Chrome hit the scene about 8 months ago (in July, 2009) and has shown quick adoption and fast usage growth. For the most part, those where windows users. In Google fashion, a beta has been released. What’s the difference between Google Chrome and Chromium?
Chromium is what you’ll find in your repositories and for the most part looks like a normal open-source package, and indeed it is FOSS. It was started by Google, and they release a version called Google Chrome. So, you can see them as two sides of the same coin. Google will continue to bring the awesome changes from the Chromium project, and you can expect Google to share their code back.
Like many Ubuntu users I started using Chromium via the chromium-daily PPA (Personal Package Archive – Usually a cutting-edge place for packages provided by a user or developer, used to get the latest features of some package) This repository contains a daily build of the Chromium project. This repository, and the project, is a lot more stable, and I use the repository now.
Google’s Chrome (beta) on Ubuntu runs well and is a simple package download, but it completely lacks updates of any kind. I removed it because I wanted a slightly newer feature – Bookmark Synchronization. It worked across Windows and Ubuntu, might I add. Future builds will probably include some system of updates, but the way it looks right now you’ll have to install a package of a later version (update) or remove the beta and install the newer version manually.
The bottom line: Go with the chromium-daily PPA until Google Chrome has some kind of update system and has bookmark sync working.
There is an update system for Google Chrome. The repository is maintained by Google and has both the beta version of chrome and the unstable one. See http://ubuntuupdates.org/ppas/8 for install instructions and to compare versions.
Thanks! I'll update the article when I get a chance to test the update system and bookmark sync.