How this Debian Stable user ended up with Google Chrome from Google’s repository

It’s been a long time since I ran the “real” Google Chrome in Linux.

(Update: A new Chromium browser moved into Debian Stable on Jan. 1, 2021. The original post follows.)

I guess I knew that the Chromium web browser — the code from the open-source project that is still coded by Google people but isn’t fully Googled — was very out of date in the Debian Stable repository.

But I didn’t know how bad it was until I started digging. Digging is easy in Debian.

While the rest of the web-browsing world was on version 87, Debian users are stuck with version 83. And that version 83 hasn’t been patched or otherwise updated since July 12. That’s more than six months at this point.

Whenever something’s not right with a Debian package, the place to turn is the bug reports.

There have been problems. Chromium is notoriously hard to package. There are unresolved issues with dependencies. Plus packaging of Chromium for Debian appears to be the responsibility of a one-man army. I’m not even sure if this guy Michael is the maintainer of the package. It doesn’t look like he is. Others are trying to help, but Debian Stable is old, and Chromium needs some other, newer packages in order to run.

It has gotten so bad that Chromium was removed from the Testing repository that is slated to become the next Debian release sometime next year. That could be bad news if the situation isn’t resolved before the “freeze” of Testing in anticipation of Debian 11/Bullseye.

Debian has always done a great job with Firefox. It ships with Debian desktop ISOs, and it is a priority for Debian Developers. Chromium, with its Googly origins, is not.

But many of us need Chromium/Chrome. It’s the IE of the 2020s, and sometimes Firefox doesn’t quite cut it. Like it or not, Google services run better on Chrome. And I use a lot of Google services in my day job. For my non-work browsing, I use Firefox, but when I’m snatching chocolates off the belt and putting them in boxes, it’s all Chromium.

I have Flatpak enabled on my Debian Stable/Buster system, and I thought that might solve my problem. There is a Chromium Flatpak. There is also Ungoogled Chromium, which I just learned exists.

Neither of these Flatpaks would install. The error message said my version of the flatpak package is too old. Debian’s Buster Backports repository has a newer version of flatpak, and I’m already set up for Backports, so I got the new flatpak package.

Chromium and Ungoogled Chromium still wouldn’t install from Flathub.

There were error messages, but I really don’t care about them, so I didn’t write down what they said.

I just need to get this system working with a Chromium web browser that HAS ACTUALLY RECEIVED A SECURITY PATCH IN THE PAST SIX MONTHS.

This is a huge problem.

In many ways, the idea of a never-changing Stable operating system and a constantly changing web browser doesn’t make sense. That’s why Debian ships Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release) instead of “regular” Firefox.

So what did I do about Chromium?

I used the nuclear option. Or in this case the tactical nuclear option. The nuclear option is wiping Debian Stable and installing a Linux distribution that includes an up-to-date Chromium and is committed to keeping it that way.

The tactical nuclear option — for me anyway — is downloading the .deb of Chrome from Google and using dpkg to install it, knowing that the package adds the Google Chrome repository to my sources.list, and now Google is in charge of updating the browser for me.

I’m already logging into Google to sync my bookmarks and other settings, in addition to being logged into Google Apps, so insisting I have Chromium instead of Chrome is nowhere near a hill I need to die on.

I just need a working, secure Chrome/Chromium browser. And now I have one.

I considered moving to Fedora — or even the dreaded CentOS Stream (another topic for another day) — so I could get the up-to-date Chromium that the Fedora Project packages for its own distro as well as the RHEL/CentOS EPEL repo.

(There was a time in the mid-level distant past when Chromium was a problem for Fedora as well. But the distro seems to have it under control now.)

I could also move to Ubuntu, where that distro’s decision to only offer Chromium as a Snap package has been controversial. The decision on Ubuntu’s part was a labor issue. It’s so hard to package Chromium that they can do it once for the Snap and use that on all their Snap-enabled releases.

