Ubuntu To Look At Replacing Firefox With Chromium

Written by Michael Larabel in Ubuntu on 15 May 2013 at 09:12 PM EDT. 70 Comments
UBUNTU
Linux developers are considering this week replacing Mozilla Firefox with Chromium, Google's open-source version of their Chrome web-browser, for the Ubuntu 13.10 release.

One of the discussion items for Thursday of the virtual Ubuntu Developer Summit is considering Chromium as the default web-browser. The session abstract explains, "Chromium has matured to being as good or better than Firefox. It will be the foundation of a lot of Ubuntu Touch code and webapps code. We should consider using Chromium as the default browser in Ubuntu."

Replacing Firefox with Chromium has been talked about before, but never acted upon for an Ubuntu Linux release. With Canonical having a vested interest now in Ubuntu Touch and its dependencies, Chromium may finally take center-stage. This change is only about what web-browser should be the default for the Ubuntu desktop with Chromium already being available through the Ubuntu repository and Firefox will still more than likely be maintained within the Ubuntu repository should it be replaced.

Compared to upstream Google Chrome, Chromium lacks built-in support for automatic updates, the built-in Adobe PDF viewer, and the built-in Adobe Flash player, among other changes.

Stay tuned for updates on Thursday through Phoronix to find out whether Ubuntu developers plan to replace Firefox with Chromium.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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