Just received my Librem13 and can’t find clear info on how to install Chrome. Has anyone done this. New to PureOS so I’m figuring I’m in for a learning curve.
PureOS only includes open-source software by default. Google Chrome is closed source and anti-privacy, but if you wish to install it, downloading the .deb file from the Chrome website will probably work. PureOS is based on Debian (as are Ubuntu and many others), so the .deb package will likely work, but I can’t guarantee it.
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Thanks everyone. The reason being is, if I plan on getting my friends and family turned on to the Librum I know they are going to want the familiarity of some of the programs they are use to.
Not sure I see the relevance here. Nevermind.
In that case, Chromium (as linked by @rcu) should get the job done, while being open source, or you can follow @rjm’s instructions to add the Chrome repo. In my PureOS virtual machine, there are some problems installing the Chrome .deb after all.
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Chromium was decent to use. I like the Pure browser but it make sense to want friends/family to feel comfortable. I’ve had an issue with getting them to switch from whatsapp. Still working on that one.
The problem with Pure Browser is it is based on Firefox ESR52, which has been out of support since the middle of last year. It receives no security updates from Mozilla (and ESR branches already only get the “critical” and “high” rated security fixes by default). ESR60 is currently on its fifth (!) release with 60.5.1 and even that will end of life after another three releases, moving to ESR68.
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I have PureBrowser version 60.1.0esr-2pureos1 here, that is the one we release.
$ apt-cache policy purebrowser
purebrowser:
Installed: 60.1.0esr-2pureos1
Candidate: 60.1.0esr-2pureos1I have a literally brand new Librem 15 v4. First thing I did on opening it and booting, was check the browser version. It was ESR52 based. Then I did a system update and it was the same thing.
Even 60.1 is missing many many security updates. It was released 2018-06-26.
Read the list of things fixed since 60.1 at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefox-esr/
Can you do a $ apt-cache policy purebrowser?
This is what I have, but I have updated my system. You can find out which version of PureBrowser you’re running by going to the right hand ‘hamburger’ menu, then Help --> About PureBrowser which should pop-up a similar window.
purebrowser:
Installled: 52.8.1esr-2pureos1
Candidate: 52.8.1esr2-pureos1
Version Table:
*** 52.8.1esr2pure0s1 500
500 https://repo.puri.sm/pureos green/main amd64 packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
I literally had this laptop arrive last week and have barely touched it due to work.
Still not secure though, Four releases and a point release out of security updates…
I find it distressing because, well, I want a secure browser and ESR 601. (let alone 52.8) are woefully out of date. I can have a high security laptop but if I get pwned by an 0day, it won’t matter.
I apologize for that. You should have the newer version based on Debian’s Firefox ESR. We make some minor changes, like removing Google from default search engine and adding DuckDuckGo, but aside from that we have a fairly vanilla version of Firefox. That is what you should have received. I’ll look into the images we’re building to make sure that we update our browser.
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Thanks you. I appreciate it.
Checking now, I see I didn’t run apt-get update and upgrade because I’m now downloading 610 MB of updates on the new machine.
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Exactly, I’m thinking I would have a hard time converting someone to Pure. Hell, I’m having second thoughts.
In the meantime, you may be interested in https://firefox-flatpak.mojefedora.cz/
Please note, this is not related to PureOS and I have only lightly tested it, but it is more recent and appears to be maintained. I recommend this only if you want bleeding edge, unmaintained, untrusted flatpak’d FF.
As for our PureBrowser, we do maintain it pretty carefully, you can see the Debian patches, which include Mozilla and Debian security fixes here: https://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs//main/f/firefox-esr/firefox-esr_60.5.1esr-1~deb9u1_changelog
You can see we track these here: https://source.puri.sm/pureos/packages/firefox-esr/commit/c602753f38b0930a07254ae9e1f93d2623b07e84
The point is that we are pretty actively working to ensure PureBrowser is the most secure and privacy respecting as we can make it, but is still a convenient and user friendly browser with lots of flexibility.
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I’m pretty zealous so I’m in it for the long haul. They’ll catch up.