installing chrome for ChromeOS under linux

Sun Dec 4 23:35:24 EST 2016

Kirk,
I assume this is all 64 bit?
Sounds promising.
Thanks
Tom Fowle

On Sun, Dec 04, 2016 at 07:26:02PM -0500, Kirk Reiser wrote:
> I have found that chrome from ChromeOS runs quite nicely on my debian
> sid linux machine. It will most likely work just as well under other
> distributions. I have also found that it is the best browser
> experience I have had under linux to date.
> 
> This particular set of binaries I built on December 2nd 2016 from the
> chromium source repository.  It consists of two tarballs
> chromium.tar.gz and usr_share_chromeos-assets.tar.gz. The first
> contains the binaries from the build while the second is the speech
> and tools frome google voice.
> 
> You can download them with curl or wget from my web site
> https://reisers.ca with:
> 
> wget https://reisers.ca/chromium.tar.gz
> wget https://reisers.ca/usr_share_chromeos-assets.tar.gz
> 
> You will need to have xorg and it's recommended extra packages
> installed as well as the xinit package.
> 
> I am pretty much strictly a linux console user so getting these
> binaries to work under gnome or other X windows managers I cannot help
> with.
> 
> They run almost completely as a standard user with root permission
> only necessary to install the voices and the chrome-sandbox.
> 
> Unpack as root or sudo the voices with:
> 
> sudo tar zxf usr_share_chromeos-assets.tar.gz
> 
> Unpack the chromium tarball anywhere you'd like to keep it in your
> home directory tree with:
> 
> tar zxf chromium.tar.gz
> 
> Next set the root permissions on the sandbox with:
> 
> sudo chown root.root chromium/chrome-sandbox
> sudo chmod 4755 chromium/chrome-sandbox
> 
> I have written two small scripts startchrome and newchrome to start up
> the chrome browser. Startchrome is a very much stripped down version
> of startx that I use to call xinit with only enough parameters to
> start the browser with no other window manager or desktop. The second
> newchrome is a one liner to call startchrome in the current directory
> and start a log file for debugging.
> 
> You can place the newchrome script anywhere you like in your search
> path providing you modify it to point at the startchrome script
> wherever you unpacked the tarball. You could also just make a symlink
> to newchrome from someplace in your search path. I.E. I put all my
> scripts in a bin directory in my home tree and have a symlink in there
> to start chrome.
> 
> ln -s ~/chromium/newchrome ~/bin/chrome
> 
> When you first start it up it will just go quiet because by default
> chrome-os doesn't start up talking. It also takes a while to load. To
> start the chromevox access type control-alt-z and shortly thereafter
> you should hear a tic-toc noise from a low pitch to a high pitch. Once
> you have chromevox running it will continue working until you hit
> control-alt-z again to toggle it off. You can start and quit chrome as
> often as you like and the it will come up talking each time. It does
> take a while to actual start talking after starting the program. I
> typically leave it running a console and just move to that console
> when I want to browse the web or look something up.
> 
> Chrome and X are very greedy about taking over the keyboard so your
> normal speakup review functions will not work. You can leave the
> chrome console however with control-alt-f1-fn to get back to a console
> where your review functions work just fine again.
> 
> You can leave chrome by hitting control-shift-q twice quickly.
> 
> The Windows key is the chromevox key and you use it in conjunction
> with other key combinations to provide it's review functions. I shall
> indicate the chromevox key as crv hereafter.
> 
> A few key combinations to get you started are crv-r to read from the
> cursor to the bottom of the page. crv-ctrl-left-arrow to move to top
> of page and crv-ctrl-right-arrow to move to the bottom. Crv-up and
> crv-down to move up a line and down respectively. crv-right to move to
> the next object and crv-left to move to the previous. Crv-dot or
> period will place you into chromevox's option menu with a list of the
> currently available review functions.
> 
> You can move from object to object on a site with the tab and
> shift-tab key combinations. You can move from each tab or window with
> control-tab and control-shift-tab. You return to the parent tab/window
> with alt-left-arrow.
> 
> 
> If for some reason chrome doesn't cooperate right off the bat and
> either stay running or start talking there is a chrome.log file
> created in your home directory which usually provides the information
> needed to figure what is either not installed or preventing
> progress. Sometimes it can be a bit difficult to figure what it is
> telling you but I've found you can figure it out with a little
> consideration. Often it is because it can't find some library it is
> expecting to provide a necessary service.
> 
> I'm sure there are piles of things I've forgot to put in this document
> and there's even more I don't know yet about chrome but so far it's
> the only browser I've found to work on every site I've tried. I still
> haven't figured out how to get it to play streams that are started
> from playlist files like m3u or pls but I'm sure it can be done. There
> are loads of chrome extensions that can be installed and I'd be very
> interested in hearing what folks find to do various tasks. I've found
> simple-rss is a not bad rss reader but there may be better ones
> available I haven't found yet.
> 
> Good luck and let me know how it goes getting this set-up. You can
> contact me at kirk at reisers.ca to let me know what you think.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Well that's it then, colour me secure!
> 
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