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At this moment, Ubuntu 14.04 only offers version 53 of Chromium (released at 2016-11-16), while Chrome version 56 was just released. More recent versions of Ubuntu, e.g. 16.04, are already offering Chromium version 55 (and I guess 56 will follow soon). Looking at the upstream project, chromium-browser, I see that they don't offer a newer version than 53 for Ubuntu 14.04 either.

Is there a reason why a more recent version is not available? Has chromium-browser stopped supporting Ubuntu 14.04?

Sicco
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  • Also see http://askubuntu.com/questions/151283/why-dont-the-ubuntu-repositories-have-the-latest-versions-of-software for why this is – Rinzwind Feb 01 '17 at 14:46
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    I think it should NOT be marked as a duplicate of this question.

    While the other question is interesting, it is too wide and it does not seem to apply strictly to browsers. Both Chromium and Firefox versions are actually too new to match with the "freeze" explanation that is given as an answer of the other question.

     – dotpush Feb 15 '17 at 15:12

2 Answers2

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From the staging PPA for Chromium, it seems the builds are failing for some reason. The packagers maybe aware of it, a bug has been filed. You can mark it as affecting you.

muru
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    It seems to be the reason, I hope they will successfully fix that soon. Google Chrome works great in Trusty with version 56.0.2924.87 (64-bit). This is a good hint that the build problem can be solved. For the bug filling, I've seen this one. – dotpush Feb 15 '17 at 15:20
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    @dotpush thanks, I edited the post to include that bug report. – muru Feb 15 '17 at 15:23
  • is there a binary package (for download)? – cupakob Feb 23 '17 at 12:45
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    @cupakob no, with the build failing, no binary packages will be created. And this also seems to be the case for the PPAs I could find. – muru Feb 23 '17 at 12:56
  • Do you know if there's a mailing list or forum discussion or similar where I could see why the builds are failing? I looked at the staging PPA link and saw some buildlogs, but they're about 50MB with nearly 30,000 lines, near the end of the i386 & amd64 I'm seeing "/usr/bin/ld.bfd: obj/chrome/browser/libbrowser.a(native_desktop_media_list.o): undefined reference to symbol", "./libsnapshot.so: error adding symbols: DSO missing from command line" and then "collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status" and then a ninja says "ninja: build stopped: subcommand failed." ...? – Xen2050 Mar 06 '17 at 16:06
  • @Xen2050 ninja is Google's favourite build tool: https://ninja-build.org/ there's a (currently deleted) answer on your other q, which says that using the gold linker works. I don't know about mailing lists, but IMO, the easiest way would be to try building it yourself using the PPA code – muru Mar 06 '17 at 16:10
  • Thanks, I may try a build, even though it seems it could take hours from what the staging ppa says. I'm guessing Ubuntu's not the only ones having trouble with Chromium, I'll have to try a broader web search, maybe others have already built it, or maybe declared it "unsolvable" and given up – Xen2050 Mar 06 '17 at 17:06
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    Have a look at this bug report where a potential patch was found in Fedora. – Jens Mühlenhoff Mar 07 '17 at 05:43
  • The link of bug report in the answer seems to be a duplicate and Launchpad suggests https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/+bug/1664147 instead. – osiixy Mar 13 '17 at 13:45
  • @osiixy updated the bug link to that – muru Mar 14 '17 at 04:34
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At last, chromium-browser version 58.0.3029.81-0ubuntu0.14.04.1172 was released. Websites complaining about unsupported Chromium version work well now (e.g. GMail); however, all video acceleration seems to be disabled if you check the chrome://gpu flags. If anybody has experienced heavy tearing on video playback in the new version, I've filed a bug report here (in case anyone wants to comment):

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/+bug/1687213

dennismayr
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  • If you have a NEW question, please ask it by clicking the Ask Question button. If you have sufficient reputation, you may upvote the question. Alternatively, "star" it as a favorite and you will be notified of any new answers. – Elder Geek Apr 29 '17 at 20:51
  • I wasn't posing a question, rather telling that there was at last a new version of Chromium, however warning the OP about a bug present at that time (issue now resolved). – dennismayr Aug 07 '17 at 20:34