Ubuntu 11.10, has Firefox installed as the default web browser. Although Firefox has improved the performance in its latest version, on the Linux platforms such as Ubuntu but it doesn’t seem to be faster, if we compare it with Google Chrome. Chrome web browser is based on the open source project called – chromium. Chromium web browser is already available in Ubuntu Software Center, and it supports all most all features – themes, extensions or other stuffs that you uses with Google Chrome.

Firefox is very popular probably because of the huge number of add-ons, (in other words I can say that you can get an add-on for everything, in Firefox), but the speed sucks most of the time, specifically in the case when you’re using with Ubuntu 11.10 , Fedora, Linux Mint or other Linux distributions with a lot of tabs opened and a number of plugins has installed on it (When I install both Google toolbar and Alexa toolbar together – then the browsing experience is horrible). On the other hand, Google Chrome has decent performance (speed , stability) on Ubuntu.

Therefore you can also try installing Chromium from Software Center or if you want to install Google Chrome, then simply download the debian package and install it either from command line or Right Click on the file and open with Ubuntu Software Center.

google-chrome-on-ubuntu-11-10
Running Chrome on Ubuntu 11.10

Installing Google Chrome on Ubuntu 11.10 – Oneiric Ocelot

#1 Get the debian package of chrome from its official website.

Download Google Chrome

#2 Now, you can either install it using Software Center or from command line.

installing-chrome on Ubuntu 11.10
Installing Chrome using Ubuntu Software Center

You can also use the dpkg tool to install the *.deb package. Open the terminal (CTRL+ALT+T), and type (move to other directory instead of Downloads f you’ve saved it  some where else) :

cd Downloads
sudo dpkg -i file_name.deb

#3 If any dependency error occurs then run the following command(s)

sudo apt-get -f install

or install dependent libraries/program manually like this :

sudo apt-get install libnspr4-0d
sudo apt-get install libcurl3

Join the Conversation

30 Comments

  1. if i open with software center i get an error message that the file could not be opened

  2. Chromium is the open-source version of Chrome. Chromium is available in
    Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid) and later in the Universe repository,
    package name “chromium-browser” (NOT “chromium”). To install it, open
    the Terminal and enter sudo apt-get install chromium-browser. 

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *