Mint 20 beta - How to install chromium-browser.

[smurphos]

This tutorial is superseded by new (currently WIP) official documentation - https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedoc ... omium.html

[clem]

@smurphos thanks for doing this.

Just a quick note. You mentioned using Buster with pinning as an alternative, how about Bionic? It still received updates for Chromium until 2021 afaik.

[fstjohn]

Maybe just skip Chromium and install Brave.

[smurphos]

@smurphos thanks for doing this.

Just a quick note. You mentioned using Buster with pinning as an alternative, how about Bionic? It still received updates for Chromium until 2021 afaik.

Thanks Clem. I've added a Bionic option. Do I recall correctly that when Canonical announced this direction of travel they implied they might backport the change to Bionic, or do you think they'll back of from making this kind of change in an existing LTS?

[smurphos]

Maybe just skip Chromium and install Brave.

There's a few rumblings of discontent around the wider interwebs re some of Brave's monetisation techniques. I'm not sure if they are warranted or not but food for thought - https://www.technadu.com/brave-browser- ... on/104177/

[AndyMH]

Thanks for this, having previously read the blog was thinking about dumping chromium when I move to LM20. Problem was what to replace it with? Was leaning towards vivaldi or brave, but not really happy with either (or any of the other many choices).

Will probably go down the bionic route. Updates through 2021, is buster any longer?

Can we make this topic sticky?

[smurphos]

Buster is sometime in 2022 according to - https://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases# ... %2D07%2D06.

[kc1di]

Thanks smurphos,
For the great tutorial. though I've gone to using Chrome beta for the time being as Facebook live will no longer work with Chromium or Chrome stable. only beta at this time.

[Pjotr]

Nice work, smurphos.

However, I've decided to eliminate Chromium from my web browser repertoire: I've replaced it by Opera, which has the additional advantage of a free built-in VPN option. Opera is built on Chromium, by the way.

For me, it's strictly Firefox (common browsing), Chrome (specific purposes) and Opera (specific purposes) now.

[Roland]

note this version will need to be updated manually by the end-user. You will be responsible for downloading a fresh version at intervals of your choosing to ensure you are keeping up with any security related fixes.

Does Chromium warn me when there is an update?
I need Chromium for the Citrix Workspace app; tried to telework under Firefox, did not succeed despite all internet tips I found.

[clem]

@smurphos thanks for doing this.

Just a quick note. You mentioned using Buster with pinning as an alternative, how about Bionic? It still received updates for Chromium until 2021 afaik.

Thanks Clem. I've added a Bionic option. Do I recall correctly that when Canonical announced this direction of travel they implied they might backport the change to Bionic, or do you think they'll back of from making this kind of change in an existing LTS?

Time will tell. For now it's still an option but that's a decision that is entirely up to them.

[stig_latin_cousin]

A word of caution: I would advise against 'ungoogled-chromium' as it is very late in updates. At the time of writing, it is still using v81 (more than a month without updates). I think it's important to add that information in the tutorial, because it is pointed out in the zip method.

As a side note: it is not encouraged to use any browser maintained by either one (as ungoogled-chromium) or very small group of developers. Web security updates are not something to afford not updating as soon as posible.

[smurphos]

A word of caution: I would advise against 'ungoogled-chromium' as it is very late in updates. At the time of writing, it is still using v81 (more than a month without updates). I think it's important to add that information in the tutorial, because it is pointed out in the zip method.

As a side note: it is not encouraged to use any browser maintained by either one (as ungoogled-chromium) or very small group of developers. Web security updates are not something to afford not updating as soon as posible.

That's a fair point although I believe ungoogled-chromium is maintained by a small team (there are certainly multiple contributors to their repos). They appear to have their reasons for not updating the Debian / Ubuntu builds from 81 to 83. The main repo is pretty much up to date with chromium stable - https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium - the repo for the Debian / Ubuntu builds has this issue logged - https://github.com/ungoogled-software/u ... issues/147 - and indeed the Debian Buster repo is still on 81 at time of writing.

[clem]

Careful, a few things here...

The pinning info for bionic is wrong, you can't just set priority 1 for ubuntu repos... that's dangerous. You can do it for Debian, but if you want to do it for Ubuntu you have to specify to only do it for Bionic.

There is no "recommended" way from Mint. We'll update the links and info in the packages and release notes to point to information where all alternatives are available. We're working on a user guide for this and a few other things at the moment.

[smurphos]

Careful, a few things here...

The pinning info for bionic is wrong, you can't just set priority 1 for ubuntu repos... that's dangerous. You can do it for Debian, but if you want to do it for Ubuntu you have to specify to only do it for Bionic.

Thanks - I've amended the first post - I think using the release v=18.04 or release n=bionic is OK looking at the apt policy output?

[clem]

hmm... I'd want to test that before saying for sure Pinning has to be done right, timeshift, test, test, test

[clem]

I had to point to something that could be updated (from rel_notes, packages etc..) and that was pertinent, easy to read, and not maintained by just me. We've also needed a place to document quite a lot of things which didn't fit in the previous guides... so now is as good as ever to start writing content for a user guide.

chromium content was added at https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedoc ... omium.html.

[smurphos]

I've actually taken down the instructions I put up - pending further testing - I got some odd results with the Debian testing.

[clem]

We'll make a team to maintain this, I talked to Xenopeek, I'd like the dev and forums teams to work together on it. The tie to github in the backend also allows the community to participate by creating issues and/or pull requests.

[clem]

I'm going to add a warning also, whether it's pinning or PPAs, to make a snapshot beforehand.