Ubuntu started shipping Chromium as a snap package a while back. However, not many people like Snap due to its performance issues, among other things. As the Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, its users do not perceive the forced inclusion of the Snap version of Chromium.
During the development of Linux Mint 20, you may remember that the Linux Mint team was angry about Chromium’s snapd requirement added by Canonical – the maintainers of Ubuntu.
In response, it replaced the Chromium package with a dummy package forcing users to download it from other places. To remedy this, the Linux Mint team has decided to begin providing Chromium builds on its own.
Hence, the Linux Mint team removed Snap completely, like Pop OS. Then, listening to the users and the popularity of base Chromium, the dev team compiled the entire Chromium project separately and packaged it only for Linux Mint users.
The Chromium browser is now available for both Linux Mint and LMDE. If you’ve been waiting for this, I’d like to thank you for your patience.
Clement Lefebvre, Linux Mint maintainer
The package is available in the Linux Mint repository as “chromium,” which you can install using standard apt-get or via the package manager. So, it is a pure native Chromium browser and not a Snap version.
