Latest version of Chromium

[coolblue2000]

Is it possible to get a modern version of Chromium on pi? I seem to be stuck on version 22 which is over 1 year old and does not seem to have all the html5 compatibility!

[Jim Manley]

The Chromium browser for the Pi was built by a Google intern who volunteered to do it on their own time and it's not officially supported by Google (yet?). So there won't be any updates unless Google or someone else with sufficient understanding of the current browser source makes the effort to bring the Pi version up to 28 (the current public release on other platforms). There is other work beyond the Chromium browser being done that could be announced at some indefinite point in the future that may obviate the browser being updated, but we'll have to wait patiently to see if/when that work is completed.

[coolblue2000]

I suppose the next question then is what is the best browser on Pi that supports HTML5 and has the same kiosk functionality as chromium?

[Jim Manley]

Iceweasel is the Linux flavor of Firefox and will get you HTML5, except video, IIRC:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install iceweasel

[Heater]

FireFox is the Linux version of FireFox. http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/

Iceweasle is Debian's version of FireFox. It's the same but Debian had some issue with taking all the FireFox trademarked stuff into the Debian repositories so they changed the name and logo's etc.

Problem is that IceWeasle can be some older version that whatever the latest FireFox is. So I like to the real FireFox on my PC.

On the other hand it's probably hard to get a recent release of FireFox in a Raspian package. Although people have built their own: http://featherweightmusings.blogspot.fi ... ry-pi.html

[ghans]

Jim , can you point out who the intern was which
ported Chromium ? I'm curious , was this a foundation - Google
collaboration or something else ?

ghans

[blc]

Jim , can you point out who the intern was which
ported Chromium ? I'm curious , was this a foundation - Google
collaboration or something else ?

ghans

I don't know if this is the same guy Jim refers to, but I know that Hexxeh did quite a bit of work with the Pi, including Chromium and an attempt at Chromium OS (I think he managed to get a proof-of-concept working for Chromium OS, but it didn't exactly run very fast). And from what I remember it was completely off his own back, no collaboration with the foundation or Google.

Hexxeh's current work on Raspberry Pi stuff is on hold though; being an intern for Google might have something to do with not having much free time any more .

[Jim Manley]

When someone doesn't tell you who it was in order to keep them from being distracted by the Nerdocracy and to not expect anything anytime soon, there's a really good reason for it. This isn't some kind of old-timey newspaper reporting competition, with guys in Fedoras hanging around loading docks trying to scoop each other on completely insignificant details.

Sometimes I just want to do as instructed in the old AT&T long distance telephone ads: "Reach out and touch someone." No Nerdocrats were harmed in the making of this post, but ohhhh, I am sooooo sorely tempted!

[blc]

When someone doesn't tell you who it was in order to keep them from being distracted by the Nerdocracy and to not expect anything anytime soon, there's a really good reason for it. This isn't some kind of old-timey newspaper reporting competition, with guys in Fedoras hanging around loading docks trying to scoop each other on completely insignificant details.

Sometimes I just want to do as instructed in the old AT&T long distance telephone ads: "Reach out and touch someone." No Nerdocrats were harmed in the making of this post, but ohhhh, I am sooooo sorely tempted!

...Eh?

[Jim Manley]

...Eh?

He's extremely busy and shouldn't be bothered, although he may not even be paying any attention to the forum at this point, and I can certainly understand why that might be.

[blc]

...Eh?

He's extremely busy and shouldn't be bothered, although he may not even be paying any attention to the forum at this point, and I can certainly understand why that might be.

I shouldn't post just after I've got out of bed .

[Heater]

blc,

..Eh?

and

I shouldn't post just after I've got out of bed

It's OK, that post made no sense to me either, and probably no one else.

[Leestons]

blc,

..Eh?

and

I shouldn't post just after I've got out of bed

It's OK, that post made no sense to me either, and probably no one else.

Add me to the list of people it made no sense to.

[plugwash]

I belive hexxeh released some unofficial packages and did some upstream work on chromium for the Pi but he wasn't directly responsible for the packages that actually went into raspbian.

Those were initially done by someone who went by the irc nick jui-feng and were later updated a few times by myself.

Unfortunately in debian and raspbian we ran into crash bugs on arm which noone seemed to have the time or inclination to properly deal with (probablly not helped by the fact that on most arm boards people had at the time building the chromium package took literally DAYS). So debian dropped arm from their chromium packages and I basically gave up updating the packages in raspbian.

[Jim Manley]

Hexxeh has recently been doing more work related to this, but that's all I can say until he's ready to show something, assuming he gets that far during this Summer intern session. He's on "vacation" from his university studies!

What's really needed is a version of the browser that manages functionality vs. memory footprint intelligently. This is an example of the everything-including-the-kitchen-sink software development mentality engendered by large-memory models combined with high-clock-speed processors that have overlapped pipelines (e.g., staggered fetch-execute using look-ahead). Virtual memory on the Pi is slow, especially if an SD card is the only storage available, and browser developers assume typical desktop/laptop systems with gobs of RAM and hard disk space are being used.

In theory, it was supposed to be possible for users to configure the browser to turn features on/off selectively, but as it's evolved, the granularity and number of features that can be controlled from the Settings menu selection is paltry. Perhaps someone familiar with the code can go in and reorganize the plethora of stuff already there to make that feature-culling simpler, rather than adding yet-more features of dwindling real utility. In the early days, browsers performed layout incrementally using placeholders for images, text blocks, and other elements and then went back and rendered each element in increasing detail as resources could handle them. This made scrolling, zooming, etc., very responsive, as every character of text, image pixel, etc., didn't have to be rendered at increased fidelity until the user dwelled on them or otherwise designated interest.

I hope this is the kind of lesson that's being learned by young software developers using the Pi to become educated in development.

[mrpi64]

My version seems fine! Flash, java, all works. But, yeah, HTML5 doesn't work.