Call for testing: chromium-browser deb to snap transition

Just wanted to share some feedback myself. I installed the Chromium snap under Ubuntu 19.10. Contrary to other reports, the application launch speed is normal for me. The first one took a second or two, but I assume that probably has to do with some snap-related initialization. The following launches were instant, though I am on an SSD.

The themeing is actually working well under X11, except for save dialogs and the fact that it is outdated (right click menu shows grey highlights rather than orange). It is close under Wayland as well, but unfortunately the titlebar is Adwaita rather than Yaru for some reason. Also under Wayland there are issues such as lack of font hinting, and for Firefox in particular, an incorrect cursor (white rather than black), so it seems all XWayland applications have some regressions there.

Other than the theme issues, the Chromium snap seems to be working as expected. Let me know if there is something else that I can test.

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My dmesg gets flooded with
[114081.618847] audit: type=1400 audit(1568277508.541:17300): apparmor=“DENIED” operation=“open” profile=“snap.chromium.chromium” name="/home/baz/snap/chromium/849/.config/chromium/Default/QuotaManager-journal" pid=3281 comm=“ThreadPoolForeg” requested_mask=“w” denied_mask=“w” fsuid=1000 ouid=1000
[114086.472544] audit: type=1400 audit(1568277513.397:17354): apparmor=“DENIED” operation=“truncate” profile=“snap.chromium.chromium” name="/home/baz/snap/chromium/849/.config/chromium/Default/Favicons-journal" pid=3281 comm=“Chrome_HistoryT” requested_mask=“w” denied_mask=“w” fsuid=1000 ouid=1000
[114087.314067] audit: type=1400 audit(1568277514.237:17355): apparmor=“DENIED” operation=“open” profile=“snap.chromium.chromium” name="/home/baz/snap/chromium/849/.config/chromium/Default/Cookies-journal" pid=3749 comm=“ThreadPoolForeg” requested_mask=“wc” denied_mask=“wc” fsuid=1000 ouid=1000

I’m using the Chromium Snap Edge version 79.0.3921.0
It seems it was updated very recently, and I noticed that the ‘simple HTML view’ or reader view if you will, is now missing from the Omni Bar. This was a feature I often used and miss it. Why was it removed?

Mine does not take the Yaru theme.

Just to update this post for those that might be searching for a solution:

The manual setting of the Flag for the ‘Page Distiller’ feature, was reset to the default. So, once enabled, I had my “reader” view back. More on the ‘Page Distiller’ here.

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If the issue is that they don’t want to use snaps, then yes, there’s no point. But if that refusal is motivated by real technical concerns, then we would like to hear about them.

As an extension developer, one thing that snap completely lacks is usable access to the Native Messaging API due to snap’s aggressive sandboxing, this breaks basically all binaries that depend on libraries chromium does not. Two examples are the native binaries for my own Pass Companion and BrowserPass, this has been a known issue for a long time and as far as I’m aware, the resolution for this scenario either has no fix or is poorly documented.

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I have two ways to start Chromium.
Below is snap-Chromium. Starting from app grid, it takes a while to start and has not-very-pretty light colour bar on top.

The 2nd Chromium is the standalone one, shown below, taken off the snap and placed in my home folder and the executive file run with Gmrun. It starts almost immediately and correctly takes the system theme - Yaru-dark.

Now, I’d create a desktop file, so it can be placed permanently in the favourites. And the snap one taken off the app grid. For the moment, it runs off Gmrun.

All web browsers are standalone, so a snap is not needed for them. All you need is to make a desktop file to run the executive and a link to it. It might be easy to create a deb out of the standalone Chromium.

Note: Just ran that executive file from the Linux Mint (Eoan), and it correctly read the system theme there too. Mint doesn’t have snaps, only flatpaks.

Maybe, you’d consider creating a deb file, @oSoMoN ?
I even opened this same Chromium from Arch Linux.

The snap Chromium is 607.3 MB
The standalone Chromium is 237.2 MB
Something serious to think about.

