Chromium
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Chromium is an open-source graphical web browser from Google, based on the Blink rendering engine.
Installation
The open-source project, Chromium, can be installed with the chromium package. You can also find:
- chromium-devAUR - the development version
- chromium-continuous-binAUR - the automatically tested nightly version
- chromium-snapshot-binAUR - the untested nightly version
The derived browser, Google Chrome, bundled with Flash Player and Widevine EME (for e.g. Netflix), can be installed with the google-chromeAUR package. You can also find:
- google-chrome-betaAUR - the beta version
- google-chrome-devAUR - the development version
Configuration
Set Chromium as default browser
This behaviour is related to xdg-open: see xdg-open#Set the default browser. For more information about the topic in general, see Default applications.
File associations
This behaviour is related to xdg-open: see xdg-open#Configuration. For more information about the topic in general, see Default applications.
Flash Player plugin
Pepper Flash is the Flash Player plugin, using the new Pepper plugin API. It is co-developed by Google and Adobe, and distributed bundled with Google Chrome.
To install Pepper Flash for Chromium, install the chromium-pepper-flashAUR package. If you want the development version, install the chromium-pepper-flash-devAUR package instead.
Make sure the plugin is enabled in chrome://plugins
.
Widevine Content Decryption Module plugin
Widevine is Google's Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) Content Decryption Module (CDM). It is used to watch premium video content such as Netflix. It comes bundled with Chrome.
To install the Widevine CDM for Chromium, install the chromium-widevineAUR package.
Make sure the plugin is enabled in chrome://plugins
.
PDF viewer plugin
Chromium and Google Chrome are bundled with the Chromium PDF Viewer plugin, so installing a third-party plugin is not required.
If you prefer another implementation, disable the Chromium PDF Viewer plugin in chrome://plugins
, and install one of the following alternatives:
PDF.js
See the main article: Browser plugins#PDF.js
Certificates
Chromium uses NSS for certificate management. Certificates can be managed in Settings
→ Show advanced settings...
→ Manage Certificates...
.
Tips and tricks
See the main article: Chromium tweaks
Troubleshooting
Constant freezes under KDE
Uninstall libcanberra-pulse. See: BBS#1228558.
Cracking sound
There have been reports of cracking sound with Chromium over HDMI audio. Start Chromium with a different audio buffer size to fix the issue:
$ chromium --audio-buffer-size=2048
Fonts
Font rendering issues in PDF plugin
To fix the font rendering in some PDFs one has to install the ttf-liberation package, otherwise the substituted font causes text to run into other text. This was reported on the chromium bug tracker by an Arch user.
Force 3D acceleration
First, make sure you have all the required packages as explained in VDPAU. Then, to force 3D rendering, enable the flag "Override software rendering list" in chrome://flags
. Check if it is working in chrome://gpu
. This may also alleviate tearing issues with the radeon driver.
WebGL
Chromium will sometimes disable WebGL with certain graphics card configurations. To remedy this, enter chrome://flags
into the URL bar and disable the Disable WebGL flag. Alternatively, pass 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. See #Force 3D acceleration.
If you are using Chromium with Bumblebee, WebGL might crash due to GPU sandboxing. In this case, you can disable GPU sandboxing with optirun chromium --disable-gpu-sandbox
.
If none of the above solves your problem, you may be able to visit chrome://gpu/
for additional debugging info.
Distorted GUI
Chromium's graphical interface may look unsightly, distorted and zoomed in on high-DPI displays. To disable any attempts to scale display according to device DPI, use --force-device-scale-factor=1
.