Centos 6/RHEL install Chromium Browser with Flash/Java plugins

This tutorial is to install the Open Source Chromium browser on Centos 6/RHEL with the Java and Flash plugins, it is for a single user and is installed to a hidden folder in the home directory, with a symlink to /usr/bin/.

If you are having problems with Google-Chrome browser on Linux then you might want to try the Chromium browser offshoot, which is built using the same codebase. It is free of the spyware associated rightly or wrongly with the former so you might feel more comfortable using it.

Chromium browser is very difficult to track down in binary form so I have made the Linux version available below.

This covers installation on Centos 6/RHEL but it should work on pretty much any Linux distro with slight alterations.

I've found this version to be very stable and free from bugs.

We also install Flash and Java plugins which work perfectly.

It's best to have Java and Firefox/Flash installed first, and in that order if possible, so go to these links for relevant info on Java and Firefox/Flash

Firefox is needed because it has the required plugins directory for the lib-flash and lib-java files & others.
After ensuring that you have Firefox installed with the Java and Flash plugins, get the dependencies.

$ sudo yum -y install lsb xdg-utils libXcomposite unzip

Download the zip file to your home directory

chrome-linux.zip

chrome-linux-64.zip

Now four commands will install Chromium and the plugins.

$ unzip chrome-linux.zip
                    
$ mv chrome-linux .chrome-linux        

$ sudo ln -s /home/<user_name>/.chrome-linux/chrome-wrapper /usr/bin/chrome-wrapper

$ ln -s /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/* . /home/<user_name>/.chrome-linux/

(Ignore 'file exists' make sure to include the dot after *)

The above commands will unzip & hide the chrome-linux folder, create a symlink in /usr/bin and symlink ALL plugins from your Mozilla plugins directory to the Chromium directory.

You could alternatively create a 'bin' folder in your home directory to symlink it to, as in

$ mkdir bin    (or /home/<user_name>/bin)

$ sudo ln -s /home/<user_name>/.chrome-linux/chrome-wrapper /home/<user_name>/bin/chrome-wrapper

That's it, run it with

$ chrome-wrapper              

Typing 'about:' in the address bar gives you version info

and 'about:plugins' gives plugins info

Check the plugins work, browse to javatester and youtube

Users of Fluxbox can put a line in the /home/<user_name>/.fluxbox/keys file

F10 : ExecCommand chrome-wrapper

See Fluxbox key bindings for more. 

You can also cd to Desktop folder (or anywhere else) and create a symlink shortcut

$ sudo ln -s /usr/bin/chrome-wrapper

Currently I only have it tested in 32bit Centos.

Older and other OS versions available at the link below, I did find some bugs with some of these so if you want to play safe stick with the 32bit version at the top of the page.

http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-continuous/index.html

They like to move things regularly so feel free to post an update if the link goes dead.


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