Gentoo Linux is removing Chromium from its official repositories on October 24 unless a volunteer takes over maintenance.
The maintainer cites the heavy burden of frequent releases, complex custom build configurations, and packaging standards.
Why is maintenance becoming more difficult?
Maintaining the program has become extremely difficult due to frequent updates, security requirements, and packaging rules. Gentoo allows users to build programs themselves from source with their preferred settings, which adds a lot of complexity to Chromium.
This process is very time-consuming. Creating a new version can take about six hours on a powerful desktop computer and 15 to 16 hours on a laptop. The current manager spends more than six hours a week of his personal time on the program, not counting troubleshooting and fixes. Proper maintenance would ideally require a team of at least three developers with knowledge of multiple coding languages and Google's build tools.
Due to these obstacles, Chromium version 151.0.7922.169-r1 on Gentoo is four major versions behind the latest version 155.0.8059.84.
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What options do users have?
Google Chrome will continue to be available on Gentoo as a ready-to-use package. Other supported alternatives, such as Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi, Opera, and Firefox, will also remain available.
Users who absolutely want to use Chromium can install the community-maintained version through the Flathub platform.
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