How to Install Google Chrome Web Browser on Debian 9

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Install Google Chrome on Debian 9

Google Chrome is the most popular web browser in the world. It is fast, intuitive, and secure browser built for the modern web.

Chrome is not an open-source browser, and it is not included in the default Debian repositories. It is based on Chromium , an open-source browser that is available in the Debian repositories.

In this tutorial, we will cover how to install the Google Chrome web browser on Debian 9.

Prerequisites

You’ll need to be logged in as a user with sudo access to be able to install packages on your Debian system.

Installing Google Chrome on Debian

Complete the following steps to install Google Chrome on your Debian system:

1. Download Google Chrome

Open your terminal either by using the Ctrl+Alt+T keyboard shortcut or by clicking on the terminal icon.

Run the following wget command to download the latest Google Chrome .deb package:

wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

2. Install Google Chrome

Once the download is complete, install Google Chrome by typing:

sudo apt install ./google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

You will be asked to enter your user password. The command above will install Chrome and all dependencies.

Starting Google Chrome

Now that you have Google Chrome installed on your Debian system you can start it either from the command line by typing google-chrome or by clicking on the Google Chrome icon (Activities -> Google Chrome).

When you start Google Chrome for the first time, you will be presented with the following window asking whether you want to make Google Chrome your default browser and to send usage statistic and crash reports to Google:

Debian Google Chrome Default Browser

Select according to your preference, and click OK to proceed.

Google Chrome will open, and you’ll see the default Chrome welcome page.

Debian Google Chrome Welcome Page

From here, you can sign-in to Chrome with your Google Account to sync your bookmarks, history, passwords and other settings on all your devices.

Updating Google Chrome

During the installation, the official Google repository will be added to your system. You can use the cat command to verify the file contents:

cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list
### THIS FILE IS AUTOMATICALLY CONFIGURED ###
# You may comment out this entry, but any other modifications may be lost.
deb [arch=amd64] http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main

When a new version is released, you can update the Google Chrome package through your desktop standard Software Update tool or by running the following commands in your terminal:

sudo apt updatesudo apt upgrade

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we’ve shown you how to install Google Chrome on your Debian 9 desktop machine. If you’ve previously used a different browser, like Firefox or Opera, you can import your bookmarks and settings into Chrome.

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