Problem Description:
I installed Chrome Browser through the App Center but it wouldn’t open after install was completed. I uninstalled it & then downloaded the official .deb file from the chrome website & installed that & the browser wouldn’t open after the installation either. Each time the Chrome icon appears in my apps after the install but when I click it nothing happens. Is there some kind of a bug in 26.04 that won’t let Chrome work or am I missing something?
Chromium is not Google Chrome, the latter is based on the former.
You can’t install Google Chrome from the default App Center, you can install Chromium that way. Google Chrome can be installed using their official .deb or by manually adding Google’s repository and keys, results being the same. It’s also available as a Flatpak.
So, first question to clarify, which one have you installed (and how exactly), Chromium, Google Chrome, both? Which one doesn’t start normally or both don’t?
Also please try running it in terminal and post the results.
Through the app center I installed Chromium & it shows up as Chromium but I just call it Chrome. It is described as Chromium web browser, open-source version of Chrome in the app center.
When that didn’t work I uninstalled & downloaded google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb. When I installed that it showed the same Chromium icon but wouldn’t open either.
Neither of the two installations would open. I’ve uninstalled both of the versions that I installed so I don’t have any more info to give out. I should have mentioned that I did a clean install of 26.04 & Firefox works fine just out of the box but I wanted to install Chromium. I’ve never had a problem installing Chromium browser on any other ubuntu version before 26.04.
The default snap package includes the Apparmor profile, did your installed deb provide that for your OS? or did you create it yourself?
If you check system logs you’ll find the DENIED messages if that’s the case, and you missed a step. You didn’t provide specifics as to deb, as the official Ubuntu deb is only a stub which causes tehe snap package to install which is setup with an Apparmor profile; and I suspect you don’t mean the official Ubuntu deb, but a third party (from the Chromium project for example; it’s 3rd party for Ubuntu, and will likely not be packaged for your specific release but be a more generic one that may not perfectly match requirements for your release).
I wonder if this has anything to do with you using Gnome Flashback (Metacity desktop) which requires the X11 server which is not supported by the version of Gnome used in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.
I am also troubled by the fact that the icons are the same. If I remember correctly the Chrome icon is a multi-coloured swirl and the Chromium icon is the same swirl but blue coloured. My memory may be incorrect.
Uninstalling the Chromium snap should have removed the Chromium icon.
I am replying from my install of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. It has the Gnome 50 desktop environment and it is on Wayland.
I have installed the Chromium snap package from the App Center. It does have a circular blue icon and it loads from the Chromium home page in the App Center and the Chromium icon in Show Apps (matrix) pages.
So, there we are. I have no intention of installing Chrome web browser.
Try running google chrome from the terminal to check for any error messages. Also verify there aren’t conflicting Snap and .deb installations or leftover Chrome config files. Sharing the terminal output will help pinpoint the issue.
When that didn’t work I uninstalled & downloaded google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb. When I installed that it showed the same Chromium icon but wouldn’t open either.
Reason why I posted the command to open Google Chrome. It isn’t as obvious as Chromium which is just chromium as you correctly pointed out.
The main problem here is someone not knowing what they’re doing (and who knows what they did before) so it’s hard to determine why Chromium and Chromium based browsers aren working as they should. Unfortunately I suspect we’ll never see what happens in Terminal.
One of the problems is that I’ve tried so many installs & uninstalls along with some other attempts to remove files that I can’t remember what I did. The last of the files I removed were ~/.config/google-chrome & ~/.cache/ google-chrome if that tells what the latest installation was.
I’ve tried installing from the App center, from terminal using snap, apt & even downloading the google-chrome-stable……deb version & installing it but nothing has worked so far.
Every time the the chrome or google chromium icon will appear in my apps & when I click on it it will try to open as you can see a little activity going on but it ends up stopping & never opening. I checked my other 24.04 computer & I have Chromium working fine but this 26.04 computer I just can’t get it installed & working.
So now I think I’ve deleted it all the Chromium stuff & am back to square one. If anyone has a recommendation of how I should proceed to install a working chromium version I welcome any ideas.
Again, Chromium and Google Chrome are different products and you don’t install the latter from the App Center (reason: contains proprietary closed-source code), only with the .deb or manually adding Google’s repository, something I’m sure you didn’t do.
You were asked three times (that I’m aware of) to run whatever from the Terminal so you/we can see the errors messages. Obviously you’ll have to install one or both. Please read back for the commands to run either one. Then, and only then, someone may start understanding where the problem is based on the output. Repeating what you already did while ignoring requests for diagnostic data will lead this to a dead-end, as I sorta predicted a few posts before. Please prove me wrong.
If you are sure you are back to square one (note that the Google Chrome deb actually does some extra bits to your system like adding the Google repository for it, not sure how well it cleans up after itself), I’d start with installing the chromium snap from the app center again (note that snap packages are completely separate from the OS so there is no way it could influence your host system) and then try launching it from a terminal, using the command chromium.
It should definitely print there why it fails to start so paste the output here and we can take a look…
Ok here is from my latest snap install from terminal:
result of command:chromium --version
Chromium 150.0.7871.114 snap
Then result of command: chromium
[18300:18300:0721/123823.365499:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/host/wayland_connection.cc:202] Failed to connect to Wayland display: No such file or directory (2)
[18300:18300:0721/123823.366072:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/wayland/ozone_platform_wayland.cc:288] Failed to initialize Wayland platform
[18300:18300:0721/123823.366188:ERROR:ui/aura/env.cc:246] The platform failed to initialize. Exiting.