March 23, 2024
How to install Ungoogled Chromium
What is Ungoogled Chromium:
In order to understand Ungoogled Chromium, you first need to understand some basic information on the base browser, Chromium.
Chromium is the open-source engine and framework that Google Chrome is derived from; it also functions as the upstream for well-known browsers like the Brave browser.
This does not necessarily mean that Chromium is Google Chrome.
This also does not at all mean that Chromium, as it is, is a private alternative to Google Chrome.
This gap is exactly where Ungoogled Chromium steps in.
Ungoogled Chromium is what its name implies; it is Chromium stripped of its dependencies on Google web services such as "Safe Browsing" and Google Location Service.
This improves your online privacy because it completely eliminates the "phoning home" to Google servers - something that even regular Chromium does.
For example, "Safe Browsing" sends data of the sites you visit to Google to ensure that these sites are "safe." This feature sounds good, but if you follow your standard internet safety checklists, you'll be pretty good at avoiding obviously "unsafe" sites.
The privacy issue with a "Safe Browsing" web search is that Google you're feeding the G machine free information. You can bet that they are recording what sites you visit, when you visit them, how often you visit them, and etc.
Ungoogled Chromium also removes the Google (and other Big Data/Big Tech) defaults.
For example, regular Chromium sets your browser's default search engine to Google. Ungoogled Chromium's default is its "No Search" feature.
Forewarning
While Ungoogled Chromium is a solid Chromium-based browser for privacy, you should be aware that it is not without its faults, which could compromise the general user experience, such as:
Maintained by a small group of developers
Patches come out slower than for standard Chromium (NOTE: Despite this, the developers are very good at being speedy in applying released security updates to the source code)
Binaries are created by volunteers. (This is also a warning that can be found on Ungoogled Chromium's GitHub download page.)
How to install on Linux
Most Linux users also have a couple of different ways to install Ungoogled Chromium. By far the easiest method to accomplish this would be to use Flatpak.
As previously explained, Flatpak has broad support for many different Linux flavors out there. Some distros, such as Linux Mint, have Flatpak installed by default. For those that don't have Flatpak already installed, you will need to install it prior to using this method to install Ungoogled Chromium.
Once Flatpak is installed on your system, you must add the Flathub repo (assuming it has not already been added) using this command: flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
1-Now we're ready for our system to install Ungoogled Chromium: flatpak install flathub com.github.Eloston.UngoogledChromium
Linux users who do not wish to use Flatpak (depending on the distro) can use the source to build their own Ungoogled Chromium package here .
Alternatively, Linux users can also make use of the volunteer binaries for their particular distro.
When using the binaries, if your distro doesn't have a graphical interface to handle the installation for you, then you can always use the terminal to install everything.
Source: https://avoidthehack.com/how-to-install-configure-ungoogled-chromium#linux
2-Download the Google Web Store CRX file:
https://github.com/NeverDecaf/chromium-web-store/releases
3- Set chrome://flags/#extension-mime-request-handling to Always prompt for install and relaunch.
Alternate How to get it:
For those that want to try running an Ungoogled (Google tracking removed) version of Chromium, you can download it from the Snap Store or head here for a direct download. Enjoy.
https://flathub.org/apps/com.github.Eloston.UngoogledChromium
https://ungoogled-software.github.io/ungoogled-chromium-binaries/
