Google Chrome 55 Released – Install on RHEL/CentOS 7/6 and Fedora 25-20

Google Chrome is a freeware web browser developed by Google Inc. Google Chrome team proudly announced the release of Google Chrome 55 on December 01, 2016.

The actual version is 55.0.2883.75 for Linux and Mac OS X/Windows operating system. This new version bundled with a number of exciting fixes, features, improvements and killing Flash contents in favor of latestHTML5.

If you would like to know more other cool features of this release, please visit at Google’s Chrome Features.

In this tutorial we will show you how we have practically installed Google Chrome 55 browser in one of ourCentOS 7.0 server using Google’s own repository with Yum tool and a third party script from Richard Lloyd, which installs latest chrome version on RHEL/CentOS and Fedora versions.

Important: Google Chrome support for all 32-bit Linux distributions is deprecated from March, 2016.

By using Google’s official repository you will keep your Chrome browser up-to-date. However, it should also work on RHEL 7.0/6.x, CentOS 7.0/6.x and Fedora 25-20 versions as well.

Step 1: Enable Google YUM repository

Create a file called /etc/yum.repos.d/google-chrome.repo and add the following lines of code to it.

[google-chrome]
name=google-chrome
baseurl=http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/rpm/stable/$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub

Step 2: Installing Chrome Web Browser

First, check whether the latest version available from the Google’s own repository using following yum command.

# yum info google-chrome-stable

Sample Output

Check Google Chrome Package Info

Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks, product-id, search-disabled-repos, subscription-manager, versionlock
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
* base: mirror.fibergrid.in
* epel: ftp.riken.jp
* extras: mirrors.viethosting.vn
* remi-safe: ftp.arnes.si
* rpmforge: mirror.team-cymru.org
* updates: mirror.fibergrid.in
Available Packages
Name        : google-chrome-stable
Arch        : x86_64
Version     : 55.0.2883.75
Release     : 1
Size        : 44 M
Repo        : google-chrome
Summary     : Google Chrome
URL         : https://chrome.google.com/
License     : Multiple, see https://chrome.google.com/
Description : The web browser from Google
:
: Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.

Do you see the highlighted output in the above, that clearly telling that the latest version of chrome is available from repository. So, let’s install it using yum command as shown below, which will automatically install all needed dependencies.

# yum install google-chrome-stable

Sample Output

Install Google Chrome in Linux

Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks, product-id, search-disabled-repos, subscription-manager, versionlock
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
* base: mirror.fibergrid.in
* epel: ftp.riken.jp
* extras: mirrors.viethosting.vn
* remi-safe: ftp.arnes.si
* rpmforge: mirror.team-cymru.org
* updates: mirror.fibergrid.in
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package google-chrome-stable.x86_64 0:55.0.2883.75-1 will be installed
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
Dependencies Resolved
======================================================================================================================================================================
Package                    Arch                     Version                 Repository                     Size
======================================================================================================================================================================
Installing:
google-chrome-stable      x86_64                   55.0.2883.75-1          google-chrome                    44 M
Transaction Summary
======================================================================================================================================================================
Install  1 Package
Total download size: 44 M
Installed size: 171 M
Is this ok [y/d/N]: y

Update : Sadly, the Google Chrome browser no longer supports the most famous commercial distributionRHEL 6.x and its free clones such as CentOS and Scientific Linux.

Yes, they’ve discontinued support for RHEL 6.X version as of Google Chrome and on other side, latestFirefox and Opera browsers run successfully on the same platforms.

Luckily, there is a script developed by Richard Lloyd, that automatically download and install latest Google Chrome browser by picking libraries from a more recent released distro and put those libraries in (/opt/google/chrome/lib) directory and then you can able to run Google Chrome on RHEL/CentOS 6.xversions.