I could even try Snap in Debian Stable, but how much do I have to do to get a secure version of what for many people is their most important, most used app?

Sometimes things are broken in Debian. Literally it could be a package that doesn’t work. Sometimes it’s philosophical: Is it The Debian Way? That often combines with developer attention or interest — and the lack thereof — to leave a gaping hole in the distro.

For instance, it’s hard to get a working IDE in Debian. That’s why I turned to Flatpak in the first place. It’s the easiest (to me) way to get NetBeans, IntelliJ and Eclipse. Yep, even Eclipse fell out of the Debian repo.

Another think I’ve learned over the past year or so is that while alternative packaging systems like Flathub, Snap and AppImage have their place in the Linux ecosystem, it’s hard to beat traditional Linux packaging (.deb and .rpm).

I have spent a few long periods of time running Debian Stable, just as I have Fedora. Those are the two distros I’ve run the most. They couldn’t be on more opposite ends of the spectrum. Debian stays the same throughout the release, and Fedora changes all the time. You always run into problems in both cases. Not too many problems. I always say there’s about one mid-level problem per year in both distros.

For my time running Debian 10, Chromium is my problem. At least I’ve been able to solve it. You may not agree with using Google’s Chrome repo, but it gets the job done. If I didn’t use any Google services, that would be one thing, but since I use many, this makes the most sense for me right now.

When I finally get around to buying a bigger NVMe SSD drive and reinstalling my operating system, this situation will factor into my choice of Linux distribution. No question about that.

Update: As of Sunday, Dec. 20, 2020, a new Chromium (version 87) is now in Debian Sid/Unstable.

Update: That new Chromium version moved into Stable on Jan. 1, 2021.

Update: The same thing, sort of, happened to me in Debian 11 in late 2022. Now that the Chromium developers (OK, really just Google) have removed the ability to sync bookmarks from the open-source version of the browser, I moved in 2022 to Vivaldi, which is an “enhanced” browser built on Chromium that has a lot of user-focused features added — and which allows bookmark sync.

Anyhow, sometimes Vivaldi doesn’t perform too well. It freezes. Menus won’t open. But usually it’s OK.

I finally installed Chrome from the Flathub Flatpak, and that’s what I’m using now about half the time in Debian 11 (Stable) in early 2023. Today I do have Vivaldi running, but I tend to go back and forth.

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I had to switch from Firefox to Chrome in Windows 10, and I’m not happy about it. Conexant’s horrible audio software and its CPU-grabbing Flow.exe is the problem.

I made the switch from Google Chrome to Firefox at least a year ago, and I thought the Mozilla-coded browser’s performance improvements were enough to allow me to eliminate one spy-ish element from my computing life.

Never mind that I use a lot of Google services, especially in my work life. That’s another issue for another day. I just wanted a privacy-focused browser that doesn’t necessarily phone home everything I do to Mountain View.

But on my HP Envy laptop running Windows 10, I’ve noticed the fan running a lot more, and a look at the Task Manager shows Firefox grabbing a lot of CPU, as does a process that only seems to run (and hog 20 percent of CPU) along with it: flow.exe.

I’ve since learned that flow.exe has something to do with the Conexant sound card in my laptop, and it is running all the time when Firefox is running, supposedly because the Conexant software can’t figure out how to configure itself when presented with whatever it is that Firefox is doing. There was a recent Conexant driver update for this laptop, and I think that’s when the problem began.

I could try to figure this out, try to figure out how to revert the Conexant driver, or something like that, or I could just run Chrome, which sips CPU by comparison, and wait for the situation to somehow resolve itself with fixes by Conexant, HP, Microsoft or Mozilla.

In terms of a fix, I won’t hold my breath. I will keep checking Firefox, which I’m still using on my Fedora laptop. That older HP computer doesn’t have Chrome at all.

That said, here is the best post I’ve seen about how to deal with flow.exe.

