>all of that crap that Google has started bundling with Chrome (sync, etc.).

Why do people keep bagging on sync? Personally, I'm a fan of not having to reïmport my bookmarks and reënter all of my autosaved passwords every time I reformat or change computers.

Because I've never used it and yet I'm hounded to "give it a try" on what seems like a weekly basis.

OK, yeah I see how that would be annoying.

It's kind of an extension of the annoyance from not using G+ and yet having it crammed down my throat; it's the same tactic just with a little less gusto.

I actually did try it out when they first introduced it, but when I installed Chrome on a different machine and tried to get my settings there, the sync server got totally confused and re-enabled all sorts of settings that I'd disabled (like syncing my entire history and removing my cookie-blocking exceptions.)

Agreed, this was a long time back, so I actually decided to give it another try today, but now it seems to have a problem with 2FA... I gave it both my master and app-specific password, but it consistently comes back saying the app-specific password is wrong. Has anyone else noticed this problem?

2fa with chrome sync is a PITA. I've found the best way to enable sync is to login to gmail which usually triggers a dialog that asks you whether you want to use those credentials for chrome sync.

Yet another example how horrible this "ecosystem" craze everyone seems to be enamored by these days quickly becomes. Why the fuck do I need to sign up with Gmail to use something in chrome? (How would it even work? I moved from google apps to fastmail, so my MX records are all different now.)

It's the same with most RSS readers nowadays... every single app I've tried assumes I have a Google Reader account, and flat out refuses to work without it. Same with Google Talk. All these apps implement rss/xmpp backends anyway, why do they hardcode google into it?

Sorry for the rant, it's just frustrating how (needlessly) difficult it is once you go outside the sanctioned path. Death by a thousand cuts.

Privacy is one reason, but not a very good one. For the "Open Tabs" sync, privacy is a very good reason.

You can set it to encrypt everything, including open tabs. Since it's encrypted locally, the sync server can't see anything.

Chromium includes sync. Basically the biggest parts you'll be missing are a pdf reader and flash. pdf.js has a chromium extension to make it easy to use there (though depending on the document, it won't necessarily feel faster and more minimal), but if you need flash for something, Chrome is one of the better ways to keep it updated these days. You can always run Chromium and open up Chrome for Flash, though.

The Chromium build from http://www.freesmug.org/chromium seems to have the PDF viewer as well as the Flash plugin.

You can copy the libpdf library from a Chrome install to a Chromium install, since they are the same.

Oh wow, it has sync? I thought all of the proprietary Google features were kept in Chrome; I'm not sure how sync could've been implemented in an agnostic browser...

Thanks for the further info though, it's been awhile since I've updated my Chromium.

There's a barebones sync server implementation written in Python included in the Chromium source repository. You could run your own, if you wanted.

Chromium and Chrome are identical, but Chrome includes non-Google proprietary plugins (Flash and a PDF renderer).

The stuff that is included with Chrome shouldn't have any impact on performance, the webkit and v8 engines are the same as that of Chromium. For Google, they do all their development on Chromium (which is an open source project), then apply a few patches and a new logo on top to get Chrome. It isn't some great conspiracy that they don't distribute Chromium binaries, it simply isn't their end product.

> since they go to great lengths to prevent anyone from easily obtaining a compiled binary.

1. Googled "Download Chromium"

2. Clicked on http://download-chromium.appspot.com/

3. Unzip and Install.

EDIT: Apparently it is official / sanctioned, thanks for the correction.

PREVIOUS: Yeah I saw that, but that's not an official or sanctioned site or binary, and thus didn't feel comfortable openly suggesting it. There's no way to guarantee that the contents haven't been modified or that they're even kept updated.

Ah, missed that! Thanks.

As sibling says, it is mentioned on official site (hence sanctioned?), and it was binary for me (tested on Linux and Mac).

> There's no way to guarantee that the contents haven't been modified or that they're even kept updated.

There is no solution to that but to compile things ourselves anyway.

Pretty easy:

    apt-get install chromium

Perhaps you were being tongue-in-cheeck, but I do feel the need to point out that the grandparent said they were using Safari, implying that they're on OS X.