installing chrome for ChromeOS under linux

Kirk Reiser kirk at reisers.ca
Mon Dec 5 08:54:51 EST 2016 

Hi Tom: Yes it is currently. At least one person has written me to ask
if I would build it for 32-bit machines, so I'll look into it maybe.


On Sun, 4 Dec 2016, Tom Fowle wrote:

> 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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-- 
Well that's it then, colour me secure!

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