My Windows 7 PC at the office doesn’t seem to be affected by this Firefox issue at all, but it’s things like this on the Windows laptop that send me running to Chrome.

Update: I’m going to try this solution.

What I did was go to the Services Control Panel (go to Control Panel and then search for Services) and changed the status of CxMonSvc and CxUtilSvc from automatic to manual. Then I rebooted.

What happened: This worked. Sounds works fine, but no flow.exe and CPU usage is normal.

Update on April 14, 2019: The problem is now worse than ever. Nothing seems to stop Flow.exe when Firefox is running. I’m considering removing the Conexant “smart” audio driver altogether because it’s not smart enough not to bring the laptop to its knees even when I’m not playing any sound whatsoever.

Update later on April 14, 2019: I downloaded the latest Conexant High Definition Audio Driver, Version 9.0.160.51 Rev.D, released by HP on March 22, 2019. It is a 220 MB file. That is very, very large for an audio driver. Most FULL Linux distributions with a full complement of software are under 1 GB. And they include the audio driver.

This means I am NOW using Windows’ Add-Remove Programs to remove the Conexant ISST audio driver. We’ll see what happens.

Uninstalling the driver: When I uninstalled the driver, I rebooted and had no sound.

Installing an older version of the Conexant audio driver: I’m trying an older version of the driver offered by HP: Conexant High-Definition (HD) Audio Driver 9.0.153.0 Rev.C.

Did that work? I am not working this week, so I am not torture-testing web browser. But in limited use, so far I’m not detecting Flow.exe issues with the “old” Conexant driver while running Firefox on Windows 10.

Update on May 6, 2019: I can’t believe that I’m still dealing with this issue five months later. My current “solution,” which I’ve seen a few other successfully try is to rename Flow.exe as _Flow.exe so the Conexant software can’t find it at all.

This is where Flow.exe lives in Windows 10: C:\Program Files\CONEXANT\Flow

My HP update software is nagging me to install a new version of the Conexant sound driver, and when I reboot I get this popup:

Windows and HP really want me to reinstall the Conexant “SmartAudio” driver. I renamed C:\Program Files\CONEXANT\Flow\Flow.exe as C:\Program Files\CONEXANT\Flow\_Flow.exe in order to keep the utility from stressing the CPU while running the Firefox browser in Windows 10.

It’s sad that this has gone on for so many months without anybody fixing it. I guess it says something about the number of Windows 10 users running Firefox, and that thing is that it’s a small number.

Updated: Make Firefox up to 700 percent faster with these easy tweaks

Update: I used Firefox 49 with this new configuration in my web-production work earlier today (Saturday, Oct. 1, 2016 — rust never sleeps, and neither do I). Nope. Firefox cannot perform anywhere near as well as Google Chrome. I have about 15 tabs open at any given time, and Firefox can’t really handle it. Chrome can.

Whatever you feel about Google, the Chrome web browser is a towering achievement that makes work on the web possible at a higher level than any other software I’ve used.

—————

Thursday, Sept. 29, 2016’s post begins here:

Did you (or your computer) upgrade to Firefox 48 or 49? If so, there’s a way to make your trusty non-Google web browser up to 700 percent faster when it comes to rendering pages?

How? Why? You may be asking.

It’s something called Electrolysis, and it has nothing with removing hair from your legs or other body parts.

What Electrolysis does, at some level, is create extra processes for your various Firefox tabs — just like Google Chrome — and promises dramatic improvement in page-rendering speeds.

As Jack Wallen writes on Tech Republic:

According to the developers, the page rendering gains for Electrolysis-enabled releases of Firefox could exceed over 700%.

