Bringing Chrome to ARM64 Linux Devices

123 points by ingve 23 hours ago on hackernews | 66 comments

Looking forward to no longer having to patch glibc on my Linux phone just so I can watch YouTube or use Spotify.

Wait what, how is glibc patching related to YouTube and Spotify? Could you not watch YouTube using an arm64 build of Chromium or Firefox?

Hackbraten | 22 hours ago

Spotify 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 | 22 hours ago

Firefox 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 | 15 hours ago

Regular 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 | 8 hours ago

m.youtube.com works fine in both Epiphany and Firefox on my Librem 5 with PureOS.

: Hackbraten | 2 hours ago
Turns 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

samtheprogram | 23 hours ago

I'm confused, how does Chrome work on ARM64 Android phones today?

bloomca | 23 hours ago

Maybe Android has its own libc? So they compile it for Android, but not for general Linux.

Also curious about this.

: westurner | 23 hours ago
Android's libc is called Bionic.
Bionic (software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bionic_(software)

westurner | 23 hours ago

What 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 | 22 hours ago

A 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 | 22 hours ago

Why 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

mort96 | 22 hours ago

I don't know what you mean by an "Android ARM64 binary". If you make an ELF file containing ARM64 machine code, it doesn't matter to Linux whether you meant for it to run on Linux in an Android system, on Linux in a desktop GNU system, or on Linux in some environment with without much of a userspace at all (such as a stripped down initramfs environment).

If you mean something like an Android app, the answer is that there's a ton of system stuff that the app depends on, it interacts with more than just the kernel.

westurner | 5 hours ago

  CC= clang
  CXX=clang++
  $CC hello.c -o hello_android_c
  $CXX hello.cpp -o hello_android_cpp -static-libstdc++
  $CXX hello_asm.cpp -o hello_android_cpp_asm_syscalls_only -ffreestanding -nostdlib -fuse-ld=lld
  find -name hello_android -exec readelf -l {} \;

But go binaries don't require (bionic) libc unless you compile with CGO_ENABLED=1

pjmlp | 9 hours ago

Only if they restrict themselves to the officially supported syscalls, otherwise Android will kill the application.

hugs | 23 hours ago

they probably meant desktop. i do browser test automation (selenium, vibium), and the lack of google chrome on arm64 trips up new users frequently. the workaround is to just use chromium, but that's a confusing extra step for some if it's not automated and hidden for you.

on that note, it would have been nice if they also clarified if this means they'll be shipping an official "chrome for testing" for arm64 linux, too.

kelvinjps10 | 22 hours ago

Don't most people use chromium instead of chrome anyways on Linux?

hugs | 22 hours ago

most people just click the "internet" button and use whatever was already pre-installed.

: kelvinjps10 | 22 hours ago
I meant Linux users and chromium is the one that's already in the repos and doesn't need extra work. The default browser in most distros is Firefox

drnick1 | 19 hours ago

Yes, and the last thing we need is Google's cancer spreading to Linux.

vinkelhake | 22 hours ago

This is "just" about providing the official Chrome binary to ARM64 "desktop" Linux.

You've been able to build and run Chromium on ARM Linux for a long time (I'm running it right now), it's just that they haven't provided an officially branded Chrome.

This is a good thing. While Chromium works well, there are a few things (like syncing) that is a bit of a pain to set up.

hparadiz | 22 hours ago

The Chromium project builds many things. The Android version is just one of those things.

danans | 21 hours ago

The reason they didn't release Chrome for arm64 Linux almost certainly wasn't about technical feasibility, but rather about it being worth the support costs.

The Android arm64 Chrome build is clearly worth it to them, as is the Chrome build for ARM Chromebooks.

Before this point they probably didn't think that arm64 Linux was a worthwhile target to support (especially since Chromium was available on arm64 Linux anyways).

I'm not sure what has changed in the desktop/laptop ARM Linux market that changed their minds - or maybe they want to put their shoulder behind that market.

oofbey | 21 hours ago

Support? This is Google!

: danans | 20 hours ago
Support in this context means bugfixing, performance/crash testing across devices and chipsets, security updates, etc, not "phone/email support".

CJefferson | 11 hours ago

It required custom glibc patches, and getting videoes to work required some kernel stuff as well.

This is a combination of getting stuff merged upstream, and removing the need for some more specialist features.

yjftsjthsd-h | 23 hours ago

Curious; given that ARM Chromebooks are nothing new, I'm surprised that it took them this long to ship it to other Linux distros.

: eddythompson80 | 23 hours ago
Chrome 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
edit: I think I replied to the wrong comment.
: tedk-42 | 20 hours ago
I thought the same though this comment clarifies it -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47357608

emilbratt | 23 hours ago

I 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 | 22 hours ago

I 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 | 22 hours ago
But 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.

jamesfinlayson | 21 hours ago

Me 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 | 20 hours ago

There's always Firefox.

vsgherzi | 22 hours ago

a 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

: PunchyHamster | 9 hours ago
that'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 | 8 hours ago
sudo apt install chromium (or chromium-browser in the past)

kgwxd | 22 hours ago

Nope. Make uBlock Origin work properly again, or gtfo of the browser market.

oofbaroomf | 22 hours ago

Wait... weren't there many ARM Chromebooks already?

cmrdporcupine | 22 hours ago

Sure, 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)

: oofbey | 21 hours ago
Couldn’t be bothered - the Google way. Nobody ever got promoted for doing something easy and useful.

zamadatix | 19 hours ago

Much 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 | 11 hours ago

Yeah, strange, there has been a build of CEF for Linux ARM64 since forever.

cmrdporcupine | 22 hours ago

I 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 | 22 hours ago

What is it like using a Spark as a workstation?

cmrdporcupine | 21 hours ago

Just 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.

: seba_dos1 | 8 hours ago
Chromium has been pre-packaged for ARM in Ubuntu for more than a decade now. Did they throw it away with Snaps?

swisniewski | 20 hours ago

I 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 | 22 hours ago

Cool. Let’s release Android NDK for Linux arm64 host, too.

Retr0id | 19 hours ago

This 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 | 8 hours ago

What specifically doesn't work?

: Retr0id | 6 hours ago
I'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

transpute | 21 hours ago

  Google 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

Retr0id | 19 hours ago

I 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 | 10 hours ago

Debian 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

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 | 8 hours ago
It's just about their branded closed build, not even about V8 JIT which was there already.

pjmlp | 9 hours 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?

seba_dos1 | 9 hours ago

Bring the mobile UI there and it will be a news. Chromium has worked on ARM64 Linux since forever.

madduci | 8 hours ago

Since the inception of Raspberry Pi at least?

seba_dos1 | 8 hours ago

Longer than that. Raspberry Pi isn't that old, it only launched in 2012.

TiredOfLife | 8 hours ago

And first arm64 device was released in 2013

: seba_dos1 | 8 hours ago
Ha, touche! But it worked on ARM long before that :)

ZiiS | 8 hours ago

Surely 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 | 6 hours ago

Does that mean Widevine DRM will be supported officially? Does anyone know?

Thev00d00 | 5 hours ago

Most interesting here is the possibility of Arm64 Widewine libraries appearing?