Regarding web browsers on Linux, Firefox comes pre-installed with all Linux distributions.
And yes it’s fast and reliable, and privacy-focused but we also can’t deny that there are some things that Chrome does better than Firefox, especially when we’re talking about extensions and if we use some other products from Google that also work better with Chrome.
So in this article, I am going to show you how you can easily install Chrome on Ubuntu Linux both graphically and with the help of the terminal (command line).
So without further ado, let’s get started.
How to Install Chrome using Browser
To install Google Chrome using the Graphical User Interface, you can follow the steps listed below –
Step 1 – Navigate to Google’s official Chrome Download Page
Click on the link below to navigate to Google’s official website to download the chrome .deb package.
https://www.google.com/intl/en_in/chrome/
Step 2 – Download Chrome .Deb File
After clicking on the link, you’ll land on Google Chrome’s official website.
Since Chrome officially supports two Linux packages which are .deb package for Debian-based packages and .rpm for Fedora and Open Suse.
when you’ll click on the download button a download pop-up will appear that will give you options to choose your download package.
You need to Choose the 64-bit Debian package and download it.
Step 3 – Go to Downloads Folder
Now go to the downloads folder to access the chrome .deb package file that you just downloaded.
Step 5 – Double Click to Install Chrome
Double-click on the package file to run the installation. It will open a software installation page where you will see the option to install Google Chrome.
Click Install and it will ask you for the admin password to be able to install.
Now enter your password to begin the installation of Google Chrome.
It will start installing the application and after it’s installed you will see a “Remove” button instead of the “Install” button which indicates that Google Chrome has been successfully installed on your Ubuntu Computer.
Now to launch Google Chrome you need to hit the windows button to pull out the search menu and type in – Chrome.
You will see it listed as a program and when you click on it; it will launch Google Chrome.
You’ve successfully installed Google Chrome on your Ubuntu Linux Machine, using the browser method.
But if you want to install Google Chrome using the terminal, use the steps given below.
Install Chrome on Ubuntu using terminal
Most Linux Enthusiasts just turn to the terminal to get anything installed, and the good part is that it’s pretty easy to install any application through the terminal than using the graphical user interface method or software managers.
To Install google chrome on Ubuntu using the terminal follow the steps listed below.
Step 1 – Open Terminal
Open the terminal by hitting the windows key and searching for “terminal”.
or to open the terminal window, you can simply hit the keyboard shortcut – Ctrl + Alt + T
Step 2 – Update and Upgrade the packages
Type in –
Sudo apt update && Sudo apt upgrade
to update the packages and archive.
Step 3 – Check if wget is installed
Type in
wget –version
And hit enter.
To check if wget is already installed in your system.
Wget is the tool that we will use to fetch that Chrome Debian package. If wget is already installed in your system you’ll see the version number else you’ll get an error, if wget is already installed you can directly skip step number 5.
Step 4 – Install wget
If it is not installed, then first we need to install wget in your system first. To install wget through the terminal you will have to type –
sudo apt install wget
And hit enter.
Step 5 – Fetch Chrome .deb Package
Type the following command in your terminal to fetch the 64-bit version of the chrome .deb package for installation since Google Chrome no longer supports 32 Bit, System architect.
wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
Now hit enter.
Step 6 – Install the downloaded package
Now install the downloaded package and the following command in the terminal and hit enter –
sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
How to update chrome on Ubuntu
According to Google, Chrome doesn’t get auto-updated on Linux but your package manager handles it.
So when you update the system through your package manager, in our Ubuntu case, say – apt, then it also updates google chrome stable to its latest versions.
There’s no other update manager to chrome like Windows and Mac so either it gets automatically updated to the latest version through system update or you can manually update it.
To manually update Google Chrome to its latest stable version follow the steps below.
Step 1 – Open the Terminal
Step 2 – Get Package Updates
Type
sudo apt-get update
To get the packages refreshed.
Step 3 – Upgrade Chrome to the latest version
Type
sudo apt-get –only-upgrade install google-chrome-stable
To install the updated version of chrome.
Note – If you’re on Ubuntu 20 or above you don’t have to use apt-get necessarily alternatively you can just use the apt package manager to perform both of those tasks. The new command would look like this –
sudo apt update
sudo apt –only-upgrade install google-chrome-stable
Conclusion
So it was pretty much how you can easily install Chrome on Ubuntu using both the browser and the terminal and how you can easily update Google Chrome to the latest stable version with the help of the terminal.
If you’ve any difficulty while installing Chrome on your Ubuntu machine, you can comment down below your queries, I will try to help you solve the issues that you’re facing.
FAQs Related to Google Chrome and Ubuntu
Here are some of the commonly asked questions related to Google Chrome and Ubuntu.
- Where is chrome installed on ubuntu?
On Ubuntu, Chrome browser is installed on
/usr/bin directory. If you’ve installed Chrome on Ubuntu you can find it by typing the following command into the terminal –
whereis google-chrome
It will give an output something like this –
/usr/bin/google-chrome
If this doesn’t give an output like this, it’s more likely Chrome is not installed and you need to the browser on your system again. - Is there Chrome on Ubuntu?
Chrome doesn’t come pre-installed on most Linux Distros. Majority of the popular Linux distros ship with Firefox as their default web browser because Firefox is an open-source browser.
However, you can install Chrome on Ubuntu and almost all of the other popular Linux Distros out there. - Can you install Chrome on Linux?
Yes, You can install the Chrome web browser on almost all of the popular Linux distros out there.
Chrome officially supports Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and OpenSuse, you can install chrome on Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and OpenSuse directly but even on other distros than these you can always use unofficially ported versions of Chrome.
Otherwise, you can always use chromium which is the project on which Chrome is based on. It’s available in the majority of Linux software stores. - How do I open Chrome in Ubuntu?
You can open Google Chrome on Ubuntu by pressing the windows or super key on your system and typing “Chrome”.
You can right-click on the Chrome app icon and click on “Add to Favorites” to pin it to your Ubuntu shelf for quick access.
You can also open the terminal and type “google-chrome” to launch the chrome app in Linux from the terminal. - Is Chromium and Google Chrome the same?
The short answer is: No!
Chromium is an open-source web browser, managed by Chromium Project. Opposite to that Chrome is a privately owned browser by Google.
Although Chome is based on chromium but offers a lot more features and richness in browsing than chromium, it offers built-in support for media codecs to be able to play media on websites.
There are many web browsers that are based on the chromium project. They take chromium as a base and make their browser on top of it. Many browsers like Chrome, Edge, Brave, and many others are based on Chromium. For me, the benefit is all chrome extensions work across all the chromium based browsers. - How do I know if Chrome is installed on Linux?
To check if Chome is installed on your Linux distro, you can open the terminal and type in –
google-chrome –version
It is the command to check what version of Chrome is installed on your computer. If it shows any version number that means chrome is installed on your Linux PC; otherwise this command will result in an error.
Alternatively, you can also type the following command in the terminal to try to launch Chrome on your Linux Distro –
google-chrome
If this launches Google Chrome App that means, Chrome is installed on your Linux. - How do I open Chrome from the terminal?
To open chrome from your Linux terminal, you need to type in –
google-chrome
It will launch the chrome app. - How do I update Chrome on Ubuntu?
You can update Chrome in Ubuntu through the terminal using the following command –
sudo apt update
sudo apt –only-upgrade install google-chrome-stable
If you wish to remove Firefox from your Ubuntu or any other Linux Distribution after installing Chrome, here’s a quick guide for removing Firefox from Linux –
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