But this feature is not turned on by default. Wallen details how to activate Electrolysis on your Firefox installation:

By default Electrolysis is disabled. To enable it, you have to do the following:

1. Open Firefox
2. Enter about:config in the address bar
3. Set browser.tabs.remote.autostart to true
4. Set extensions.e10sBloc­kedByAddons to false
5. Set extensions.e10sBloc­ksEnabling to false
6. Restart Firefox

I would feel much better running Firefox as my daily browser but have gone pretty much 100 percent to Google Chrome in recent years because it’s so damn fast when running multiple tabs. And I run a lot of tabs — between 12 and 20 at a time.

The problem with Chrome is that Google gets a whole lot more out of you in terms of data. A lot more. With the Mozilla-coded Firefox, which is less beholden to Google than ever, you as a user get some important separation from one of the world’s biggest, Big Brotherly web companies.

I am going to set up all of my work-related bookmarks in Firefox and see if I can get through the day without the browser quitting on me.

The Adiwata Global Dark theme is enough to get me using GNOME 3

Here is my Fedora 20 desktop running Files (aka Nautilus), Gedit and GNOME Terminal with the Adiwata Global Dark theme, which is easy to invoke with the GNOME Tweak Tool.

Through the GNOME Tweak Tool, I discovered the GNOME 3 Adiwata Global Dark Theme, which makes GNOME 3 looks so good, I find myself wanting to use it, leaving Xfce aside for the time being.

You select the Global Dark Theme via GNOME Tweak Tool as seen here.

It’s not all sweet darkness. GNOME 3 is GTK3-centric, and since Firefox uses GTK2, it’s not dark.
While there are ways to “force” Firefox to go dark, it’s much easier to find a new Firefox theme. I looked at a bunch and settled on one called Dark Black. Unfortunately, the title bar stays white, but you can’t have everything:

Firefox with the Dark Black theme. Note that the title bar stays in the light Adiwata theme from GNOME 3.

Google Chrome goes its own way, too, and I was able to go to the Chrome themes page and find a few darker choices. I settled for Dark Vibe, and now when using Chrome I’m keeping the darkness of the overall GNOME 3 Dark Theme.

This is Google Chrome with the Dark Vibe theme. It’s dark. Maybe a little too dark to “match” the rest of the GNOME Adiwata Dark theme. I’ll look for something that is not quite so dark.

Later: Thanks to a reader in the comments below, I was introduced to the Htitle extension for Firefox, which makes the glaringly white header bar go away when using GNOME 3 in full-screen (aka maximized) mode. Here’s what Firefox looks like on my system now:

The HTitle Extension for Firefox by Alexander Seleznev makes the top title bar go away if your browser window is maximized. It’s a great way to make Firefox look more integrated with GNOME 3.

Firefox vs. Chrome on Windows and Linux

I spent quite a bit of time running Google Chrome/Chromium on both Windows and Linux, but between feeling uncomfortable giving away so much data to Google when logged in on Chrome and Linux performance improvements for Firefox, I now use Firefox about 99 percent of the time in Linux (currently Fedora 20).

But on my Windows 7 work machine, which is a more powerful (quad-core AMD to my laptop’s dual-core, with 8 GB of RAM to the laptop’s 4 GB), I flip it, using Chrome about 99 percent of the time.

So I’ve been switching it up to see how I might like using more Chrome in Linux and more Firefox in Windows.

I’ll keep it short. There’s nothing about Chrome on my laptop in Fedora 20 that makes me want to use it. It’s no faster and no more stable. And SELinux doesn’t much like it (and I get warnings).

I spent the whole day yesterday in Windows 7 on my big box running Firefox (version 27 on both machines for the record) for everything. It was measurably slower, and I had a few periods of non-responsiveness, especially with my customary 15-20 open tabs.

This means I’ll be sticking with Firefox on my Linux-running laptop (and for my personal use, where I’m not so crazy about Google spying and Chrome on my workplace desktop, where I’m already using Google Apps and am not doing any personal business (and could care less if Google knows about my web use as it relates).

Firefox no longer requires the xulrunner package, at least in Fedora

Fedora has pushed an update of Firefox 26 that doesn’t require xulrunner as a separate package. I’m not sure if this is something happening in all Linux builds of Firefox, or just in Fedora, but it’s definitely happening in F20.

