Chromium

sudo apk add chromium

Chromium is the open-source browser project that serves as the foundation for Google Chrome and many other browsers. It provides a fast, secure, and standards-compliant web browsing experience on Linux systems.

What makes Chromium different from Chrome?

The main difference is that Chromium doesn't include proprietary codecs (like H.264/MP3), built-in auto-update mechanisms, or Google-specific services — it's the raw upstream project. For most users on a desktop Linux system, this means you get essentially the same browsing experience without the Google integration.

Installing on Alpine Linux

Chromium is available in Alpine's community repository under the package name Chromium (capital C). The community repo isn't enabled by default on fresh installs, so you need to uncomment it in /etc/apk/repositories before installing — this tutorial walks through that step.

Running as root

If you launch Chromium from a root terminal session, it will refuse to start with a sandbox error by default (this is a security feature). Add the --no-sandbox flag to work around this:

chromium --no-sandbox

This is fine for a personal workstation but should be avoided on shared or production systems.