The Chromium guys have started to release Linux builds which is fantastic. Chrome on Windows is blisteringly fast, and coming from a slow Firefox in Linux under both Fedora and Ubuntu, it is very nice to have a browser that is very quick. It takes a little bit of work to get it going through, and I will detail the process below.

This process is adapted from hicham.haouari's comments on Chromium issue 12562, which is what I used to get the browser working in the first place. The process detailed here will include very slightly altered instructions to get it to work on x86_64 systems, and will work if launched from another folder than the extracted folder. This was important for me because I wanted Chromium to be in my Main Menu.

So on to how to do it:

First you will need to download the latest build of Chromium, which obviously will be the highest numbered version. Extract the archive somewhere.

Trying to launch Chromium on Fedora at the moment gets the following error:

[beefsack@beefsack lib]$ /home/beefsack/Download/chrome-linux/launch-chrome.sh 
/home/beefsack/Download/chrome-linux/chrome:
error while loading shared libraries:
libnss3.so.1d: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Fedora actually has NSS installed, but it has different names for the files. The solution is to create symbolic links to the library files with the names that Chrome is looking for. So, from inside the extracted Chrome folder (32-bit only):

[beefsack@beefsack chrome-linux]$ mkdir lib
[beefsack@beefsack chrome-linux]$ cd lib
[beefsack@beefsack lib]$ ln -s /lib/libnspr4.so libnspr4.so.0d
[beefsack@beefsack lib]$ ln -s /lib/libnss3.so libnss3.so.1d
[beefsack@beefsack lib]$ ln -s /lib/libnssutil3.so libnssutil3.so.1d
[beefsack@beefsack lib]$ ln -s /lib/libplc4.so libplc4.so.0d
[beefsack@beefsack lib]$ ln -s /lib/libplds4.so libplds4.so.0d
[beefsack@beefsack lib]$ ln -s /lib/libsmime3.so libsmime3.so.1d
[beefsack@beefsack lib]$ ln -s /lib/libssl3.so libssl3.so.1d
[beefsack@beefsack lib]$ 

There is another option to do this, which is also the only option for 64-bit as 64-bit doesn't have the 32-bit libraries that Chrome requires. This is to get the relevant required 32-bit libraries for Chrome and place them in the library path. Download the libraries and extract them to the lib folder inside the Chrome folder. I have already renamed the libraries to suit what Chrome looks for.

After this, you will need to create a bash script in the Chrome folder to add this new lib folder to the PATH and then launch the Chrome binary. Create a file in the Chrome folder called launch-chrome.sh and use a text editor to paste the following text in it:

#!/bin/bash
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`dirname $0`/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
`dirname $0`/chrome

And finally, add execution permissions to the new script either using properties in Nautilus or doing the following from terminal:

[beefsack@beefsack chrome-linux]$ chmod +x launch-chrome.sh 
[beefsack@beefsack chrome-linux]$ 

Now, you can run Chrome in Fedora by running the script using ./launch-chrome.sh and you are also able to run it from Nautilus and add it to the Main Menu.

If there are still errors (as some people have experienced on the issue page linked earlier), it is possible that more libraries are required. If you get an error saying you are missing libgconf-2.so.4 or libasound.so.2, run:

[root@beefsack ~]# yum -y install libgconf-2.so.4 alsa-lib.i586