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

The key difference between Chromium and Chrome is that Chromium is open-source. It Chromium doesn’t include proprietary web codecs and doesn’t send crash reports and usage tracking to Google. If you prefer open-source applications, then Chromium is an excellent choice.

This article explains two ways of installing Chromium on Ubuntu 20.04. Chromium can be installed as a snap package via the Snapcraft store or as a deb package from the Google repositories.

Choose the installation method that is most appropriate for your environment. The same instructions apply for any Ubuntu-based distribution, including Kubuntu, Linux Mint, and Elementary OS.

Installing Chromium as a Snap Package #

The chromium snap package is distributed and maintained by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu.

Snaps are self-contained software packages that include the binary all dependencies needed to run the application. Snap packages are easy to upgrade and secure. Unlike the standard deb packages, snaps have a larger disk footprint and longer application startup time.

Snap packages can be installed from either the command-line or via the Ubuntu Software application.

To install the Chromium snap, open your terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run the following command:

sudo snap install chromium

That’s it. Chromium has been installed on your Ubuntu desktop, and you can start using it.

Whenever a new version is released, the Chromium snap package will be automatically updated in the background.

If you are not comfortable with the command line, open Ubuntu Software, search for “Chromium” and install the application.

Installing Chromium with apt #

Chromium deb is available in the default Ubuntu repositories. It is actually a transitional package that installs the snap.

Open your terminal using either the Ctrl+Alt+T keyboard shortcut or by clicking on the terminal icon and running the following commands as a user with sudo privileges :

sudo apt updatesudo apt install chromium-browser

That’s it. At this point, you have Chromium installed on your Ubuntu system.

When a new version is released, you can update Chromium through the command-line or your desktop Software Update tool.

Starting Chromium #

In the Activities search bar, type “Chromium” and click on the icon to launch the application.

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

Conclusion #

We’ve shown you how to install Chromium on Ubuntu 20.04. If you’ve previously used a different browser, like Chrome , Firefox, or Opera, you can import your bookmarks and settings into Chromium.

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