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# Chromium

From ArchWiki

Summary
General information, installation and troubleshooting for Chromium.
Related
Chromium Tips and Tweaks
Browser Plugins
Firefox
Opera

Chromium is an open source graphical web browser from Google, based on the WebKit rendering engine.

## Installation

The open source project, Chromium, can be installed with the package chromium, available in the official repositories. In the AUR you can also find:

- chromium-dev - the development version
- chromium-browser-bin - the binary version of the latest Chromium build

Note: Compiling Chromium takes at least as long as compiling the Linux kernel.

The modified browser, Google Chrome, bundled with Flash Player and PDF Reader, can be installed with the package google-chrome, available in the AUR. In the AUR you can also find:

- google-chrome-beta - the beta version
- google-chrome-dev - the development version

Tip: See these two articles for an explanation of the differences between Stable/Beta/Dev, as well as Chromium vs. Chrome and the version numbers.

SRWare Iron, a modified Chromium with altered settings to increase privacy and with built-in ad-blocker, can be installed with the package iron-bin, available in the AUR.

## Configuration

### Set Chromium as default browser

This behaviour is related to Xdg-open, please see its dedicated section.

### File associations

Unlike Firefox, Chromium does not maintain its own database of mimetype-to-application associations. Instead, it relies on xdg-open to open files and other mime types and URI schemes, for example, magnet links. There are exceptions to this rule though, for example in the case of mailto URIs, Chromium calls `xdg-email`, which is also part of xdg-utils package.

Refer to xdg-open, default applications or environment variables on how to set up default file associations.

### Font rendering

Chromium (and Google Chrome) will use the settings in `~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf`. For possibly better rendering you may try the following. Create the file if it does not already exist.

    ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf

    <match target="font">
      <edit mode="assign" name="autohint"><bool>true</bool></edit>
      <edit mode="assign" name="hinting"><bool>true</bool></edit>
      <edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle"><const>hintslight</const></edit>
    </match>

If the fonts are still rendered badly, you can use Xft settings as suggested here:

    ~/.Xresources

    [...]
    ! Xft settings ---------------------------------------------------------------
    Xft.dpi:        96
    Xft.antialias:  true
    Xft.rgba:       rgb
    Xft.hinting:    true
    Xft.hintstyle:  hintslight
    [...]

Then update the X Resources database using:

    $ xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources

Note: These settings will affect any application that uses X Resources for font settings; e.g. rxvt-unicode.

#### Non-Latin characters

Install needed fonts to correctly display Chinese, Japanese, Korean characters. For examples of recommended fonts for various languages see Font Packages.

For the Arch Wiki, one only needs the ttf-arphic-uming package.

### Flash Player plugin

#### Adobe (Netscape plugin API)

Warning: This version will not be updated (except for security updates), and is stuck at version 11.2. It will be completely disabled in January 2014.[1]

The Adobe Flash plugin can be installed with the package flashplugin, available in the official repositories.

#### Adobe (Pepper plugin API)

While the classic Flash plugin will not be updated for Linux, an updated Flash Player is included with Google Chrome. It is compatible with Chromium and Iron.

The easiest way to install pepper-flash for Chromium is using one of the packages provided in the AUR:

- chromium-pepper-flash-stable for the stable version.
- chromium-pepper-flash for a development version.

Note:

- If you have still flashplugin installed, in order for Chromium to use this new Pepper Flash plugin, please make sure the plugin location from `/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so` is disabled and `/usr/lib/PepperFlash/libpepflashplayer.so` is enabled in `chrome://plugins`.
- If you use SRWare Iron, and have still flashplugin installed and if the Pepper Flash doesn't show up in the plugins list, then disable `libflashplayer.so` and start Iron with:

    $ iron --ppapi-flash-path=/usr/lib/PepperFlash/libpepflashplayer.so --ppapi-flash-version=11.9.900.117

### PDF viewer plugin

There are multiple ways of enabling PDF support in Chromium that are detailed below.

#### libpdf

libpdf is Google's own implementation of a PDF renderer included with Google Chrome. It is compatible with Chromium and Iron.

The easiest way to install libpdf for Chromium is using one of the packages provided in the AUR:

- chromium-libpdf-stable for the stable version.
- chromium-libpdf for a development version.

Enable the plugin in `chrome://plugins`.

