What is Chromium? We explain everything you need to know

what is Chromium

If I mention the word "Chrome", surely many users know what I mean. Google's browser has been very famous since it was launched almost 11 years ago. It is very famous because it is one of the products of the technology giant that has worked. It is also because many Android users use it as their default web browser. But, What is Chromium? Like Chrome, it will depend on what we mean.

Chrome can be both a web browser and an operating system. Chrome OS is Google's desktop operating system, but it is not a very powerful system, but one that can be run on computers with limited resources and that is basically little more than a browser that runs web applications, to put it quickly. and bad. In the case of Chromium we have the same, with the difference that we would be talking about open source software.

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To understand a little what the Chromium browser is, we can rely on Android, although there are two important differences: Android is not a complete operating system. Let no one jump on me, let me explain it: Google develops the main software of base Android, but it is the manufacturers who finish the job and who turn it into a complete operating system. Google itself also "finalizes" a version of Android that is currently available for its Pixels. I do not know if it is the best example, but it is so that you understand that "Google does something and others finish it."

Just as Android is developed on the base Android that we have mentioned above, the Chromium browser is the base of Chrome, Google's browser, and developed by the same company that is now part of Alphabet. The two differences that I was talking about previously are that 1- Chromium is a complete browser that can be downloaded and installed and 2- Google has made Chromium open source softwarewhile Android is not. What does it mean for Chromium to be open source? Well, any developer can take its source code and develop on it adding and modifying what interests them. This is something that Opera, Vivaldi and Microsoft want to do with their Edge. Modifying the software is possible with Chromium, but not with Chrome.

For anyone who has used Chrome, Chromium will look familiar. In fact, both browsers share most of the code, but Chromium consumes less resources than Chrome. It is also true that Chrome is more powerful than Chromium, and this is something we can see when we can use some extensions in Chrome and not in the open-source version of the same browser (for example, Movistar Plus). On the other hand, the open source version has also eliminated functions, such as creating a web-app directly from its options. If we think badly, we can think that Google's intention with this is that we use Chrome, which is a browser with which they have more control.

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On the other hand we have the operating system. Almost everything we have said about the browser we could say about the operating system: it is the development and open source version of Chrome OS. It is designed to run applications from the Chrome Store, from where we can find web-apps like those of Gmail, Google Maps, Facebook, Calendar, YouTube and almost everything you need to make a web use. You could say that it is almost like an operating system in which everything happens in a web browser, which in this case is Chromium and not Chrome. Or so it was in the past.

Today, Chromium OS doesn't seem to be at its bestPerhaps because users prefer to install lightweight full versions of Linux on low-resource computers to "a browser with applications." In the past, especially from 2009 to 2011, there was more interest and Chromium OS forks were launched such as the Cherry, Zero, Vanilla or Flow versions, the most famous for having been developed by a 17-year-old boy who even added features that were not available in Chrome OS, such as the Java programming language. This is the open best of why open source software is so good: a person takes the original software, improves it, and can release it without any problem.

The operating system has evolved from what you see in the header image to what you see above these lines: everything no longer happens in a web browser, but we have something like a desk. Applications are web-apps, but they are similar to what we wrote in their day about how to run twitter lite on Linux. These would be smaller and more limited instances of Chromium with which you cannot navigate, but rather consult the information of a specific web page. Some of these applications include small changes that improve the user experience.

And is it compatible with Linux applications?

Unfortunately, no. Or not yet. In this article We are talking about a new feature in Chrome OS that allows run Linux applications on the Google desktop system. The company of the famous search engine continues to develop its Chrome OS slowly but surely and improves it a little more with each version it launches. But Google continues to develop Chrome OS because the Pixelbooks have enjoyed some success, that is, because they see that they can make a profit. But what if we will your hardware store? Computers don't even appear on the Spanish website. They do appear in the United States, but that they are not available worldwide gives us an idea of ​​why Chromium OS does not develop as fast as we would like.

With the above in mind, we can't rule out Chromium OS being able to run Linux apps and use the latest Chrome OS features in the future, but we can't pin our hopes on it. Would you like to install Chromium OS on your computer or do you prefer to install a light version like Lubuntu?

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  1.   Joseph Waynes said

    I prefer a light version of Linux. Put Chrome on my PC, no. In fact I want to put Ubuntu on my Smartphone, I don't like android.

  2.   Antonio Moya Ramos said

    I have read only up to the part where it says that chromium is the one based on chrome and not the other way around ...