Iridium is a Web browser that’s derived from the Chromium code base, and built with an emphasis on privacy and security. In other words, using Iridium is the same as using Google’s Chrome browser, but with the following extra benefit: Your browsing habits and what else can be gleaned from your use of the browser will not be streamed to a Google server somewhere.
That last point is why I decided to take Iridium for a spin, and after a few hours, I closed Vivaldi, my other browser that’s also derived from the Chromium project, and made Iridium my other browser, besides Firefox. Because Iridium seems to be much faster than Firefox, I’m seriously thinking about making it my default browser.
But while I’m still thinking about that, here’s how to install Iridium on Ubuntu 16.10 and Linux Mint 18.1. The instructions will also work on any recent edition of Ubuntu and Linux Mint, or any other distribution that uses the Advanced Packaging Tool (APT), like Debian.
Because Iridium is not available in official Ubuntu repositories, installing it involves the following steps:
- Add the key to the Iridium repository to your system
- Add the Iridium repository itself
- Update the package database
- Finally, install Iridium
All the steps need to be completed at the command line, so fire up a terminal emulator if you don’t have one already. Then use the commands below to prepare your system and install Iridium browser on it.
# Add Iridium's repository key to your system wget -qO - https://downloads.iridiumbrowser.de/ubuntu/iridium-release-sign-01.pub | sudo apt-key add - # Add the Iridium repository itself sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://downloads.iridiumbrowser.de/deb/ stable main" # Update the package database sudo apt update # Install Iridium Browser sudo apt-get install iridium-browser #
After installation, you’ll find Iridium in your applications menu, possibly under Internet Applications. More information about Iridium is available at the project’s home page at https://iridiumbrowser.de.
