Chromium is the open-source project that underlies Google Chrome . Chromium, being completely open source, is one of the browsers available in the software repositories of most Linux distributions in order to facilitate its installation (while Google Chrome is not found and must be installed from the official website).
Just as Chromium is the project from which Google Chrome was born, Chromium OS is the name of the open source project underlying Google Chrome OS, the operating system of Chromebooks.
If Chromium is easily found in repositories on Linux, using Chromium on Windows and Mac is a bit more difficult.
The problem is not so much in downloading and installing it as in the fact that updates are not automatic in Chromium .
The automatic update program of Chrome was in fact made by Google and therefore is not included in Chromium.
Using Chromium instead of Chrome therefore becomes inconvenient and inefficient since you have to update it manually.
Another difference between Chrome and Chromium are the "closed source" plugin and codec packages that Google includes in its browser.
Chromium lacks support for AAC, H.264, MP3 multimedia content and sites that use HTML5 videos. Both browsers have the basic free codecs: Opus, Theora, Vorbis, VP8, VP9, and WAV.
Chrome also includes the Flash plugin that Google automatically updates with each new version of Chrome.
Installing Chrome is the only way, on Linux, to get the latest version of Flash.
Also on Windows and Mac the Flash version of Chrome is the preferable one because the Pepper API (PPAPI) plugin is put in a sandbox, therefore isolated from the browser, so that even if it crashed and crashed it would not drop the entire browser.
Google Chrome also includes the crash and bug reporting feature that is not found in Chromium.
Both browsers also have a security sandbox to prevent bad sites from crashing the entire browser.
The sandbox appears to be disabled on Chrome in some Linux distributions.
Even though Chrome looks significantly better than Chromium, there is still something negative, in the Google browser, which can make your mouth turn up.
I am referring to the fact that many of the features of Chrome depend on the Google servers, especially with regards to privacy and the options that are enabled by default.
At the time, we listed the options for privacy in Chrome and Google browser security.
Among these, options such as the one for auto-correcting web addresses, the search prediction service, the anti-phishing protection and the correction of spelling errors inextricably link internet browsing to Google servers.
Even if there is no evidence, if one day it is discovered that Google monitors and controls user behavior on the internet thanks to Chrome, it would not be such a sensational news.
So which browser you should use "> Chromium may be the right choice on a Linux distribution that, thanks to the repository, keeps up to date.
The fact that Chromium is open source and independent of the large multinationals of the web is certainly appreciable, however, the lack of advanced features and support for online videos make it an incomplete software.
You can also think of Google Chrome from a privacy point of view, but it is undoubtedly the best browser ever on both PC and smartphone, full of features, extensions and applications, updated every month with new functions brought by the development team of Google.
In Windows and Mac, the choice is therefore mandatory, and if you really do not want to have anything to do with Google, you can always install an alternative version of Chrome, based on Chromium, not Google.
READ ALSO: Download or update Google Chrome with offline installation
