

This is in effect similar to a commercial proprietary solution, but with two major differences: It runs as root, and it installs itself without asking you. You've as much empowerment with this as if you were using proprietary software, i.e. You can't audit them, hold them, modify them, or even point Snap to a different store. Applications in this store cannot be patched or pinned. In the Ubuntu 20.04 package base, the Chromium package is indeed empty and acting, without your consent, as a backdoor by connecting your computer to the Ubuntu Store. That's all well and good, but Lefebvre disliked enormously that: This covers all supported Ubuntu releases including 14.04 with Extended Security Maintenance (ESM), as well as other distributions like Debian, Fedora, Mint, and Manjaro.' Chromium is an open source web browser run by the Chromium Project, first released in 2008. In contrast, a Snap needs to be built only once per architecture and will run on all systems that support Snapd. Every new stable version has to be built for each supported Ubuntu release − 16.04, 18.04, 19.04, and the upcoming 19.10 − and for all supported architectures (amd64, i386, arm, arm64).Īdditionally, ensuring Chromium even builds (let alone runs) on older releases such as 16.04 can be challenging, as the upstream project often uses new compiler features that are not available on older releases. Google releases a new major version of Chromium every six weeks, with typically several minor versions to address security vulnerabilities in between. That's a lot of work and painful programming, which led to the process being given the name: Dependency hell. They must ensure that each program has access to specific libraries' versions. They require programmers to hand-craft Linux programs to work with each specific distro and its various releases. While tried and true, these traditional packages are troublesome for developers. The older way of installing Linux apps, such as DEB and RPM package management systems for the Debian and Red Hat Linux families, incorporate the source code and hard-coded paths for each program.
#Chromium web browser software#
The Ubuntu Snap software packing system, along with its rivals Flatpak and AppImage, is a new, container-oriented way of installing Linux applications. But then Canonical, Ubuntu's parent company, moved from releasing Chromium as an APT-compatible DEB package to a Snap. Some of you may be saying, "Wait, haven't they offered Chromium for years?" Well, yes, and no.įor years, Mint used Ubuntu's Chromium build.
#Chromium web browser how to#
How to add new users to your Linux machine