# wget http://chrome.richardlloyd.org.uk/install_chrome.sh
# chmod u+x install_chrome.sh
# ./install_chrome.sh

Sample Output

Richard Lloyd Google Chrome Script

Google Chrome Installer 7.50 on the x86_64 platform
(C) Richard K. Lloyd 2016 <rklloyd@gmail.com>
*** Creating temporary directory /tmp/chrome_install ...
*** Changing working directory to /tmp/chrome_install ...
*** Generating a list of out-of-date packages (please wait) ...
*** Checking for an update to install_chrome.sh ...
*** Downloading version.dat (please wait) ...
--2016-12-05 02:11:44--  https://chrome.richardlloyd.org.uk/version.dat
Resolving chrome.richardlloyd.org.uk (chrome.richardlloyd.org.uk)... 193.110.246.232
Connecting to chrome.richardlloyd.org.uk (chrome.richardlloyd.org.uk)|193.110.246.232|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 5
Saving to: ‘version.dat’
100%[=====================================================================================================================================================>] 5           --.-K/s   in 0s
2016-12-05 02:11:44 (335 KB/s) - ‘version.dat’ saved [5/5]
*** install_chrome.sh is already the latest version (7.50) - continuing ...
*** Determining latest Google Chrome version number (please wait) ...
*** Downloading chrome_versions.csv (please wait) ...
--2016-12-05 02:11:46--  http://omahaproxy.appspot.com/all?os=linux&channel=stable
Resolving omahaproxy.appspot.com (omahaproxy.appspot.com)... 216.58.220.177, 2404:6800:4009:801::2011
Connecting to omahaproxy.appspot.com (omahaproxy.appspot.com)|216.58.220.177|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 318 [text/plain]
Saving to: ‘chrome_versions.csv’
100%[=====================================================================================================================================================>] 318         --.-K/s   in 0s
2016-12-05 02:11:46 (39.1 MB/s) - ‘chrome_versions.csv’ saved [318/318]
*** Latest google-chrome-stable version number is 55.0.2883.50 ...
*** Downloading google-chrome-stable_current_x86_64.rpm (please wait) ...
--2016-12-05 02:11:46--  https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_x86_64.rpm
Resolving dl.google.com (dl.google.com)... 216.58.199.142, 2404:6800:4009:806::200e
Connecting to dl.google.com (dl.google.com)|216.58.199.142|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 43781619 (43M) [application/x-rpm]
Saving to: ‘google-chrome-stable_current_x86_64.rpm’
100%[=====================================================================================================================================================>] 4,37,81,619 3.40MB/s   in 14s
2016-12-05 02:12:00 (3.42 MB/s) - ‘google-chrome-stable_current_x86_64.rpm’ saved [43781619/43781619]
*** Google Chrome 55.0.2883.50 downloaded successfully ...
*** Installing Google Chrome 55.0.2883.50 RPM (please wait) ...
Preparing...                          ################################# [100%]
Updating / installing...
1:google-chrome-stable-55.0.2883.50################################# [100%]
Redirecting to /bin/systemctl start  atd.service
*** Google Chrome 55.0.2883.50 was installed successfully ...
*** /opt/google/chrome tree contains 87 files totalling 181 MB ...
*** /tmp/chrome_install tree contains 1 files totalling 47 MB ...
Google Chrome 55.0.2883.50 was installed successfully.
Please run the browser via the 'google-chrome' command as a non-root user.
To update Google Chrome, run "yum update google-chrome-stable" or
simply re-run this script with "./install_chrome.sh".
To uninstall Google Chrome,
run "yum remove google-chrome-stable " or "./install_chrome.sh -u".

Step 3: Starting Chrome Web Browser

Start browser with non-root user.

# google-chrome &

Welcome screen of Chrome web browser.

Welcome Google Chrome

Exploring www.tecmint.com with cool Chrome web browser.

Google Chrome Preview on CentOS 7

About Google Chrome

Download Two Free Google Chrome eBooks

Google Chrome Cheat Sheet: This free ebook contains dozens of other helpful keyboard shortcuts that will help you on how to use Google Chrome efficiently.

10 Essential Chrome Tips: This free ebook provides certain useful but overlooked Chrome tips that have the potential to significantly enhance a Chrome user’s everyday experience.

That’s it, enjoy browsing with Chrome and do let me know your browsing experience with Chrome via comments.