How to Install Chromium Browser in Ubuntu Linux

Chromium is an open-source browser project that sits at the foundation of Google Chrome. It is maintained by The Chromium Projects, along with Chromium OS.

You can install Google Chrome in Ubuntu easily, but if you want to use the open-source version of Chrome (i.e. Chromium), then you are at the right place.

You are going to learn the following in this tutorial:

• Easily install Chromium in Snap format
• Put extra effort to get the deb package from Linux Mint repositories

Installing Chromium in Ubuntu as Snap [Easy method]

Snap is the only straight-forward way to install Chromium on Ubuntu easily as of now.

If you want to install it through the command line, use:

sudo snap install chromium

Otherwise, open your software center and search for Chromium.

Click on Install to install the browser.

You can now open Chromium by searching for it in the Applications menu:

or by opening up a terminal and typing in:

chromium

Remove Chromium Snap

You can uninstall the app in Ubuntu the same way you installed it (from the Software Center).

Or, type in the terminal:

sudo snap remove chromium

Install the Chromium Deb package from Linux Mint Repository [Requires effort]

If you don’t want to run Chromium as a snap in Ubuntu, you can install it as a deb using the Linux Mint repo. Here, I am using Linux Mint Victoria upstream repo for the purpose.

First, create a file called mint.list as follows:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mint.list

In that file, enter the following lines:

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com victoria upstream

Now, download the Linux Mint Keys from the link below.

Install the keyring deb file by running in a terminal:

sudo apt install <path to keyring deb file>

Now, to stop Ubuntu from updating your system with Linux mint repositories, you need to define the priorities. Here, you only want to install and update the Chromium package from Linux Mint.

For this, create the preference file as follows:

sudo nano /etc/apt/preferences.d/mint-victoria-pin

Inside that file, enter these lines:

# Upgrade only Chromium from Linux Mint Victoria repository
Package: chromium
Pin: origin packages.linuxmint.com
Pin-Priority: 500

# Do not prefer other packages from the Linux Mint Victoria Repository
Package: *
Pin: origin packages.linuxmint.com
Pin-Priority: 1

Save this file and update your system.

sudo apt update

Now, you can install Chromium as a deb package from Linux Mint repositories.

sudo apt install chromium

You can see that the Chromium installed is from Linux Mint.

Remove Chromium Mint Repository

First, remove the chromium app and its configuration from your system.

sudo apt purge chromium*
sudo apt autoremove

Now, you need to remove the entry for Mint repo in the sources.d directory. Also, you can remove the priority file created during installation.

sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mint.list
sudo rm /etc/apt/preferences.d/mint-victoria-pin

Once done, update your system.

sudo apt update

That's it.

Wrapping Up

In this article, I’ve covered various methods you can install it on Ubuntu and other Linux distributions, even covering Beta and Dev releases.

I also recommend mastering Chromium keyboard shortcuts to use it more efficiently.

Thanks for reading our article. We hoped that you learned something new while reading it. As always, we are eager to hear your questions and suggestions in the comments!