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Bringing Chrome to ARM64 Linux Devices
- Hackbraten 7mo agoLooking forward to no longer having to patch glibc on my Linux phone just so I can watch YouTube or use Spotify.
- mort96 7mo agoWait what, how is glibc patching related to YouTube and Spotify? Could you not watch YouTube using an arm64 build of Chromium or Firefox?
- Hackbraten 7mo agoSpotify requires Widevine CDM to run, and Firefox doesn't come with Widevine on Debian-based distros. The .so hasn't been available on arm64 except for ChromeOS. You can rip the .so out of ChromeOS (that's what RaspberryPi OS did). But ChromeOS uses its own flavor of libc so a couple of patches to glibc are required. Same thing with YouTube. A few months ago, YouTube started to require Widevine CDM if one uses the m.youtube.com site. I can't use the non-mobile site on my phone for performance issues, so I'm essentially locked into Widevine for watching YouTube, too.
- cmrdporcupine 7mo agoFirefox pre-packaged for Ubuntu on my NVIDIA Spark has no problems with YouTube? I guess it must be a snap, not a deb package, but... wouldn't that work?
- Hackbraten 7mo agoRegular YouTube works as is (but has performance issues on my weak phone.) It's m.youtube.com that seems to require the DRM thing, at least for me. Have you tried that?
- seba_dos1 7mo agom.youtube.com works fine in both Epiphany and Firefox on my Librem 5 with PureOS.
- Hackbraten 7mo agoTurns out you’re right. I just uninstalled the CDM and YouTube indeed works! I’m still absolutely, positively sure that m.youtube.com started gating it for me last August without a doubt. [0] Maybe they pulled some temporary A/B experiment on me? I’ll probably never know. Thanks for the correction. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45193597 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45193597
- samtheprogram 7mo agoI'm confused, how does Chrome work on ARM64 Android phones today?
- bloomca 7mo agoMaybe Android has its own libc? So they compile it for Android, but not for general Linux. Also curious about this.
- westurner 7mo agoAndroid's libc is called Bionic. Bionic (software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bionic_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bionic_(software)
- westurner 7mo agoWhat is necessary to run Linux ARM64 binaries on Android ARM64? To run conda-forge arm64 Linux binaries on Android in termux requires proot-distro because the ABIs are slightly different FWIU. What is necessary to run Android ARM64 binaries on Linux ARM64? Android Studio, LineageOS or BlissOS's outdated Android containers, a runtime like vinegarhq/sober that emulates just enough of Android. An Android binary that makes Linux compatible syscalls only (that doesn't require Android libraries that aren't compiled for Linux) won't work will it?
- mort96 7mo agoA fully statically compiled Linux ARM64 binary which only interacts with the kernel through syscalls should run no problem on ARM64 Android. From the kernel's perspective, there is no difference between a "Linux binary" and an "Android binary" because the kernel in Android is Linux. Most programs want to interact with various system libraries and system services though. Android and your typical desktop Linux system share pretty much nothing aside from the kernel.
- westurner 7mo agoWhy is it easier to run a Linux ARM64 binary on Android than to run an Android ARM64 binary on Linux? My guess is that the reason is the same reason that there aren't official updated Android containers
- yjftsjthsd-h 7mo agoCurious; given that ARM Chromebooks are nothing new, I'm surprised that it took them this long to ship it to other Linux distros.
- eddythompson80 7mo agoChrome had no official arm64 build. There are distro specific builds from debian, fedora etc for arm64 chromium, but google had no official arm64 build. There were actually some paid services that provided a distro-agnostic chromium arm64 builds mostly targeting people running puppeteer on AWS ARM lambda. You can see some discussion here https://github.com/alixaxel/chrome-aws-lambda/issues/241 https://github.com/alixaxel/chrome-aws-lambda/issues/241 edit: I think I replied to the wrong comment.
- tedk-42 7mo agoI thought the same though this comment clarifies it -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47357608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47357608
- emilbratt 7mo agoI have been waiting... so many years for this. Like, I figured it would never come. So happy to be wrong. Wonder if it will work well on Raspberry Pi and also if it will come with Hardware Video Acceleration out of the box.
- mort96 7mo agoI would have more faith in Raspberry Pi's own patched build of Chromium to do hardware acceleration properly on the Pi than I would have in Google's generic Chrome build.
- emilbratt 7mo agoBut as far as i know, there has never been working HW accelerated video in their build of Chromium. But yeah, I guess you have point.
- sstim 7mo agoIf enough people ask Broadcom to do VA-API on their platforms getting that enabled on Chromium shouldn't be too hard. The caveat is that codec support is limited (no VP8/VP9/AV1).
- jamesfinlayson 7mo agoMe too. Trying to get Chrome to run in Docker on an ARM Mac was a battle that I didn't win (I didn't want to fight the battle to start with but I had to use a Mac rather than Linux).
- andrepd 7mo agoThere's always Firefox.
- vsgherzi 7mo agoa lot of people seem to not understand what used to go into running chrome on arm64 devices, this blog goes over it pretty well https://www.da.vidbuchanan.co.uk/blog/netflix-on-asahi.html https://www.da.vidbuchanan.co.uk/blog/netflix-on-asahi.html
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- PunchyHamster 7mo agothat's not really "running chrome" but "running that specific DRM part browsers use to play content from companies you shouldn't give your money to"
- seba_dos1 7mo agosudo apt install chromium (or chromium-browser in the past)
- kgwxd 7mo agoNope. Make uBlock Origin work properly again, or gtfo of the browser market.
- oofbaroomf 7mo agoWait... weren't there many ARM Chromebooks already?
