[HN Gopher] Bringing Chrome to ARM64 Linux Devices
___________________________________________________________________
Bringing Chrome to ARM64 Linux Devices
Author : ingve
Score : 37 points
Date : 2026-03-12 20:13 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.chromium.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.chromium.org)
| Hackbraten wrote:
| Looking forward to no longer having to patch glibc on my Linux
| phone just so I can watch YouTube or use Spotify.
| mort96 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?
| samtheprogram wrote:
| I'm confused, how does Chrome work on ARM64 Android phones today?
| bloomca wrote:
| Maybe Android has its own libc? So they compile it for Android,
| but not for general Linux.
|
| Also curious about this.
| westurner wrote:
| Android's libc is called Bionic.
|
| Bionic (software)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bionic_(software)
| westurner wrote:
| 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| Android Studio, LineageOS or BlissOS's outdated Android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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| hugs wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Don't most people use chromium instead of chrome anyways on
| Linux?
| hugs wrote:
| most people just click the "internet" button and use
| whatever was already pre-installed.
| kelvinjps10 wrote:
| 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
| vinkelhake wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The Chromium project builds many things. The Android version is
| just one of those things.
| danans wrote:
| 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
| was 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 wrote:
| Support? This is Google!
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| emilbratt wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| vsgherzi wrote:
| 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
| kgwxd wrote:
| Nope. Make uBlock Origin work properly again, or gtfo of the
| browser market.
| oofbaroomf wrote:
| Wait... weren't there many ARM Chromebooks already?
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Couldn't be bothered - the Google way. Nobody ever got
| promoted for doing something easy and useful.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| What is it like using a Spark as a workstation?
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| 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.
| r2vcap wrote:
| Cool. Let's release Android NDK for Linux arm64 host, too.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-03-12 23:00 UTC)