 

 

The Economist explains: How might your choice of web browser affect your job prospects?

The Economist explains: How might your choice of browser affect your job prospects?

Flash 11 doesn’t work on older CPUs in Linux — here’s how to fix that by replacing it with Flash 10

If you’re running Linux on an older 32-bit computer, Flash 11.2 might install with no problem but won’t work.

How do you fix this? By installing Flash 10 manually.

This helpful Linux Questions post explains exactly how to do this — and I can confirm that it works because I just did it on a Stella 6 (a CentOS spin) installation on my last remaining Toshiba 1100-S101, which runs a 32-bit Intel Celeron CPU that doesn’t work with Flash 11.2.

That post explains why this is an issue for older CPUs:

Version 11 of the Flash plug-in for web browsers has been compiled to use the sse2 feature in the CPU. This was introduced in the Intel Pentium 4, but other chip manufacturers only used it in 64-bit CPUs. If you have a Pentium 3 or earlier, or a 32-bit chip from AMD or VIA, the plug-in will not work. If you have a 32-bit computer and Flash is not working, follow these instructions.

The post includes instructions on how to test in your terminal whether or not you need to revert your Flash Player to version 10, then goes over exactly how to do it for the Firefox browser.

Iceweasel 10.0.09 ESR update for Debian Wheezy

The “fast” pace of Iceweasel/Firefox and Icedove/Thunderbird releases over the past couple of years has really thrown longer-term Linux distributions for a loop.

The Mozilla-coded apps quickly get very old, and it’s harder and harder for Debian developers to patch those older versions with the latest security fixes when the upstream code leaves the distro’s original version further and further behind.

And enterprises, educational institutions and people who like things to stay the same aren’t terribly excited by applications that change versions from month to month, regardless of what actual changes are happening in the code. Never mind that those changes are often significant enough to break things built for a platform that is moving too quickly for many tastes.

Enter the Extended Support Release version of Firefox and Thunderbird. After seeing its Mozilla applications get really old really fast in Squeeze, Debian picked up on the ESR releases of Iceweasel and Icedove for Wheezy. That’s what I see in CentOS, Scientific Linux and Stella as well, so it appears even Red Hat Enterprise Linux has opted for ESR.

Sure there are features in the “consumer” version of Firefox (which Ubuntu follows even for its LTS release) that users of ESR will miss, but between stability in terms of functionality and knowing that these web-connected applications are fully patched, the peace of mind is well worth it.

Iceweasel 10.0.09esr just rolled onto my Debian Wheezy box. I’m glad to see it.

GNOME 3: Renaming Nautilus as Files is a good idea

The more I think about it, GNOME’s renaming of applications with clear words describing their function is a good thing to do.

The file manager Nautilus is now called Files.

The web browser Epiphany is now called Web.

I believe that Totem will eventually be Movies (or something like that).

Sure it makes it hard to manage these applications when you don’t have them installed.

But when you install a Linux distribution (or eventually a BSD system that runs GNOME 3) with a complete GNOME environment, users won’t be confused and need to scale a steep learning curve to figure out what they need to click to find … Files. And the Web. And what they need to click to watch video (like “Movies”).

I will ignore the fact that Epiphany (now Web) as a browser is not quite ready for prime time, and almost all users will need and want Firefox or Chromium/Chrome (or Opera for those who love Opera). Maybe Epiphany will get up to speed. By that I mean it will get Flash support.

But overall, simple declarative names for core applications is a good idea. Maybe they’ll retain their descriptive package names (Epiphany, Nautilus, Totem, Gedit, etc.). Or maybe they’ll have a GNOME-appended package name (gnome-web, gnome-files, gnome-movies, gnome-text-editor). That would make package management more sane.

But for users coming to the GNOME desktop for the first time, clear and simple application names gets them going that much faster.