by default you will get chromium-browser-stable, which is the normal stable version and recommended for productive usage.
chromium-browser-beta and chromium-browser-unstable are only available for Cauldron.
As Chromium is a hassle to update and the packaging is rather complex, it may not be always up-to-date as Chromium is
using a really fast release cycle (usually a new major version every 6 weeks). Feel free to join the packaging team to help improve that situation:
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Becoming_a_Mageia_Packager
Confusion / Mix-up between Chromium browser and Chromium B.S.U
There is another package called only chromium, don't confuse this for the Chromium web browser.
Chromium (the full name is Chromium B.S.U.) is an arcade-style, top-scrolling space shooter and a really
fun game, feel free to try it out, but it has nothing to do with the Chromium web browser.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/chromium-bsu/
Chromium 35 and issues with plugins
Since version 35, chromium doesn't support browser plugins anymore. See http://advisories.mageia.org/MGASA-2014-0413.html
and the thread viewtopic.php?f=7&t=8568 for more information.
See http://blog.chromium.org/2013/09/saying ... npapi.html or http://blog.chromium.org/2014/05/update ... ation.html for more information on why and when the support for NPAPI browser plugins has been dropped.
It's still possible to get at least flash working, by using pepperflash plugin from chrome.
See the above linked forum post for the pepperflash plugin, and the following instructions on how to install chrome to obtain the plugin.
Using chrome directly from Google repositories
You can also use Google Chrome directly, for example if you want your updates to happen faster or if you don't like the Chromium look.
There are two ways to do this, either by downloading Chrome directly from Google and installing it manually,
or by adding the Chrome repository from Google to your urpmi repositories, which enables you to get automatical updates from Google.
For the first one, take a look here: https://www.google.com/chrome and just follow the instructions.
edit doktor5000: Since google-chrome-stable-63.0.3239.84 it requires ca-certificates package, which does not exist on Mageia. For new installation or also for further updates one would need to use e.g. urpmi --allow-nodeps google-chrome-stable
See e.g. https://ml.mageia.org/l/arc/discuss/201 ... 00046.html for more details.
ATTENTION: 32bit support has been dropped by google, see this thread on their product forums
For the second, open a terminal, and as root issue the following command for a 64bit install:
Then just install google-chrome-stable (or -beta or - unstable, whatever you prefer) and you'll get updates directly from Google as soon as they release them.
One thing needs to be done to ensure correct operation, you need to import the public GPG key with which Google signs those packages,
or otherwise you'll get errors about the wrong or unknown signature of those packages. This only needs to be done if you haven't hat Chrome installed before.
Just issue the following command in a terminal as root to import Googles public GPG key after downloading it from
If it errors out like in the following example:
then it only means that you'll probably have it already installed, you can check via
output should look like this:
One extra step is needed: associating the key with the Google repository.
More on that can be found at http://www.google.com/linuxrepositories/
It is a summary of all the numerous discussions in the forum.
If you have some suggestions or if you find a mistake please post your suggestions here in the thread.
---
First things first, an introduction and disambiguation about Chrome / Chromium:
Chromium is one part of the Chromium projects, which include Chromium and Chromium OS, the open-source projects behind the Google Chrome browser and Google Chrome OS, respectively. Chromium is open source, and only available as source code from Google.
Google Chrome is a freeware web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. In general, Chrome/Chromium are renowned for fast rendering and the fastest page load times of all browsers (default settings). Chrome also contains a bundled copy of the Flash Player plugin, so no need to install it manually if you only use Chrome. Additionally Chrome / Chromium provides a really good integration of Google Tranlslate, and automatically asks you if it should translate a page into your language, which happens in-place, and is really comfortable.
Chrome / Chromium is also able to use Plugins (called Extensions) but there are not that many as f.ex. for Firefox.
For a detailed rundown of differences between Chrome and chromium, please see http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/ ... ogleChrome
IMPORTANT NOTE
If you want to know something about the privacy policies related to Chrome / Chromium:
http://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy
https://support.google.com/chrome/bin/a ... wer=114836
Also, mostly everything can be configured/disabled if you don't want that.
