There Is No Chrome For Pi

Today, Victor asks…

Hi Matt,

I have the Raspian OS installed on a Raspberry pi 2 and been trying to install the Google Chrome browser on it. I been trying apt-get, dpkg, but I get an error message, I understand that the OS is an embedded OS but what command should I use?

Sadly Victor, Chrome isn’t available for the Raspberry Pi. There are however, various methods for installing Chromium onto your Pi if you’re needing something that it provides. I must warn you though, you’re not going to be watching much browser powered video on your Pi 2. If you do, you will be pretty disappointed.

Instead, might I encourage you to do the following instead. Install an alternative browser like QupZilla or Midori. For YouTube videos, you might try something like SMTube or Minitube. Personally, I’d suggest Minitube as it provides the best overall experience. Still, watching videos on a Pi 2 is going to depend on what else you have running at the time.

If I was a betting man, I’d say you were hoping to watch Netflix via Chrome on your Pi. This simply isn’t possible….or is it? Again, I’m presuming a bit here. According to this tutorial, you can indeed go through a lot of steps to watch Netflix on a Pi. It won’t be very pleasant, but apparently it’s doable via ChromeOS, a lot of patience and the realization that you would do better to buy a Roku or Amazon Fire TV. In any event, hopefully this steers you in a better direction.

Do you have Linux questions you’d like Matt to help with? Hit the link here and perhaps you too, can Just Ask Matt!

Affiliate links for products mentioned above

Raspberry Pi - http://amzn.to/1r4rnKo

Roku - http://amzn.to/1TYA5V6

Fire TV - http://amzn.to/1U0JFbj

Matt Hartley
Matt Hartley
Freedom Penguin’s founder & talking head – Matt has over a decade working with Linux desktops, his operating system experience consists of both Windows and Linux operating platforms. In addition to writing articles on Linux and open source technology for Datamation.com and OpenLogic.com/wazi, Matt also once served as a co-host for a popular Linux-centric podcast.

Matt has written about various software titles, such as Moodle, Joomla, WordPress, openCRX, Alfresco, Liferay and more. He also has additional Linux experience working with Debian based distributions, openSUSE, CentOS, and Arch Linux.

3 thoughts on “There Is No Chrome For Pi”

  2. It should be pointed out, though that this is more a Google decision more than a Raspberry Pi decision as Google has decided to discontinue Chrome on 32 bit systems, and only the Pi 3 has a 64 bit CPU, while not yet a 64 bit OS.

Leave a Comment