SoylentNews

What's the Deal with Chromium on Linux? Google at Odds with Package Maintainers

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday January 27 2021, @03:21PM   
from the browser-non-grata dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Linux users are more likely than most to be familiar with Chromium, Google's the free and open source web project that serves as the basis for their wildly popular Chrome. Since the project's inception over a decade ago, users have been able to compile the BSD licensed code into a browser that's almost the same as the closed-source Chrome. As such, most distributions offer their own package for the browser and some even include it in the base install. Unfortunately, that may be changing soon.

[...] To the average Chromium user, this doesn't sound like much of a problem. In fact, you might even assume it doesn't apply to you. The language used in the post makes it sound like Google is referring to browsers which are spun off of the Chromium codebase, and at least in part, they are. But the search giant is also using this opportunity to codify their belief that the only official Chromium builds are the ones that they provide themselves. With that simple change, anyone using a distribution-specific build of Chromium just became persona non grata.

Source: https://hackaday.com/2021/01/26/whats-the-deal-with-chromium-on-linux-google-at-odds-with-package-maintainers/

---

Original Submission

• Keeping the newest version; 4096-byte clusters Keeping the newest version; 4096-byte clusters (Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday January 28 2021, @01:46PM (1 child)

  by Pino P (4721) on Thursday January 28 2021, @01:46PM (#1106063) Journal

  I can do the same for myself with a USB drive for laptops and desktops. Portable devices? I can sit in front of my desktop, and sync the phone to it, without Google's help.

  If doing it yourself involves manual use of file managers with USB storage between desktop or laptop computers or MTP on phones, I can think of two drawbacks to that.

  1. A cloud sync daemon is less likely to accidentally replace a newer version of a file with an older version than dragging and dropping folders in the operating system's stock file manager. It can also detect when a file has been modified separately on two separate machines and prompt the user to merge them.
  2. Web browsers and mobile applications tend to store site-specific data in a database file rather than in discrete files in the file system. This is because file systems tend to round each file's size up to a 4096-byte cluster, which is quite wasteful for (say) a 100-byte cookie identifying your most recent session on a site, a 100-byte URL in your bookmarks, or a 100-byte saved password. The operating system's stock file manager doesn't know the semantics of this database file in order to perform a line-item merge.

  What local sync method have you settled on? Can it work across devices running X11/Linux, Windows, macOS, and Android?

  Parent

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Karma-Bonus Modifier		+1
  Total Score:		2

• Re:Keeping the newest version; 4096-byte clusters (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday January 28 2021, @02:52PM

  by Runaway1956 (2926) on Thursday January 28 2021, @02:52PM (#1106087) Homepage Journal

  As you might have guessed, I don't sync. I've only looked at the concept a few times over the years. But, a quick internet search offers five pages of alternatives to Firefox sync -
  https://alternativeto.net/software/firefox-sync/ [alternativeto.net]

  Three pages of alternatives to Google sync - https://alternativeto.net/software/google-sync/ [alternativeto.net]

  If I actually needed the functionality, it appears that I could find something that suits my needs pretty quickly.

  --
  Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.

  Parent