Chromium Web Browser


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Chromium is an excellent web browser. A fine alternative to Firefox, if you have no problems with the different user interface.

Installing Chromium is a good idea, if only to have a second web browser in reserve, when you encounter problems on a web page in your primary browser.

Below you'll find some tips to improve your experience with Chromium.

Contents of this page:

Chromium and Chrome: what's the difference?

1. You may ask: what's the difference between Chromium and Chrome? The answer is: they differ very little.

Both Chrome and Chromium can be installed in Linux Mint and Ubuntu. Chrome is based on Chromium: Google develops Chromium as open source, and makes it freely available to open source developers, like those of Linux. But afterwards Google does some extra things to Chromium, and then releases it as Chrome. So one might say that Chromium is the father of Chrome.

Technically the main difference between Chrome and Chromium is, that Chromium has no support by default for several copyright-protected kinds of multimedia, and Chrome does.

In real life that's no big disadvantage for Chromium, because in Linux Mint it integrates automatically with Mints default multimedia support, which is almost complete.

The tips below (with the obvious exception of numbers 2 and 3) are nearly the same for Chrome and Chromium.

Installing Chromium

2. Installing the Chromium web browser is easy, because it's present in the official software sources for Linux Mint:

a. Launch a terminal window.
(You can launch a terminal window like this: *Click*)

b. Copy/paste the following command line into the terminal:

sudo apt-get install chromium

Press Enter. Type your password when prompted. Press Enter again.

Disable Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Chromium

3. You can disable Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Chromium for the most part like this:

Type the following text into the URL bar (the bar with the website addresses):

chrome://flags

(here the shared DNA with Chrome becomes visible!)

Press Enter.

Then use this query in the configuration screen that has appeared:

ai mode

You'll probably get to see four results. Disable all four of them by setting them to Disabled.

Close Chromium and relaunch it.

Improve Chromium's settings

4. Now you can start improving and securing the default settings of Chromium by means of its settings menu.

a. Click on the settings button (three vertical dots) in the top right corner of the Chromium window. Then select Settings

Section Privacy and security: Launch the Privacy Guide and make your choices.

Section Performance: Disable the following feature to prevent useless network traffic:
Preload pages

d. Make a habit of regularly (manually) deleting stored browsing data, by executing the following feature in the section Privacy and security:
Delete browsing data

Some graphics cards: disable the graphics acceleration

5. A few video cards have trouble because of the graphics acceleration (hardware acceleration) that's on by default in Chromium. On most hardware, this browser feature is very useful and boosts performance.

However, when you experience graphics problems in Chromium (delay when typing text, problems with displaying videos), try if it helps when you disable it as follows:

Click on the button with three vertical dots in the top right corner - Settings - section System

Disable the following feature:
Use graphics acceleration when available

Close Chromium and launch it again.

Extensions and add-ons: don't turn Chromium into a Christmas tree

6. Extensions and add-ons for Chromium, can be very useful. You can download them here. You can configure their settings like this:

Click on the settings button - Tools - Extensions

But extensions have a couple of important disadvantages, because they are basically "applications within an application":

- they make Chromium run slower, in particular when there are many;
- they can cause malfunctions, both in each other and in Chromium in general;
- they might contain malicious content. Do not trust them blindly.

So don't turn Chromium into a Christmas tree: don't stuff it with all kinds of extensions. Limit yourself to only a few extensions, that are really important to you.

Strictly speaking, extensions and add-ons pollute the clean code of your browser. It's wise to keep the level of pollution down to a reasonable minimum.

Note: Be especially averse to extensions that claim that they make Chromium run faster! Often they do more harm than good: for the sake of a minimal speed gain they can endanger the stability of your browser. Do not use them.

For the sake of privacy enhancement, this particular extension is advisable: Empty New Tab Page.

Running Chromium in incognito mode

7. You can run Chromium in full incognito mode, when you launch it with this terminal command:

chromium --incognito

If you wish to make incognito mode the default, then you can modify the Exec value of the Chromium launcher accordingly (simply by adding the handle --incognito).

Want to get rid of polluted settings in Chromium?

8. Do you have polluted settings in Chromium (possibly because of shady add-ons), and do you wish to start anew with a clean browser? Then proceed like this (item 16).

9. Want more tips?

Do you want more tips and tweaks? There's a lot more of them on this website!

For example:

Speed up your Linux Mint!

Clean your Linux Mint safely

Avoid 10 fatal mistakes


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