Chrome won both speed benchmarks on my Ubuntu box and JetStream on Windows, and it’s still not the browser I’d tell most people to install. Since the Chrome Web Store pulled the last Manifest V2 extensions on August 31, 2026, the full uBlock Origin is gone from it. And Brave, which blocks ads without any extension at all, finished within a few percent of Chrome on both tests, on both systems.
That’s the short version of what I found when I put nine of the best web browsers through the same tests on Windows 11 and Ubuntu 26.04: Chrome, Edge, Brave, Firefox, Vivaldi, Opera, Zen, LibreWolf and Chromium. Each one ran Speedometer 3.1 and JetStream 3.0, opened the same ten real websites for a memory reading, and loaded an ad blocker test page on default settings. Every browser section also has the install commands for Ubuntu 26.04 and 24.04 plus its winget ID for Windows, including the two repo setups that broke on a clean system and the winget error Edge throws on Windows, with the fix for each.
I benchmarked all nine on Ubuntu 26.04 and the eight with official Windows builds on Windows 11 between late September and early October 2026, then ran the Ubuntu install commands again on a clean 24.04 box to make sure they still hold up there.
Speed and memory at a glance
Higher is better for both benchmarks. Speedometer scores are the median of five runs and JetStream scores the median of three, all on the same host, one VM at a time. Memory is lower-is-better and comes from a separate test, explained in the next section. Chromium has no official Windows build, so its Windows cells are empty.
| Browser | Engine | Speedometer 3.1 (Ubuntu) | Speedometer 3.1 (Windows) | JetStream 3.0 (Ubuntu) | JetStream 3.0 (Windows) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Chrome | Blink | 21.6 | 22.3 | 199.8 | 205.3 |
| Vivaldi | Blink (Chromium 152 ESR) | 20.8 | 21.1 | 189.4 | 195.9 |
| Brave | Blink | 20.4 | 21.1 | 195.1 | 201.1 |
| Opera | Blink (Chromium 152) | 19.3 | 20.7 | 187.7 | 200.2 |
| Firefox | Gecko | 18.7 | 18.5 | 132.7 | 134.1 |
| Zen | Gecko (Firefox 156) | 18.7 | 17.3 | 132.1 | 133.9 |
| Microsoft Edge | Blink | 16.8 | 22.5 | 188.5 | 204.9 |
| Chromium (snap) | Blink (153) | 16.5 | n/a | 190.4 | n/a |
| LibreWolf | Gecko | 16.2 (fingerprinting protection off) | 15.8 (protection off) | 124.5 (protection off) | 129.3 (protection off) |
Stock LibreWolf doesn’t finish Speedometer at all, on either system. Its fingerprinting protection breaks the benchmark’s timers, so the LibreWolf rows were measured with that one preference turned off (more on that in the LibreWolf section). With the protection left on, it scored 116.2 on JetStream on Ubuntu and 116.5 on Windows (one run each).
The memory figures come from ten tabs of real sites, read 90 seconds after launch. The ad blocker column is the share of 132 ad and tracker requests each browser stopped on a fresh profile with default settings.
| Browser | 10 tabs, Ubuntu (USS) | 10 tabs, Windows (private working set) | Ad blocker test, defaults | Full uBlock Origin available |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LibreWolf | 1,534 MB | 1,755 MB | 7% (test undercounts its bundled uBlock Origin) | Yes, preinstalled |
| Chromium (snap) | 1,592 MB | n/a | 8% | No |
| Google Chrome | 1,623 MB | 1,876 MB | 8% | No (removed from the store) |
| Microsoft Edge | 1,712 MB | 1,837 MB | 9% | Yes, until Edge finishes its MV2 phase-out |
| Vivaldi | 1,925 MB | 2,629 MB | 8% | No |
| Zen | 2,317 MB | 2,187 MB | 9% | Yes |
| Brave | 2,348 MB | 943 MB | 63% | Yes, hosted by Brave |
| Firefox | 2,483 MB | 2,523 MB | 10% (13 of 132) | Yes |
| Opera | 2,968 MB | 2,412 MB | not captured | Yes, on Opera Add-ons |
Two things stand out. The Blink browsers sit in one tight group on JetStream (188 to 200 on Ubuntu, 196 to 205 on Windows) and the Gecko browsers in another (124 to 134 across both), so for JavaScript-heavy apps the engine matters more than the brand. And Brave is the only browser that blocks most ads out of the box. Every other browser I could score stopped 10% or less on its defaults (LibreWolf’s 7% is a quirk of the test, covered in its section).
Memory is where the two systems disagree. