What is the difference between Chromium and Google Chrome ?

While Chrome is based on Chromium , Google adds a number of proprietary features to Chrome that Chromium lacks like automatic updates & support for additional video formats , Google Chrome includes licensed codecs for these proprietary media formats , giving you access to a wider variety of media content-particularly sites using HTML5 video to stream H.264 videos .

Chromium browser is an open-source browser project that forms the basis for Chrome web browser , When Google first introduced Chrome back in 2008 , It released the Chromium source code on which Chrome was based as an open-source project , That open-source code is maintained by the Chromium Project , while Chrome itself is maintained by Google .

You have to note that while Chromium is not Google-branded , It is still very Google-centric , It contains the same sync features found in Chrome , allowing you to log in with a Google account and sync your data , Chrome has a series of features that aim to push the usage of Google services , those are absent in Chromium .

On Linux , You can install Chromium directly from your Linux distribution’s software repositories , On Ubuntu Linux , you can install it by opening the Ubuntu Software Center , searching for Chromium and then clicking Install , Chromium gets updated with security updates through your Linux distribution’s software repositories .

Chromium and chrome

On Windows and Mac , using Chromium is a little tougher , You can get official Chromium builds , but they are bleeding-edge-only & won’t automatically update , The updater is a closed-source part of Google Chrome , You could get third-party builds from someone , You’d have to trust the third-party distributor , You could compile Chromium from the source code yourself .

Google Chrome includes crash reporting features that are not found in Chromium , Linux distributions may modify Chromium’s code before giving it to you , If you’re trying to pin down some Chrome bug , you’re probably better off using Chrome instead of Chromium .

Although Chromium includes many features that depend on Google’s servers & those features are enabled by default , You’ll see these features listed on Chromium Settings page, They include a web service that helps fix mistyped web addresses, a prediction service, Google’s anti-phishing feature & more.

Chromium browser is more readily available for more Linux distributions, Chrome is not, Chromium is not packaged with the necessary closed source video codecs to play Netflix content, There is no closed-source plugins means no Adobe Flash included or the built-in PDF reader .

Google Chrome is used in Windows & Chromium is used in Ubuntu , Google Chrome is a commercial closed source product made by Google which is based on the open source Chromium project  , Google Chrome is not open source , So , It is not available in the default Ubuntu repositories , although Google makes Chrome available through their own 3rd party repository .

Chrome is updated by Google directly , Since it doesn’t need to be redistributable and open source , Chrome includes things that we can’t ship in Ubuntu out of the box , like Flash and H264 support , However you can install this support with a few packages .

Google Chrome presents Adobe Flash Player pre-installed ( not open source software ) and Chromium not , But you can install it later very easily , That Chrome has auto-update mechanism & it has Google’s brand , Chrome is not FOSS , Chromium is , Google Chrome is simply a re-branding of Chromium , but is a little more ready for public consumption .

Google Chrome is the end product designed for everyday use , Chromium browser is an open source project to develop the code that runs Google Chrome , Google Chrome releases obtained via Google officially should be stable whereas code from the Chromium project is cutting edge .

If you want a browsing experience that isn’t riddled with bugs , You have to use Google Chrome , If you enjoy browser crashes , memory and CPU usage being through the roof , You have to use Chromium , you clearly need the bleeding edge untested code direct from the chromium project .

Google Chrome blocks extensions outside the Chrome Web Store , Chromium does not , Chrome includes tracking features such as RLZ , Chromium does not , any bugs in Chromium browser appear in the same version of Chrome , Google Chrome has higher memory usage than Firefox , but less CPU than Firefox , It works fine on Ubuntu .

Although , many Linux users who aren’t so passionate about open-source software might want to install Chrome rather than Chromium , Installing Chrome gets you a better Flash player if you’re using Flash & unlocks a larger amount of media content online , Google Chrome on Linux can now stream Netflix videos ,This requires H.264 support for HTML5 video , but Chromium doesn’t include .

Google Chrome comes with Abode Flash ( PPAPI ) that will be automatically updated together with Chrome , Chrome is kept up-to-date on Mac and Windows due to the special program , Chromium security sandbox may be disabled by some Linux distributions , Installing Chromium on Windows and Mac is not as straightforward as Chrome .

In Chromium , the feature of crash reporting is not available , In Chrome , The crash reports are sent to Google , the Chromium code may be modified by Linux distributions , Google Chrome isn’t available from the Software Center , You need to visit Chrome Browser and follow a fairly simple procedure to have Google Chrome installed .

if you are looking for open-source software & you don’t want to use closed-source , Chromium browser is more suitable , but If you are not so interested in open-source software , then it is better to install Chrome , It offers better Flash player if you need access to wider media content .

Google Chrome offers a built-in Pepper Flash (in collaboration with Adobe) as well as a built-in PDF Reader that’s as functional as Ubuntu’s default PDF Viewer , updating Chromium was a community effort and not directly supported by Canonical , This resulted in outdated versions of Chromium being available in the Software Center .

What are the advantages and disadvantages of Google Chrome?

Chromium browser review , uses , features , advantages and disadvantages