The Chromium 75 sources were released last week by Google, and this new major release contains 42 fixes for security issues. A couple of them are serious enough that you are encouraged to update to the new 75 release ASAP.
In terms of functionality, not much changed in Chromium 75, but there is one interesting addition that you may want to try if you read a lot of content online. It’s called “Reader Mode” and is still disabled by default, You can enable it through the Chrome flag “chrome://flags/#enable-reader-mode“. The reader mode strips away page clutter like buttons, background images and changes the page layout for better readability.
After enabling this feature and re-launching the browser, it can be activated on the page you are currently viewing via Chromium’s top-right menu (the ‘3 vertical dots’) and selecting “Distill page“.
I still need to an in-depth comparison of this new built-in functionality with that of the Chrome extension “Reader View” which I have installed and was using so far. To give an example: this is the Wikipedia page for Slackware.
If you select “Distill page” from the 3-dot menu you will see this un-cluttered reader view:
At the moment I think that the 3rd-party plugin gives more flexibility and capabilities but the built-in functionality at least allows you to get rid of a plugin that you need to authorize to read all your online data.
From a packager’s perspective, upgrading to a new major release always is a mix of hoping and praying that the compilation does not get stuck on too many road blocks thanks to developers who mess with build and installation routines. But I am happy to inform you that even the 32bit package compiled without any issue.
I built the packages for chromium-75.0.3770.80 during the Pentecost weekend and they are now ready for download. Primary site is slackware.com but please use any of its mirrors; they are usually much faster. Try slackware.nl or slackware.uk for instance.
I verified that the Widevine CDM plugin (for Netflix movie streaming) is still working. Time to watch the new season of Happy!
Enjoy! Eric
Thank you Eric!
btw, the new theme looks good.
Yeah I had grown quite accustomed to the Andreas theme that defined the public face of my blog from day one. But it did not work all that well on my smartphone and I had been looking for a responsive theme with a contemporary look that takes more advantage of screen real estate.
Not sure yet if this is going to be *the* theme for the next couple of years though.
Thank you Eric
The 14.2 and current versions appear to be identical – same md5 – for both 32bit and 64bit….
and the 14.2 requires a later glibc than is in 14.2 (I think).
peebee,
The chromium package is built on Slackware 14.2 with patches applied (i.e. be sure to install the more recent glibc in ./patches/packages), and it is indeed the same package that is made available for slackware-current. No need to compile twice if it works.
I’ve seen this theme used on other blogs, I quite like it 🙂
Also your old theme took some time to load on my machine, this one seems faster in that regard.
Cheers!
Hi Eric
The latest in patches appears to be:
glibc-2.23-i586-4_slack14.2.txz 2017-08-09 18:02 5.2M
whereas the new chromium-75 14.2 build wants:
chromium: /lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.28′ not found (required by chromium)
chromium: /lib/libm.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.29′ not found (required by chromium)
??
peebee, my chromium 75 package installed on Slackware64 14.2 here at home (with the latest glibc-2.23 for Slackware64 14.2 installed) starts and runs just fine.
You must have installed something from -current that is getting picked up as a dynamic library by chromium?
Chromium 75 on lightly customized Slackware64 14.2 working after updating via slackpkg+ and doing the usual stuff – checking online email, downloading, watching youtube videos, posting here.
I haven’t had any of the problems peebee has reported.
I can’t help peebee but Eric, I wanted to let you know that my upgrade went perfectly.
Thanks,
TKS
Ricardo,
Yes, page loading is faster. In particular the images seem to be loading slower the larger the SQLite backend becomes and that did not improve with the new theme. But at least the blog text is loading immediately now.
I am using SQLite for this blog because I do not want a dependency on a database server. That SQLite database is currently 42 MB in size.
peebee, apologies… I had checked the 64bit package… but indeed the 32bit chromium package that I made available for Slackware 14.2 was actually built on -current which is the cause of the error you see.
I will quickly restore the older 74.x package for 32bit slackware-14.2 while I compile a new 32bit chromium-75 package.
Many thanks Eric. I hoped I wasn’t giving you erroneous problems to sort – I’m sure you’ve got plenty of real ones……….. but its nice to know I hadn’t got it wrong! Cheers pb
Thank you Eric – 2alien replacement 32-bit 14.2 version now runs fine.
So not sure in exactly which version this started happening, but trying to download any file, or editing the downloads path causes the browser to crash for me. Running current x64 with chromium-75.0.3770.100
Running chromium from terminal, then trying to edit the downloads path causes this before crash.