Note: To install libpdf for other Chromium packages, edit the PKGBUILD of chromium-libpdf-stable to install `libpdf.so` into correct path. For example, to install it for chromium-browser-bin, replace

    install -m644 opt/google/chrome/libpdf.so "${pkgdir}/usr/lib/chromium"

with

    install -m644 opt/google/chrome/libpdf.so "${pkgdir}/opt/chromium-browser"

##### Manual installation

To do it manually, download a Google Chrome release that corresponds to the version of Chromium you use:

    $ curl -O https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb
    $ curl -O https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-unstable_current_i386.deb
    $ curl -O https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
    $ curl -O https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-unstable_current_amd64.deb

Extract the deb file with:

    $ ar vx deb-file

Extract LZMA the archive with:

    $ tar -xJf lzma-file

Move `libpdf.so` from `opt/google/chrome/` to the appropriate directory as stated above. A change of its file permissions and ownership may be necessary (the permission of `libpdf.so` should be 755).

To verify that the installation went correctly: start Chromium, open `chrome://plugins/` and check if "Chrome PDF Viewer" is available (it may need to be enabled).

Note: As a new version of Chromium will not update `libpdf.so`, it may become incompatible. Thus and with respect to possible security fixes it is advisable to update both at the same time.

#### Using mozplugger

See the main article: Browser Plugins#MozPlugger

#### Using the KParts plugin

See the main article: Browser Plugins#kpartsplugin

### Certificates

Chromium uses NSS for the certificate management. Certificates can be managed in `Settings` → `Show advanced settings...` → `Manage Certificates...`.

## Tips and tricks

See the main article: Chromium Tips and Tweaks

## Troubleshooting

### Proxy settings

There have been many situations in which proxy settings do not work properly, especially if set through the KDE interface. A good method as of now is to use Chromium's command-line options, like `--proxy-pac-url` and `--proxy-server`, to set your proxy.

### Default profile

If you cannot get your default profile when you try to run Chromium and get a similar error instead:

    $ chromium

    [2630:2630:485325611:FATAL:chrome/browser/browser_main.cc(755)] Check failed: profile.
    Cannot get default profile. Trace/breakpoint trap

You have to set the correct owner of the directory `~/.config/chromium` as following:

    # chown -R yourusername:yourusergroup ~/.config/chromium

### WebGL

Sometimes, Chromium will disable WebGL with certain graphics card configurations. This can generally be remedied by typing `about:flags` into the URL bar and enabling the WebGL flag. You may also enable WebGL by passing the command line flag `--enable-webgl` to Chromium in the terminal.

There is also the possibility that your graphics card has been blacklisted by Chromium. To override this use the `--ignore-gpu-blacklist` flag or go to `about:flags` and enable `Override software rendering list`.

### Google Play and Flash

DRM content on Flash still requires HAL to play. This is readily apparent with Google Play Movies. If one attempts to play a Google Play movie without HAL, they will receive a YouTube-like screen, but the video will not play.

Note: chromium-pepper-flash does not work with this method. The user must ensure they are using flashplugin.

As per "Watching movies from Google Play on Arch Linux"; install hal and hal-info. Then remove any previous cache files for Flash:

    $ rm -rf ~/.adobe/Flash_Player/*

Start the HAL daemon and one will be able to watch Google Play Movie content.

    # systemctl start hal

Alternately one can just save the following Bash script below and run it before they want to watch Google Play Movie content.

    #!/bin/bash

    ## written by Mark Lee <bluerider>
    ## using information from <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Chromium#Google_Play_.26_Flash>

    ## Start and stop HAL service on command for Google Play Movie service

    function main () {  ## run the main insertion function
    	clear-cache;  ## remove adobe cache
    	start-hal;  ## start the hal daemon
    	read -p "Press 'enter' to stop hal";  ## pause the command line with a read line
    	stop-hal;  ## stop the hal daemon
    }

    function clear-cache () {  ## remove adobe cache
    	cd ~/.adobe/Flash_Player;  ## go to Flash player user directory
    	rm -rf NativeCache AssetCache APSPrivateData2;  ## remove cache
    }

    function start-hal () {  ## start the hal daemon
    	sudo systemctl start hal && ( ## systemd : start hal daemon
    	echo "Started HAL service..."
    	) || (
    	echo "Failed to start HAL service!"
    	)
    }

    function stop-hal () {  ## stop the hal daemon
    	sudo systemctl stop hal && (  ## systemd : stop HAL daemon
    	echo "Stopped HAL service..."
    	) || (
    	echo "Failed to stop HAL service!"
    	)
    }

    main;  ## run the main insertion function

### Force 3D acceleration in Pepper Flash Player and i.g. the browser with radeon driver

To force 3D rendering there is an option "Override software rendering list" in `chrome://flags`, also you would have to export video acceleration variables, see ATI#Enabling_video_acceleration. You could check if it is working in `chrome://gpu`.

## See also

- Chromium homepage
- Google Chrome release notes
- Chrome web store
- Differences between Chromium and Google Chrome
- List of Chromium command-line switches

Retrieved from "https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php?title=Chromium&oldid=280320"
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