Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Tag: chrome (Page 2 of 13)

Chromium 114.0.5735.133 packages address critical bug

June 17, 2023 / / 27 Comments

Chromium, regular and un-googled.

Earlier this week, Google released its 114.0.5735.133 update for Chromium 114.
This is a bugfix release and on the list of addressed security issues, there’s one which is labeled as ‘critical‘, labeled CVE-2023-3214. Three other fixes are labeled with a vulnerability rating of ‘high‘.
As always, it is wise to upgrade to my latest chromium and chromium-ungoogled packages.

The updated Slackware 15.0 and -current packages both for chromium and chromium-ungoogled are available in my repository and its mirrors (like my own US server and in a short while, the UK mirror).

Cheers, Eric

Chromium 114 Early Release on Slackware

May 27, 2023 / / 10 Comments

An “early release” of Chromium 114 source code was published a few days ago, the release notes are on the developer blog.  Since Chromium 110, Google rolls out new major releases to a small sub-set of its users to monitor any potential breakage and apply fixes before the majority of users get upgraded. The formal release of Chromium will be on May 30th, but I decided to go along with the early release this time, and offer this version to Slackware users already this weekend, to celebrate the Pentecost 🙂

Looking at the new stuff in Chromium 114, there’s two things you might want to play with, since they are already contained in the browser and mostly usable in Chromium 114, but not yet enabled by default.

  • By toggling the flag “chrome://flags/#chrome-refresh-2023” from “default” to “enabled” the ongoing work will be revealed to bring a new User Interface design (Material You) to the desktop browser. A new tab design, new icons and work on the dark theme is visible. This new UI is scheduled for release in September 2023.
  • The toggle “chrome://flags/#password-manager-redesign” will enable a revamped Google Password Manager. It wants to look more like a standalone application and Chromium will ask you if you want to “install the app” which basically just adds a shortcut to “chrome://password-manager/passwords” in the “three-dots” sidebar menu. I was not yet impressed with this one, as it was unable to show me the passwords I had already saved in Chromium before. Yet is was obvious that my passwords were present since the password manager was able to check them all for compromise and weakness. So, I toggled this one back to “default” and will wait for Google to mature and stabilize it.

Also obvious is the disappearance of the “lock” icon which was an indication that you were visiting a secure “https” site. The lock has been replaced by a settings icon but functionally nothing much changed, as is shown when you click that icon.

Slackware packages (15.0 and -current) for Chromium 114.0.5735.45 are available for download from my repository or any of its mirrors.

The Un-googled version of my Chromium browser package will probably have to wait until May 30th –  the formal release date of Chromium 114. There is no sign that Eloston will release a tarball sooner.

Enjoy! Eric

Chromium (also ungoogled) now at version 112

April 8, 2023 / / 6 Comments

Last week the Chromium source code major version was upped to 112. According to the developer blog, this release addresses 16 security issues, none of them critical. Nevertheless, better safe than sorry, so the Slackware packages (15.0 and -current) for Chromium are now ready for downloading from my repository or any of its mirrors. Likewise chromium-ungoogled.

The regular as well as the Un-googled Chromium browser is now at version 112.0.5615.49.
Let’s see what version 113 brings next month – it should have enabled WebGPU by default on ChromeOS even though the Linux builds of Chrome seem to have to wait a bit longer. I wonder if it’s just compile options that I could try to exploit for my Chromium build. I am also curious to see where WebGPU is going to be used in 3D-rendered web applications.

Enjoy! Eric

Chromium 110 packages for Slackware (the last version for Slackware 14.2)

February 13, 2023 / / 12 Comments

I have uploaded the packages for Google Chromium 110.0.5481.77 as well as its un-googled version. The sources for this new major release were available since a week ago, but as it often happens when Chromium updates its major version number, I get to find ways around the breakage that seems to be specific for the unusual Slackware target, and create fixes and patches to make the sources compile into a package for Slackware.

It took me so long to come up with packages this time, that Google already released a newer update (110.0.5481.96) today…
You won’t get that update now, hopefully soon though. Get the 110.0.5481.77 release from my server (chromium or chromium-ungoogled) or its US mirror (chromium or chromium-ungoogled).

The new packages are targeting Slackware 14.2 and newer. As announced last year and repeated a couple of times, I am going to drop support for Slackware 14.2 on the first anniversary of Slackware 15.0, which is February 22nd, 2023.
Ergo, the final version of Chromium you’ll get from me for Slackware 14.2 will be this “110” release because Chromium 111 will see the light on March 1st.
It would be wise to upgrade to Slackware 15.0 anyway if you are still on 14.2.

Enjoy! Eric

New packages for Chromium (also ungoogled) work on Slackware 14.2 again

January 19, 2023 / / 14 Comments


It looks like Slackware 14.2 is starting to show its age when it comes to supporting Chromium. The packages that I uploaded earlier this week for Chromium (also -ungoogled) version 109.0.5414.74 failed to run on Slackware 14.2 despite the fact that they were successfully compiled on Slackware 14.2. The packages ran without complaint on Slackware 15.0 and -current however.
The cause was a run-time dependency on libdrm for which the minimum version requirement was increased in Chromium 109 and Slackware 14.2 contains a libdrm library that is now too old.
After finding that root cause, I have rebuilt the chromium (also -ungoogled) packages, this time using an internal copy of libdrm instead of relying on the system libraries. The BUILD=2 version of these packages is now available for download from my repository and its mirrors, they are working correctly on Slackware 14.2 again.

Have fun! Eric

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