[2024-feb-29] Sad news: Eric Layton aka Nocturnal Slacker aka vtel57 passed away on Feb 26th, shortly after hospitalization. He was one of our Wiki's most prominent admins. He will be missed.

Welcome to the Slackware Documentation Project

Google Chrome Browser in Slackware

According to Google, the chrome browser is a web browser built for speed, simplicity, and security. Note that this package has little to do with chromium as this is a pre-compiled package by Google, instead of a package that a user can compile locally from the open-source project.

Google Chrome is not installed as a default application in Slackware but it is provided instead as an installation-ready application through a Slackbuild, created by Patrick Volkerding that is available in the extra folder of the Slackware folder tree. At the time of this writing, the Google Chrome Slackbuild is available in the extra directory of Slackware13.37, and 14.

Stable Google Chrome Release Installation on Slackware 14.1 & 14

In the Slackware directory tree, the google-chrome folder inside the extra directory contains a README file that provides simple instructions to follow for this installation. Using a Slackware mirror, the Google Chrome Slackbuild folder can be easily downloaded online.

The following simple steps illustrate the installation of a Stable release of Google Chrome in Slackware 14:

1. Visit the official Google Chrome download page.

2. Click the download button, and select either:

  • 32 bit .deb (for Debian/Ubuntu).
  • Or 64 bit .deb (for Debian/Ubuntu).

3. Select a download package that is appropriate for your architecture:

  • 32 bit .deb (for Debian/Ubuntu) for a 32-bit version of Slackware.
  • 64 bit .deb (for Debian/Ubuntu) for a 64-bit version of Slackware.

4. Read and accept the license terms.

5. Download the .deb package.

6. Copy the extra/google-chrome Slackbuild folder into a temporary location (/tmp for example).
http://slackbuilds.org/mirror/slackware/slackware-14.1/extra/google-chrome/

7. Move or copy the downloaded .deb package (google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb or google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb) package in the same folder (/tmp/google-chrome).

8. In a terminal log in as root:

su -

9. Change into the temporary directory:

cd /tmp/google-chrome

10. Edit the Slackbuild-

   vi google-chrome.Slackbuild

The .deb packages no longer use lzma compression so you must change the line that says:

   ar p $CWD/google-chrome-${RELEASE}_current_${DEBARCH}.deb data.tar.lzma | lzma -d | tar xv || exit 1

to:

   ar p $CWD/google-chrome-${RELEASE}_current_${DEBARCH}.deb data.tar.xz | xz -d | tar xv || exit 1

11. Make the Slackbuild executable:

   chmod 755 google-chrome.Slackbuild

12. Run google-chrome.SlackBuild script as root:

sh google-chrome.SlackBuild

13. At completion of the SlackBuild execution, a message similar to the following one will appear:

Slackware package /tmp/google-chrome-42.0.2311.152-x86_64-1.txz created.
The exact version number in the package filename will depend on the version of Google Chrome found in the .deb package, but it will be something like google-chrome-21.0.1180.81-i386-1.txz (32-bit architecture) or google-chrome-21.0.1180.81-x86_64-1.txz (64-bit architecture).

14. Install the newly created package as root. It will be located in the /tmp directory:

upgradepkg --install-new /tmp/google-chrome-42.0.2311.152-x86_64-1.txz
Note that OLD VERSIONS of Google Chrome requires the PAM library libpam.so.0. A google-chrome-pam-solibs package is available in the same folder (extra/google-chrome) as the Google Chrome Slackbuilds. Installing the google-chrome-pam-solibs package allow newer versions of Chrome to run without having to actually switch the system to using PAM. To install the google-chrome-pam-solibs package, run the following code as root within the downloaded or copied Google Chrome Slackbuild directory (/tmp/google-chrome) :
upgradepkg --install-new /tmp/google-chrome/google-chrome-pam-solibs-1.1.3-i486-1.txz

If you need real PAM (to compile Chromium for example), you can find it in extra/source/pam/ from the Slackware directory tree.

Installing Google Chrome browser in Slackware 13.37 requires the installation of the packages GConf and ORBit2. These packages are also available in the extra/google-chrome directory and can be easily installed with the upgradepkg command.

Beta and Unstable Google Chrome Release Installation on Slackware 14.1 & 14

Installing Beta or Unstable release of Google chrome follows the same steps as installing the Stable release installation with minor tweaks:

  • Download a Beta or Unstable release of Google Chrome.
  • In step 10, execute the Slackbuild script as follow:
    • RELEASE=beta sh google-chrome.SlackBuild

      for a Beta release.

    • RELEASE=unstable sh google-chrome.SlackBuild

      for an Unstable release.

Sources

 howtos:software:google_chrome ()