Gentoo Linux is preparing to remove Chromium from its official repositories, citing the growing difficulty of maintaining the open-source browser, frequent releases, and the effort required to keep it secure and compatible with the distribution’s packaging standards.
According to an announcement on the Gentoo development mailing list, the www-client/chromium package is scheduled for removal on October 24 unless a new volunteer steps forward to take over its maintenance. The package has already been masked, warning users about its planned removal.
The problem isn’t just keeping up with new Chromium versions. Gentoo emphasizes allowing users to compile software with their preferred settings, including choosing system libraries over bundled dependencies whenever possible. Maintaining Chromium under these conditions has become increasingly difficult.
The time required to build the browser is another major obstacle. According to Gentoo’s bug tracker, compiling Chromium can take around six hours on a powerful desktop and 15–16 hours on a laptop. That is just one build. Maintainers must also test different USE flag combinations before an update is ready.
The current maintainer spends more than six hours of personal time each week working on Chromium, not counting additional troubleshooting and build fixes. Proper maintenance would ideally require a team of at least three developers familiar with C, C++, Rust, Go, JavaScript, and Google’s build infrastructure.
The consequences are already visible. At the time of writing, Gentoo’s Chromium package page lists version 151.0.7922.169-r1 as the latest available, while upstream has reached version 155.0.8059.84. That’s a gap of four major releases, a particularly concerning situation for a web browser that regularly receives security fixes.
For users, the planned removal doesn’t mean Chromium-based browsers are disappearing from Gentoo. Google Chrome will remain available as a precompiled binary package, which avoids much of the complexity associated with building Chromium from source. Other supported options include Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi, and Opera, alongside Firefox and several other browsers.
Those who specifically want Chromium can also install the community-maintained version available through Flathub, without depending on Gentoo’s own ebuild.
