☩ Walking in Light with Christ – Faith, Computing, Diary

I’ve decided to write a short post on how to install in a quick manner Google Chrome on Debian GNU/Linux.

There are few reasons why you would consider installing Chrome, however the most obvious one is is the browser speed.
I should admit the browsing experience with Chrome looks and feels far better compared to Iceweasel (e.g. Firefox) on Debian.
It could be that web loading speed performance with Epiphany or Opera is similar to Chrome in terms of velocity, apart from the faster browser experience with Google Chrome, I’ve seen reports online that sometimes Google Chrome behaves better when it comes to multimedia audio and video streams online.

Another thing I notice in Google Chrome is that it’s generally much lighter and loads the base browser times faster than Iceweasel.

The most accurate way to install Chrome on Debian Linux is using Google Linux repositories

So to install add to your /etc/apt/sources.list the following google linux repo

# Google software repository
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable non-free main

e.g.

debian-deskop:~# echo "deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable non-free main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list

Then update your repositories list with apt-get:

debian-desktop:~# apt-get update

Next choose your google chrome preferred release between the available (beta, stable and unstrable) version.
I’ve chose to install the Google Chrome stable release apt-getting it like shown below

debian-desktop:~# apt-get install google-chrome-stable

Now the google chrome will be ready to use to start using it either start it up from the Gnome / KDE Menus or exec the command:

debian-desktop:~$ google-chrome

So far so good, you will have now a gnome browser, however what is really irritating is the default behaviour of the chrome install by default it tampers with the default browser configured for my whole Linux desktop system in other words it automatically links:

/etc/alternatives/gnome-www-browser to -> /usr/bin/google-chrome as well as,
/etc/alternatives/x-www-browser to -> /usr/bin/google-chrome

Well I wasn’t happy with that unwarranted install behaviour of Google Chrome therefore I decided to reverse my default Gnome and System Browser back to Epiphany.

First I removed the links to /usr/bin/google-chrome

debian-desktop:~# rm -f /etc/alternatives/gnome-www-browser
debian-desktop:~# rm -f /etc/alternatives/x-www-browser

And thereafter I linked it back to Epiphany

debian-desktop:~# ln -sf /usr/bin/epiphany /etc/alternatives/gnome-www-browser
debian-desktop:~# ln -sf /usr/bin/epiphany /etc/alternatives/x-www-browser

Download PDF

Tags: browser, command, Debian Lenny, default behaviour, experience, Google Chrome, Google Linux, Install Google Chrome Web Browser Chrome on 32 and 64 bit Debian Lenny and Squeeze/Sid Linux, list, online, release, speed

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 25th, 2010 at 4:01 pm and is filed under Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Various. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.