EDIT: See, if you can install libcanberra-gtk3-module to snap-chromium >> /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gtk-3.0/modules/ Maybe, it’d start as fast as the standalone one.

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Thanks for the report @paulw2u. I can confirm the problem in Xubuntu. It appears that exo-helper ships its own desktop file for chromium. I have yet to try and reproduce the problem for MATE and Kubuntu. Would you mind filing a bug to track the issue?

Bug filed: Chromium is incorrectly shown when setting the default web browser for some flavours

Previously, you could limit Chromium to only having access to the “Downloads” folder using firejail.

This no longer works:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1178995/how-to-sandbox-chromium-thats-installed-via-snap

I’ve submitted a request for a alternative snap installation that achieves the same degree of sandboxing:

I just upgraded to Eaon and was forced to take a snap version of chromium.

No.

I don’t want snaps. Cool if you want to offer the option to people, but don’t force it.

How do we undo this?

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@popey discussed this recently here: Proposal for Ubuntu 20.04LTS

There are valid reasons why this has happened. Read through it.

Also, there is no need to ask the same question in two different threads.

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If you want the newest Chromium web browser, you can download it from here.
Unzip it and create a symlink of chrome-wrapper to your desktop or create a desktop file.

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can you please stop pointing people to a browser download like this …
quoting the first line from the page you liked to:

This is a raw build of Chromium for Linux x64, right off the trunk. It may be tremendously buggy.

note that there are users that might listen to you, not read that line, just download this pile of potential security holes and do homebanking with it … please refrain from mindlessly sending third party download links around that put other people at risk. also note that the binary from this site will explicitly not update at all, so people are stuck with this potentially buggy and/or insecure version.

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Everyone has a disclaimer. Even Ubuntu system extensions say they are mock ones. Even the Ubuntu distro, you’d download today would have a disclaimer.

That link, btw, directs you to the Chromium Team, the guys who really creates it. It upgrades every few minutes.

Snap is a repackaging system. Doesn’t create new packages. Or, does it?

If you think, btw that using snaps makes people terribly happy, how about creating a desktop Ubuntu distro entirely out of snaps? I’ll be waiting for it! :slight_smile:

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no, it obviously does not.
it directs you to a nightly build of the developer tree (trunk) of chromium, completely without any QA, bug fixes or security …
please stop posting such links and stop putting other people at risk by pointing them to potentially malicious builds of third party apps.

note that nobody will complain if you point to some stable build of the app, but this is explicitly a developer playground build out of trunk with known and unknown bugs and security holes.

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So?
Your snaps don’t have bugs, such as notoriously getting late to start?
Aren’t snaps too trunk? Who is checking the performance of snaps?
Can you create a fully snap desktop distro?
Or, are the snaps only for those devices, you mentioned elsewhere, but not for the desktop?

Chromium snap is terribly slow to start. But the ever updating “trunk” Chromium starts in a jiffy. I even installed it in Windows 10.

do you seriously expect an answer ?

comparing “capturing home banking passwords through a zero day exploitt (and taking over your bank account)” to “slow to launch” ?

please lets stop this discussion, you showed in other threads that you are not willing to accept technical facts or to accept that things do not work like you imagine them, all i’m asking you is to not put other people at risk due to that attitude, this is all.

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Yes, I do. Maybe others too.

I’ve been checking on snaps since the day one. I liked it at that time, not that much now. I expected an Ubuntu desktop snap distro, and it is not coming.

Oh, that’s what we are been doing since 2 decades. Testing all kinds of distros and apps, ppas and whatnot. People do explore. And, people have choice. If they want, they’d have a look. Installing a Linux distro on a new laptop is a risk, most times. But, we do that, don’t we? The people, who don’t want to risk would buy a Windows computer or a Macbook, don’t they? I’d been risking for nearly 2 decades and I’d surely expect others to do so too. Otherwise, why come to Linux?

And, we are going off topic, mind you.

OP is “Call for testing: chromium-browser deb to snap transition,” and that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. Have you?

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What does that even mean? If you are against snaps, when do you want a “desktop snap distro”?

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