free(): invalid pointer
Received signal 6
#0 0x55e561ab6c69
#1 0x55e561a1c283
#2 0x55e561ab67f1
#3 0x7f3286c68a80
#4 0x7f3284dd520b __GI_raise
#5 0x7f3284db7524 __GI_abort
#6 0x7f3284e1c596 __libc_message
#7 0x7f3284e2323a malloc_printerr
#8 0x7f3284e24ff4 _int_free
#9 0x7f32857c4ca4
#10 0x7f32857c74b7
#11 0x7f3285814637
#12 0x7f32857cec13
#13 0x7f3285820a95 cairo_paint
#14 0x7f32851f91c8
#15 0x7f32853231a8
#16 0x7f32851f7ecc
#17 0x7f32851b1261
#18 0x7f32853f5514
#19 0x7f32851ee41b gtk_container_propagate_draw
#20 0x7f32851ee4dd
#21 0x7f32853f5514
#22 0x7f32851ee41b gtk_container_propagate_draw
#23 0x7f32851ee4dd
#24 0x7f32851a28b4
#25 0x7f32851f347d
#26 0x7f32851f7fe4
#27 0x7f32851a4f61
#28 0x7f32853f5514
#29 0x7f32851ee41b gtk_container_propagate_draw
#30 0x7f3285351136
#31 0x7f32851f347d
#32 0x7f32851f7fe4
#33 0x7f3285350d35
#34 0x7f32853f5514
#35 0x7f32851ee41b gtk_container_propagate_draw
#36 0x7f32851ee4dd
#37 0x7f32851a28b4
#38 0x7f32851f347d
#39 0x7f32851f7fe4
#40 0x7f32851a4f61
#41 0x7f32853f5514
#42 0x7f32851ee41b gtk_container_propagate_draw
#43 0x7f32851ee4dd
#44 0x7f3285327548
#45 0x7f32853f5514
#46 0x7f32851ee41b gtk_container_propagate_draw
#47 0x7f32851ee4dd
#48 0x7f32851a28b4
#49 0x7f32851f347d
#50 0x7f32851f7fe4
#51 0x7f32851a4f61
#52 0x7f32853f5514
#53 0x7f32851ee41b gtk_container_propagate_draw
#54 0x7f32852e5a74
#55 0x7f32851f347d
#56 0x7f32851f7fe4
#57 0x7f32852e58a1
#58 0x7f32853f5514
#59 0x7f32851ee41b gtk_container_propagate_draw
#60 0x7f32851ee4dd
#61 0x7f32851a28b4
#62 0x7f32851f347d
#63 0x7f32851f7fe4
#64 0x7f32851a4f61
#65 0x7f32853f5514
#66 0x7f32851ee41b gtk_container_propagate_draw
#67 0x7f32851ee4dd
#68 0x7f32851a28b4
#69 0x7f32851f347d
#70 0x7f32851f7fe4
#71 0x7f32851a4f61
#72 0x7f32853f5514
#73 0x7f32851ee41b gtk_container_propagate_draw
#74 0x7f32851ee4dd
#75 0x7f32851a28b4
#76 0x7f32851f347d
#77 0x7f32851f7fe4
#78 0x7f32851a4f61
#79 0x7f32853f5514
#80 0x7f32851ee41b gtk_container_propagate_draw
#81 0x7f32851ee4dd
#82 0x7f328540309d
#83 0x7f32853f5514
#84 0x7f32853fe50b
#85 0x7f32852b65d8 gtk_main_do_event
#86 0x7f3284feaa75
#87 0x7f3284ffb0ab
#88 0x7f3284ffc205
#89 0x7f3284ffc3c4
#90 0x7f3286442e46
#91 0x7f328645dc50 g_signal_emit_valist
#92 0x7f328645e1d2 g_signal_emit
#93 0x7f3284ff3fe2
#94 0x7f3284fdf319
#95 0x7f328635ddc4
#96 0x7f328635d35f g_main_context_dispatch
#97 0x7f328635d6f0
#98 0x7f328635d77f g_main_context_iteration
#99 0x55e561a34cd2
#100 0x55e561a748f9
#101 0x55e561a4f6f7
#102 0x55e5616b28f7
#103 0x55e56006ce71
#104 0x55e56006f022
#105 0x55e560069e4f
#106 0x55e56166015b
#107 0x55e56165fdf6
#108 0x55e561692fdb
#109 0x55e56165e0f1
#110 0x55e55f57c203 ChromeMain
#111 0x7f3284db8b5b __libc_start_main
#112 0x55e55f57c029 _start
r8: 0000000000000000 r9: 00007ffc82230710 r10: 0000000000000008 r11: 0000000000000246
r12: 00007ffc82230970 r13: 0000000000001000 r14: 00007f3278363000 r15: 0000000000000020
di: 0000000000000002 si: 00007ffc82230710 bp: 00007ffc82230a50 bx: 00007ffc82230970
dx: 0000000000000000 ax: 0000000000000000 cx: 00007f3284dd520b sp: 00007ffc82230788
ip: 00007f3284dd520b efl: 0000000000000246 cgf: 002b000000000033 erf: 0000000000000000
trp: 0000000000000000 msk: 0000000000000000 cr2: 0000000000000000
[end of stack trace]
Calling _exit(1). Core file will not be generated.
Please do not pollute my blog with stack dumps.
I assume you run a desktop environment like XFCE?
Pat reverted the cairo package in -current a couple of hours ago, it was causing crashes similar to what you describe. Try doing a upgrade to the latest packages.
Sorry about the dump. Did not know they were frowned upon. That latest update did fix the issue. Thank You