- cmrdporcupine 7mo agoSure, and when I worked at Google on Chromecast there was also that build of Chromium. All of that is very different from The G actually providing a packaged official Chrome build, though. Which for some reason they couldn't be bothered to do before (Firefox exists though)
- zamadatix 7mo agoMuch like Android, Chromebooks are considered a different target even though they use the Linux kernel. This release will be for a generic Linux desktop binary rather than specific 1st party systems.
- torginus 7mo agoYeah, strange, there has been a build of CEF for Linux ARM64 since forever.
- cmrdporcupine 7mo agoI recently switched to using an NVIDIA Spark as my primary workstation and lack of Chrome binaries for it are what finally pushed me to completely sever my relationship with Chrome and switch to Firefox. Sorry, Google. Too late! (Bonus: ad blocking properly works).
- xupybd 7mo agoWhat is it like using a Spark as a workstation?
- cmrdporcupine 7mo agoJust like any other Ubuntu machine, really. Just lots (128GB) of RAM and relatively lots of cores (10 efficiency, 10 performance). It's not screaming fast, but it's absolutely fast enough for anything I need to do and it's got insanely fast networking options if I need them. I like it, and the local AI options make it fun enough, too. Apart from a few hassles. No pre-packaged Discord or Slack or Chromium or Spotify are the only things I've run into really.
- swisniewski 7mo agoI use a DGX spark, with Cosmic as my DE, and it's super awesome. This is a bit of a franekin-distro, as it's ubuntu + nvdia packgages + system 76 packages, but it works pretty well. I've been using Flatpack chromium, which is ok for most things. It performs a bit better than Firefox does. Having access to official Chrome will be nice though, as it should come with Widevine support. Chromium doesn't support DRM, so some things like Netflix don't work.
- r2vcap 7mo agoCool. Let’s release Android NDK for Linux arm64 host, too.
- Retr0id 7mo agoThis one is so frustrating because aarch64 android would work great under kvm, but it's a pain to set up without the NDK cooperating.
- surajrmal 7mo agoWhat specifically doesn't work?
- Retr0id 7mo agoI'm not aware of anything specific other than the fact that it's not officially supported as a build target so you have to hack up the build system to make it work. Example: https://github.com/SnowNF/ndk-aarch64-linux https://github.com/SnowNF/ndk-aarch64-linux
- transpute 7mo agoGoogle will launch Chrome for ARM64 Linux devices in Q2 2026, following the successful expansion of Chrome to Arm-powered macOS devices in 2020 and Arm-powered Windows devices in 2024.. Google is partnering with NVIDIA to make it easier for DGX Spark users to install Chrome. Will be useful in isolated Debian Linux pKVM Arm VM with accelerated vGPU, in Android-ChromeOS converged desktop on Qualcomm Arm laptops. Possibly Nvidia-Mediatek Arm laptops, if they support h/w nested virt for pKVM/AVF. Android desktop mode: https://x.com/sahajsarup/status/2031963143082295610 https://x.com/sahajsarup/status/2031963143082295610
- Retr0id 7mo agoI hope this means widevine builds for aarch64 linux are finally here (which is a strange thing to wish for but it will obsolete some very janky workarounds)
- leni536 7mo agoDebian ships Chromium on many architectures for a long time now, apparently. I never tried it outside of x86_64, so I can't say how usable it is. What am I missing? Is this about V8 JIT and widewine? Although those must be already supported on chromebooks, so I don't know. Lists of architectures on oldstable (bookworm): amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, ppc64el https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/chromium https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/chromium From where I stand it seems they enabled a build architecture for Chrome, but I don't think this required a lot of porting effort. Kudos for the official support though.
- seba_dos1 7mo agoIt's just about their branded closed build, not even about V8 JIT which was there already.
- pjmlp 7mo ago> This launch marks a major milestone in our commitment to the Linux community and the Arm ecosystem. So does Chrome finally hardware accelerates You Tube on GNU/Linux, and supports WebGPU, just like on Android/Linux and ChromeOS/Linux?
- sstim 7mo agoNo, it will not. At least for now.
- seba_dos1 7mo agoBring the mobile UI there and it will be a news. Chromium has worked on ARM64 Linux since forever.
- madduci 7mo agoSince the inception of Raspberry Pi at least?
- seba_dos1 7mo agoLonger than that. Raspberry Pi isn't that old, it only launched in 2012.
- TiredOfLife 7mo agoAnd first arm64 device was released in 2013
- seba_dos1 7mo agoHa, touche! But it worked on ARM long before that :)
- ZiiS 7mo agoSurely are more ARM64 Linux Devices running Chrome then any other Arch-Kernel combo in history? Not packaging it for common distros when they have built two empires off the kernel was just a choice.
- slhck 7mo agoDoes that mean Widevine DRM will be supported officially? Does anyone know?
- cromka 7mo agoIdk about "officially", but it works just fine on arm64 here: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/widevine-installer https://github.com/AsahiLinux/widevine-installer
- Thev00d00 7mo agoMost interesting here is the possibility of Arm64 Widewine libraries appearing?
- cromka 7mo agoThey already exist and work just fine: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/widevine-installer https://github.com/AsahiLinux/widevine-installer
- alexmyczko 7mo ago--2026-03-14 04:50:18-- https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_arm64.deb https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_curr... Resolving dl.google.com (dl.google.com)... 192.178.170.136, 192.178.170.91, 192.178.170.190, ... Connecting to dl.google.com (dl.google.com)|192.178.170.136|:443... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found 2026-03-14 04:50:18 ERROR 404: Not Found.
- alexmyczko 7mo agowhen microsoft? https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/Status/issues/697 https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/Status/issues/697
- cromka 7mo ago> We’re excited to announce that Google will launch Chrome for ARM64 Linux devices in Q2 2026 > Users with other Linux distributions can also install the ARM64 version of Chrome by visiting chrome.com/download. You had one job, press release person!