How to Install Chromium on Amazon Linux: A Step-by-Step Guide
How to Install Chromium on Amazon Linux: A Step-by-Step Guide
As data scientists or software engineers, we often find ourselves working on remote servers, and sometimes, we need to access a web browser in those environments. But what if you’re working on an Amazon Linux instance that doesn’t come with a pre-installed web browser? This is where Chromium comes in handy.
Chromium is an open-source web browser developed by Google. It serves as the foundation for Google Chrome, which means it shares many of the same features, minus some proprietary components. This guide will show you how to install Chromium on Amazon Linux.
Prerequisites
Before we start, make sure you have the following:
- An Amazon Linux instance
- root or sudo access
Step 1: Update your system
The first step is to ensure that your system is up-to-date. In the terminal, type:
sudo yum update -y
This will update all the packages on your Amazon Linux instance.
Step 2: Install Chromium
Next, we will install Chromium. Unfortunately, Chromium is not available in the default Amazon Linux repositories. So, we will have to add the EPEL repository, which contains the Chromium package.
To add the EPEL repository, enter the following command:
sudo amazon-linux-extras install epel -y
Once the EPEL repository is added, you can install Chromium by typing:
sudo yum install chromium -y
Step 3: Verify the installation
After the installation, you can verify if Chromium has been successfully installed by running:
chromium-browser --version
This should display Chromium’s version number.
Step 4: Start Chromium
Now, you can start Chromium by simply typing:
chromium-browser
If you are accessing your Amazon Linux instance via SSH, you’ll need to use SSH forwarding to view the Chromium interface. To do this, add the -X option when connecting to your instance:
ssh -X ec2-user@your-instance-ip
After logging in, you can launch Chromium with the same command as before.
Conclusion
In this article, we learned how to install Chromium on Amazon Linux. This can be particularly useful when you need to access web pages from your Amazon Linux instance, or for automated testing with tools like Selenium.
It’s worth noting that while Chromium is a powerful tool, running a browser on a server can consume significant resources. Therefore, it’s a good practice to close Chromium when you’re not using it.
We hope this guide was helpful. If you have any questions or run into any issues, feel free to leave a comment below.
keywords: Chromium, Amazon Linux, installation guide, data science, software engineering, server-side browser, EPEL, SSH forwarding
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