How to Install Chrome on Debian (Browser & Terminal)

Since Chrome is not an open source software but it is a privately owned browser built on the Chromium Project. That’s why it doesn’t come pre-installed with Debian.

But You can actually install Chrome Browser on your Debian OS.

Follow along, in this guide, I’ll show you how you can install Chrome on Debian easily using both the terminal and the Firefox browser.

So, let’s dive in.

Install Chrome using the Official .deb Package

Google officially supports some Linux Distros installation packages, and the good thing is since Debian is widely used and there are even many other Linux distros’ that are based on Debian, it’s one of the Chrome package installation files that you can officially download and install from the Chrome’s official website.

Follow the steps given below to download and install Chrome on Debian using the .deb installation package.

Step 1 – Open Google Official Download Page

You can download the official Debian Chrome installation package from Google Chrome’s website. To go to Google’s official Chrome download page, click on the link below.

Step 2 – Click on Download Chrome

Upon landing on the page you’ll see the option to download chrome. You’ll need to click on the button which will open up a new pop-up selection window that will ask you which chrome package you want to download.

The options are a 64-bit .deb chrome package to install in Debian and Ubuntu and a .rpm chrome package that supports Fedora and Open Suse. You’ll need to select the .deb chrome package file for downloading.

Step 3 – Download Chrome .deb package

Since you’re trying to install chrome on your Debian, chances are you are currently on firefox, so when you’ll click on the download button, firefox will give you a pop-up window where you have to select what you want to do with the file you’re downloading, you’ve to select “save”.

Step 4 – Visit Downloads Folder

Now after the file is finished downloading, head to the download folder and locate the downloaded file.

Step 5 – Right Click on the file name

After locating the downloaded Debian chrome package file, right-click on it, and select – “open with other application”, it will show a list of recommended applications, choose – “software install” and hit the select button.

It will open a new software installation window where you’ll see the option to install the application. Hit the “install” button which is shown below the google-chrome-stable.

After hitting the install button it might ask you for your administrator account password, feed in your account password for confirmation of the installation.

Now it will start installing Google Chrome Browser and once it’s installed, you will see a “Remove” button instead of the “Install” button which represents that the Google Chrome browser has been successfully installed on your Debian Linux.

Now if you want to launch your newly installed Google Chrome browser, you need to hit the windows button to pull out the search menu and type in – Chrome.

It will search among the apps and you’ll see it listed as an app in the search menu, and you can click on it to launch the program.

Congratulations on successfully completing the guide on how to install Chrome in Debian using a browser.

But, If you want to install chrome in Debian just by using the terminal and don’t even want to touch the browser, the next step is for you.

Install Chrome on Ubuntu using terminal

If you’re more of a Linux enthusiast, you may like doing things mostly with the terminal, and that’s perfectly normal considering how convenient it is to install things through the terminal. And is relatively also very easy to install chrome using the terminal.

To Install Google Chrome using the terminal, follow these steps:

Step 1 – Launch Terminal

Launch the terminal by hitting the windows or the super key and searching for the terminal.

Or alternatively, you can simply press Ctrl + Alt + T.

Step 2 – Update and Upgrade the packages

Now you need to upgrade your package list, to do so type –

Sudo apt update && Sudo apt upgrade

and hit enter, to update the packages and archive.

Step 3 – wget availability check

Now after updating the packages we need to first check if wget is installed on your computer, mostly it’s preinstalled but we’re checking just in case.

Wget is the tool that we will use to fetch the chrome installation package through the terminal. To check if your Debian has wget installed, type –

wget --version

And hit enter.

After running the command, if wget is already installed in your system you’ll see the version number of wget installed on your system otherwise it will return an error. If wget is already installed you can directly skip to step number 5.

Step 4 – Install wget

If it is not installed, then we need to install wget in your Debian system first, to be able to fetch the Chrome installation package. To install wget using your terminal, you’ll have to type the command –

sudo apt install wget

And hit enter.

Step 5 – Fetch Chrome .deb Package

After wget has been installed, now it’s time to fetch Chrome’s installation package using wget. We’re going to fetch Chrome’s 64-bit package here as Chrome does not support 32-Bit system architect any longer.

If your processor is 32-bit, then unfortunately you might not be able to install chrome on your Linux PC. But don’t be belittled by that; there are other browser options available that are also built on chromium project that still supports 32-bit architect and also allow you to install chrome extensions, you can look up those chrome alternatives.

To fetch Chrome’s 64-bit installation package, run the following command –

wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

Step 6 – Install the downloaded package

After the chrome package has been downloaded, now is the time to install the package, for which we’ll be using dpkg, run this command to install the downloaded chrome package for Debian –

sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

After the action has been completed, chrome will be successfully installed on your Debian Linux.

So, this was how you can install chrome on Debian using both the browser and the terminal.

How to update chrome on Debian using the Terminal

According to Google, Chrome doesn’t get auto-updated on Linux but your package manager handles it.

So when you’ll get the system update of Debian, you’ll get Chrome updates along with it. So your package manager will grab Chrome updates and update Chrome while going through the system updates.

There’s no other update manager to chrome like there’s in Windows and Mac so either it gets automatically updated to the latest version through system update or you can manually update it using the package manager, which in Debian’s case is apt.

Follow the steps below to manually update Google Chrome to its latest stable version in Debian using the apt package manager.

Step 1 – Launch Terminal

Step 2 – Fetch Package Updates

To get the package refreshed type –

sudo apt-get update

and hit enter.

Step 3 – Upgrade Chrome to the latest version

Type –

sudo apt-get --only-upgrade install google-chrome-stable

Now hit enter to install the updated version of chrome.

Conclusion

So these were the steps following which you can install and update Google Chrome on your Debian Machine.

If you’re facing any issue in the midst of any of these processes and you’re not able to install chrome on Debian or update it, feel free to comment down below, and I will try to help you to resolve the issue you’re facing.

If you want to remove the Firefox browser from your Debian system after installing the Chrome, here is a simple guide on how you can remove firefox from Debian or any other Linux Distro.

• How To Uninstall Firefox From Ubuntu & Other Linux

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