Google Chrome is a very popular, yet closed source web browser. This makes it a little tricky to install on a Linux system, as it’s pretty much never included by default on any distro, and usually not available for installation from official repositories. Contrast this to Mozilla Firefox, which is open source and ubiquitous across the most popular Linux distros.
There’s still a Linux version of Chrome that’s developed by Google, you just have to jump through an extra hoop or two to get it installed. Despite all this, Google Chrome remains the most popular web browser these days. For this reason, it is often sought after for installation on Linux, even just as a backup browser in case a website is failing to load correctly. In this tutorial, we’ll go over the step by step instructions to install Google Chrome on all the most common Linux distros.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to install Google Chrome on Debian, Red Hat, and Arch Linux based systems
| Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
|---|---|
| System | Any Linux distro |
| Software | Google Chrome |
| Other | Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command. |
| Conventions | # – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user |
Download and install Google Chrome for Linux
The closest open source alternative to Google Chrome would be the Chromium web browser. It doesn’t come with quite as many features, but is readily available for installation on all major Linux distros.
As stated earlier, Linux distros don’t typically include Chrome in a default repo, so it must first be downloaded from Google’s website. In the following instructions, we’ll be using the wget command to download Chrome and the distro’s package manager to locally install the downloaded file.
- An alternative approach is to download Google Chrome for Linux using any of your currently installed web browser by downloading the package from the following Google Chrome download page. Click on Download Chrome button.
Click on Download Chrome button - On the page “Get Chrome for Linux” select a package matching your Linux distribution package management. So for example, for Debian and Ubuntu select DEB and for CentOS or RHEL select RPM package. Once ready, click Accept and Install.
Select the package which matches your Linux distro, then download
Install Chrome on Ubuntu, Debian, and Linux Mint
Open a terminal and use the following commands to install Google Chrome on Debian based Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, Debian, Kali, and Linux Mint.
$ wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb $ sudo apt install ./google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
Installing Chrome will also add the repository to your package manager. Use the following command to keep Chrome up to date on your system.
$ sudo apt install google-chrome-stable
If you decide that you’d like to remove Chrome from your system in the future, use the following command to uninstall the web browser.
$ sudo apt purge google-chrome-stable
See also our dedicated articles for installing Chrome on Ubuntu and installing Chrome on Kali Linux.
Install Chrome on Red Hat, CentOS, and Fedora
Open a terminal and use the following commands to install Google Chrome on Red Hat based Linux distributions, such as CentOS, Red Hat, and Fedora.
$ wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_x86_64.rpm $ sudo dnf localinstall ./google-chrome-stable_current_x86_64.rpm
Installing Chrome will also add the repository to your package manager. Use the following command to keep Chrome up to date on your system.
$ sudo dnf install google-chrome-stable
If you decide that you’d like to remove Chrome from your system in the future, use the following command to uninstall the web browser.
$ sudo dnf remove google-chrome-stable
Install Chrome on Arch Linux and Manjaro
These distros can install Chrome from the AUR, so we’ll use the
git and makepkg commands to help install Chrome. Open a terminal and use the following commands to install Google Chrome on Arch Linux based Linux distributions, such as Manjaro and Arch Linux.
$ git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/google-chrome.git $ cd google-chrome/ $ makepkg -s $ sudo pacman -U --noconfirm google-chrome-*.xz
Keeping Chrome up to date is easiest to do with an AUR helper such as yay. See our guide on installing a package from the AUR for help setting that up.
If you decide that you’d like to remove Chrome from your system in the future, use the following command to uninstall the web browser.
$ sudo pacman -R google-chrome
Conclusion
In this guide, we saw how to install one of the world’s most common web browsers, Google Chrome, on an assortment of popular Linux distributions. Google Chrome for Linux is an alternative to the most common default Firefox browser on Linux Desktop. It can prove harder to install than many programs which are natively available in a distro’s repos, but following our tutorial should get it up and running quickly.
