Difference between revisions of "Chromium"

Revision as of 21:13, 17 June 2013

Template:Article summary start Template:Article summary text Template:Article summary heading Template:Article summary wiki Template:Article summary wiki Template:Article summary wiki Template:Article summary wiki Template:Article summary end 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^AUR - the development version
• chromium-browser-bin^AUR - the binary version of the latest Chromium build

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

• google-chrome-beta^AUR - the beta version
• google-chrome-dev^AUR - the development version

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^AUR, available in the AUR.

Configuration

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.

Default browser

The simplest way to make Chromium the default browser is to set variable $BROWSER=chromium in ~/.profile

if [ -n "$DISPLAY" ]; then
        BROWSER=chromium
fi

To test if this was applied successfully, try to open an URL with xdg-open as follows:

$ xdg-open http://google.com/

If everything went well, either a new tab inside Chromium, or a new window would open and display the Google homepage, depending on your settings.

Another option, when using mimeo^AUR, is to associate "http://" links with Chromium:

~/.config/mimeo.conf

/usr/bin/chromium
  ^http://

If all of that still does not get it working, you can try adding the following to the [Added Associations] list in ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list:

x-scheme-handler/http=chromium.desktop

If even that didn't work, try this:

$ xdg-mime default chromium.desktop x-scheme-handler/http
$ xdg-mime default chromium.desktop x-scheme-handler/https

For more info, see Xdg-open.

Font rendering

Chromium is now supposed to use the settings in ~/.fonts.conf, though you may have to edit it manually (see Font Configuration). If your fonts setting are stored in another place, create ~/.fonts.conf and add these lines:

~/.fonts.conf

 <match target="font">
    <edit name="autohint" mode="assign">
      <bool>true</bool>
    </edit>
    <edit name="hinting" mode="assign">
      <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. Create ~/.Xresources if it does not exist and add in:

~/.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

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)

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^AUR for the stable version.
• chromium-pepper-flash^AUR for a development version.

Enable the Flash Player plugin with location /usr/lib/PepperFlash/libpepflashplayer.so in chrome://plugins and disable the plugin with location /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so.

iron --ppapi-flash-path=/usr/lib/PepperFlash/libpepflashplayer.so --ppapi-flash-version=11.7.700.169

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^AUR for the stable version.
• chromium-libpdf^AUR for a development version.

Enable the plugin in chrome://plugins.

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

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:

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

Extract the deb file with

$ ar vx deb-file

Extract LZMA 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).

Using mozplugger

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Using the KParts plugin

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Certificates

Chromium uses NSS for the certificate management. Certificates can be managed (including added) by going to Settings, clicking the Show advanced settings.. link and then Manage Certificates.

Tips and tricks

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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, pass the flag --ignore-gpu-blacklist when starting Chromium, alternatively, go to about:flags and enable Override software rendering list.

Pulseaudio, PA-Alsa-Bridge and Pepper-Flash

Given a certain version of Chrome (23.x seem to exhibit this problem) and Pepper-Flash (11.x) while using the PA-Alsa-Bridge, sound may not play, become distorted, start skipping or outright keep crashing the PA-Alsa-Bridge continously. See [1] for the bugreport.

A possible workaround is to use pasuspender to suspend Pulseaudio and force Chrome to use Alsa directly.

First, create an ~/.asoundrc file to default Alsa to your real hardware instead of Pulseaudio. See Alsa and [2] for more information. Exemplary ~/.asoundrc:

~/.asoundrc

pcm. !default {
    type hw
    card 0
    device 0
}

Then use pasuspender to suspend Pulseaudio and force Chrome to use Alsa which now uses your real hardware.

pasuspender -- google-chrome

The problem might be related to the tsched=0 option in Pulseaudio. See Pulseaudio#Glitches, skips or crackling and comment #27 in [3].

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.

As per "Watching movies from Google Play on Arch Linux"; install hal^AUR and hal-info^AUR. Then run the following Bash code:

cd ~/.adobe/Flash_Player;                       ## enter the Adobe Flash Player directory
rm -rf NativeCache AssetCache APSPrivateData2;  ## remove cache

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

# systemctl start hal.service

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.service && ( ## 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.service && (  ## 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