So you want to have a look at Chrome but frustrated that there is no Linux version?

Even more frustrated that the open source dev version (Chronium) has binaries available for certain distros but you are running Ubuntu which hasn't?

Well I have done some digging and found a simple way to install the latest dev version of Chronium in Ubuntu and its actually pretty damn good. (By the way I have done this in Karmic, I am not sure if this applies for older versions).

First step is to add the ppa source so add the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu karmic main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu karmic main

(or if you like the GUI add those lines to the software sources 'Other Software' option in Synaptic)

Next install the browers by either finding 'chromium-browser' in Synaptic or on the commandling with:

sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

I guess now that you want Flash to be working. To this we have to manually add the Flash plugin to the Chromium plugin folder.

If already have Flash installed then chances are the file we are looking for (libflashplayer.so) is in /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer. Therefore a quick copy to the plugin directory will suffice:

sudo cp /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/chromium-browser/plugins/

Finally a cosmetic step. It appears that Chromium uses Microsoft TrueType fonts which can be installed from the commandline with

sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer

or again using Synaptic.

And jobs a good'un