Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth is a big fan of Google Chrome, and says the browser could replace the standard Firefox in future versions of Ubuntu Linux. <..>
<..>In fact, Shuttleworth says, "We looked at it closely in the last cycle and the decision was to stick with Firefox in 11.10."
11.10 is the next version of Ubuntu, to be released in October as part of Canonical's twice-a-year release cycle. Chrome probably won't replace Firefox in 12.04, due out in April 2012, either, because that will be the long-term support version, making it an unlikely candidate for major changes.
"That probably keeps us on Firefox for another year, at least, and we'll see from there," Shuttleworth said.
If that sounds like a wishy-washy answer, Shuttleworth also made it clear that he is a believer in the future of Chrome on Linux.
The work Google is doing with the Chrome operating system, which runs the Chrome browser on top of a generic version of Linux, "is having a hugely positive impact on the performance of Chrome on Linux," Shuttleworth said.
So... it is up for discussion (as are all other default packages) with every release that is not LTS. This time around Firefox wins. Maybe next release it will be Chromium.
Ubuntu ships with at least 10 browsers: you can find them in Ubuntu Software Center. There is of course only 1 default browser and as such only 1 is installed directly. In our case Firefox but you are seconds away from installing another one.
Best Answer
There can be some packages that depend on (or recommend) a browser, in the form of a virtual package (
firefox
provides the virtual packageswww-browser
,iceweasel
andgnome-www-browser
) or through an alternative (some package depends onfirefox | chromium-browser
).To solve your problem you can use
aptitude
that provides more choices to as to proceed. The packageaptitude
is not installed by default, so you need to install itthen you can do
and see what it suggests. This is what it says on my system
This way you can see removing firefox what packages breaks. If you choose
n
, another possible solution is suggested, ans so on.When you have a best understanding of the problem, and you have selected your way, run
aptitude
without the--simulate
option.