Using chromium-browser from the Mageia repositories
The recommended way is to use the Mageia packages for chromium. If you attempt to install
the chromium-browser package (which is actually empty, and only pulls in one of the flavours, this is called a meta-package)
by default you will get chromium-browser-stable, which is the normal stable version and recommended for productive usage.
chromium-browser-beta and chromium-browser-unstable are only available for Cauldron.
As Chromium is a hassle to update and the packaging is rather complex, it may not be always up-to-date as Chromium is
using a really fast release cycle (usually a new major version every 6 weeks). Feel free to join the packaging team to help improve that situation:
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Becoming_a_Mageia_Packager
Confusion / Mix-up between Chromium browser and Chromium B.S.U
There is another package called only chromium, don't confuse this for the Chromium web browser.
Chromium (the full name is Chromium B.S.U.) is an arcade-style, top-scrolling space shooter and a really
fun game, feel free to try it out, but it has nothing to do with the Chromium web browser.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/chromium-bsu/
Chromium 35 and issues with plugins
Since version 35, chromium doesn't support browser plugins anymore. See http://advisories.mageia.org/MGASA-2014-0413.html
and the thread viewtopic.php?f=7&t=8568 for more information.
See http://blog.chromium.org/2013/09/saying ... npapi.html or http://blog.chromium.org/2014/05/update ... ation.html for more information on why and when the support for NPAPI browser plugins has been dropped.
It's still possible to get at least flash working, by using pepperflash plugin from chrome.
See the above linked forum post for the pepperflash plugin, and the following instructions on how to install chrome to obtain the plugin.
Using chrome directly from Google repositories
You can also use Google Chrome directly, for example if you want your updates to happen faster or if you don't like the Chromium look.
There are two ways to do this, either by downloading Chrome directly from Google and installing it manually,
or by adding the Chrome repository from Google to your urpmi repositories, which enables you to get automatical updates from Google.
For the first one, take a look here: https://www.google.com/chrome and just follow the instructions.
edit doktor5000: Since google-chrome-stable-63.0.3239.84 it requires ca-certificates package, which does not exist on Mageia. For new installation or also for further updates one would need to use e.g. urpmi --allow-nodeps google-chrome-stable
See e.g. https://ml.mageia.org/l/arc/discuss/201 ... 00046.html for more details.
ATTENTION: 32bit support has been dropped by google, see this thread on their product forums
For the second, open a terminal, and as root issue the following command for a 64bit install:
- Code: Select all
urpmi.addmedia --update google-chrome http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/rpm/stable/x86_64
Then just install google-chrome-stable (or -beta or - unstable, whatever you prefer) and you'll get updates directly from Google as soon as they release them.
One thing needs to be done to ensure correct operation, you need to import the public GPG key with which Google signs those packages,
or otherwise you'll get errors about the wrong or unknown signature of those packages. This only needs to be done if you haven't hat Chrome installed before.
Just issue the following command in a terminal as root to import Googles public GPG key after downloading it from
- Code: Select all
rpm --import https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub
If it errors out like in the following example:
- Code: Select all
Error: https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub: Import failed.
then it only means that you'll probably have it already installed, you can check via
- Code: Select all
$ rpm -qi gpg-pubkey-7fac5991-*
output should look like this:
- Code: Select all
Name : gpg-pubkey Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version : 7fac5991 Vendor: (none)
Release : 4615767f Build Date: So 11 Mär 2012 15:33:27 CET
Install Date: So 11 Mär 2012 15:33:27 CET Build Host: localhost
Group : Public Keys Source RPM: (none)
Size : 0 License: pubkey
Signature : (none)
Summary : gpg(Google, Inc. Linux Package Signing Key <linux-packages-keymaster@google.com>)
Description :
-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: rpm-4.8.1 (NSS-3)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=Quqp
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
One extra step is needed: associating the key with the Google repository.
- From the Software Management window, go to Options menu -> Media Manager.
- From the Configure Media window, go Options menu -> Manage keys.
- Scroll down to sellect the chrome_* medium, and click the Add button.
- Select the Google signing key 7fac5991, click OK.
More on that can be found at http://www.google.com/linuxrepositories/
