How to Install Chromium Web Browser on Ubuntu 18.04

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Install Chromium on Ubuntu 18.04

Chromium is a fast, stable and secure browser built for the modern web. It is the base of many browsers including the most widely used web browser in the world Google Chrome .

The main difference between Chromium and Google Chrome is that Chromium is open-source. Unlike Chrome, Chromium doesn’t include proprietary web codecs and doesn’t send crash reports and usage tracking to Google.

If you prefer open-source, then Chromium is an excellent choice.

In this tutorial, we’ll explain how to install Chromium web browser on Ubuntu 18.04. The same instructions apply for Ubuntu 16.04 and any other Ubuntu-based distribution, including Kubuntu, Linux Mint and Elementary OS.

Prerequisites

To install packages you have to be logged in as a user with sudo privileges .

Installing Chromium on Ubuntu

Chromium is available in the default Ubuntu repositories and the installation process is pretty straightforward.

Open your terminal either by using the Ctrl+Alt+T keyboard shortcut or by clicking on the terminal icon and run the following command to install the chromium package:

sudo apt install chromium-browser

You will be prompted to enter your password and confirm that you want to continue with the installation.

That’s it, at this point Chromium has been installed on your Ubuntu system.

Starting Chromium

You can start the Chromium browser either from the command line by typing chromium-browser or by clicking on the Chromium icon (Activities → Chromium):

Ubuntu Open Chromium
You can differentiate Google Chrome and Chromium by the color of their icons. The former is blue.

When you start the browser for the first time, you’ll see the default Chromium welcome page.

Ubuntu Chromium Welcome Page

From here, you can sign-in to your Google Account to sync your bookmarks, history, passwords and other settings on all your devices.

Updating Chromium

When a new version is released you can update Chromium through your desktop standard Software Update tool or by running the following commands in your terminal:

sudo apt updatesudo apt upgrade

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we’ve shown you how to install Chromium on your Ubuntu 18.04 desktop machine.

If you’ve previously used a different browser, like Chrome or Opera , you can import your bookmarks and settings into Chromium.

Feel free to leave a comment below.