How do I install only Chrome on a minimal installation?

It's something like Chromium-OS, however even more minimal.

I was thinking, if it is possible at all??? That I use an Ubuntu 12.04 minimal, just to install the base OS, and then on top of it only the chromium browser, without any GUI like gnome, KDE, etc.

If this is not possible, then is it possible to browse the internet directly through the terminal which comes immediately after installing the base minimal OS. I don't want to install anything except for a GUI browser (not the text browser).


Just install Xorg, your graphic card driver, and Chrome. Then put Chrome in Xorg's startup script (.xinitrc). Though if you want something minimal like that you'd probably be more suited with Arch Linux, which is designed to let you build up your whole system from the ground (without too much effort).

Some command line web browsers are Links and Lynx.


I'm not sure, but this should be how to achieve it...

  1. sudo apt-get install xorg chromium-browser
  2. Install your graphic card driver. You can choose whether you want the open source or the proprietary one. If you can tell me what graphic card you have, I'll try to tell you which driver you need. The MESA driver should work with any card, if I'm not mistaken, but has terrible performance.
  3. echo chromium-browser >> .xinitrc (Might be a different command. once again; I'm not sure.)
  4. startx

Use a minimal X configuration with a very lite desktop manager like Openbox, the following command will install the X server, the desktop manager and very little other packages

sudo apt-get install openbox obconf

you can then call up a desktop session with startx and run Chrome inside it or modify your .xinitc to auto start a desktop session with Chrome running as a startup application.