How do I download a stable, not development version of Chromium?

[Mark S]

I need a binary of Chromium because my Linux distribution only offers a "snapped" version. Snap prevents important extensions from working. I would prefer not to use a bloated and possibly unstable developer edition. 

I've carefully followed the instructions given on the download page. And I've also used "pupeteer", which gave the same results as I found by hand.

The binary should be at :

https://storage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/Linux_x64/1135570/chrome-linux.zip

However, 1135570 can't be found in that directory (Linux_x64) . I've looked at the numbers surrounding 1135570, and those subdirectories have files with the wrong date stamp (from April, instead of two weeks ago). 

So either the instructions are wrong, and/or the location of the googleapis is wrong. Or maybe there are no compiled stable releases. 

[PhistucK]

The Chromium project does not offer/distribute binary versions/snapshots of Chromium equivalent to Chrome stable versions, not even for testing.

Also, not all commits have binary versions/snapshot. The system uploads a binary every X commits and that one might have just missed that mark.

The number you mentioned might be the branch point, which means it misses out on all of the commits merged to the stable version after the branch point, including important bug fixes, possibly even rendering regression fixes, so while somewhat helpful, it is not the stable version or its equivalent. Not sure where you got the number from.

The closest you can get is Chrome for testing, which, while branded as Chrome, is really mostly Chromium with very few changes that are probably not privacy-affecting (usually the reason for choosing Chromium over Chrome) and is offered for versions equivalent to the Chrome stable versions. It should only be used for testing, though, not for everyday browsing, as it does not update automatically.

☆PhistucK

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[Jon Perryman]

Chromium is only available as source code. Any binaries you may have installed are not guaranteed to be chromium stable unless that person or group maintains a stable version. The snapshot you are using is probably for testing.

There are many stable chromium binaries easily available. A search for chromium browsers will give you a list (e.g. Chrome, MS edge, Brave and more). Documentation to build your own Chromium can be found at chromium.org but you will need to decide what stable means to you. Is it one used to build Chrome? Is it one that is in use by multiple browsers? Is it one that is 6 months old?

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[guest271314]

I use https://download-chromium.appspot.com/.

wget --show-progress --progress=bar --output-document chrome.zip https://download-chromium.appspot.com/dl/Linux_x64?type=snapshots && unzip chrome.zip && rm chrome.zip

Launch chrome-linux/chrome --password-store=basic <additional flags>

One of the first things I do on a Linux machine is get rid of snap

sudo systemctl disable snapd.service \
systemctl disable snapd.socket \
systemctl disable snapd.seeded.service

sudo snap remove firefox snap-store gtk-common-themes \
&& snap remove gnome-3-38-2004 && snap remove snapd-desktop-integration core20

sudo rm -rf /var/cache/snapd/

[Jon Perryman]

I would like to remind people to consider the security implications when downloading from unverified websites. It's convenient to download Chromium but I personally wouldn't risk installing from a website giving them full control and access to your computer. 

[guest271314]

> created by François Beaufort - now maintained by the Chromium team | File a bug report

[Mark S]

On Saturday, July 8, 2023 at 8:35:09 AM UTC-7 PhistucK wrote:

The number you mentioned might be the branch point, which means it misses out on all of the commits merged to the stable version after the branch point, including important bug fixes, possibly even rendering regression fixes, so while somewhat helpful, it is not the stable version or its equivalent. Not sure where you got the number from.

I followed the directions on the download page! The most current version of chromium, per the ubuntu snap and mint distribution is 114.0.5735.198. I take that number and paste it into the search engine at the lookup site. That gives the number I used. 

 

I then use this number in the API continuous builds archive. Which is very slow so I don't have  a screen grab. But the number doesn't show up. I look at the directories just before and just after. They give dates from April or earlier.

The closest you can get is Chrome for testing, which, while branded as Chrome, is really mostly Chromium with very few changes that are probably not privacy-affecting (usually the reason for choosing Chromium over Chrome) and is offered for versions equivalent to the Chrome stable versions. It should only be used for testing, though, not for everyday browsing, as it does not update automatically.

 Not updating automatically is fine, if that's the only significant difference. However when I followed the "Chrome for Testing" for chrome@stable, it gave an error indicating that it was using the same number I mentioned above and could also not find the stable version. 

When I tried to find the "'latest" in https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/index.html, I got a developer  version.

I'm just trying to find a sane way to get the same build I would get if Ubuntu/debian hadn't started distributing via Snap. I can't be the only person who wants this.

At the moment, the solution I've found is to install from the Mint distribution. Seems to work, but not sure how fragile that will be. Will definitely have to update manually. 

[guest271314]

https://www.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel/

• Other builds: If you're extra brave, you can download the latest working (and that's a very loose definition of working) build from download-chromium.appspot.com. You can also look for a more specific recent build by going to the Chromium continuous build waterfall, looking at the number near the top under "LKGR", and then going to this Google Storage bucket and downloading the corresponding build.

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[guest271314]

> I'm just trying to find a sane way to get the same build I would get if Ubuntu/debian hadn't started distributing via Snap. I can't be the only person who wants this.

That was probaly quite some time ago.

> At the moment, the solution I've found is to install from the Mint distribution. Seems to work, but not sure how fragile that will be. Will definitely have to update manually. 

I fetch the Developer Build every few days. Sometime multiple times in the same day.

[Mark S]

On Saturday, July 8, 2023 at 11:28:30 AM UTC-7 guest271314 wrote:

I use https://download-chromium.appspot.com/.

I certainly looked at that site. However it didn't make me confident to have it prefaced:

This is a raw build of Chromium for Linux x64, right off the trunk. It may be tremendously buggy.

 

[guest271314]

It is buggy. Nonetheless you get the tip-of-tree Chromium. I've been using the Chromium builds from there for years now.

You can just use this https://www.google.com/chrome/.

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[guest271314]

There is also this https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium-binaries and this https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium-debian.

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[PhistucK]

Not sure which download page you are talking about.

Anyway, like I mentioned, the branch point is not particularly useful because it does not have a lot of commits that were merged and released as the stable Chrome.

I ran this (on Windows, but I used the --platform command line flag to get the Linux version) and I got the binary -

npx @puppeteer/browsers install chrome@stable --platform linux
> chr...@114.0.5735.133 C:\Projects\temp\chrometesting\chrome\linux-114.0.5735.133\chrome-linux64\chrome

Not sure what you tried. You can specify a full version number (114.0.5735.133) instead of stable in that command and you will get that specific version. It will not have all of the commit positions (the number you mentioned is a commit position, probably also known as revision), it should have all versions and keywords like stable. The snapshots will also not have all of the commit positions, just some of them (but those are not that great anyway).

☆PhistucK

[Mark S]

I'm referring to the download page at chromium dot org:

https://www.chromium.org/getting-involved/download-chromium/

The branch point is how the instructions there say to locate your desired chromium version. 

Among other things, I ran 

npx @puppeteer/browsers install chrome@stable

Maybe the puppeteer command needs the platform argument to find the right stable version? In which case maybe that should be in the instructions.

Thanks!

[PhistucK]

Without --platform, it downloaded the Windows version, so I just wanted to make sure it has the Linux ones and added --platform and it still worked.

Note that the npx... command did not work for me with old Node.js versions (I had 12 and 14 by default on different command line shells). Using 18 worked.

☆PhistucK

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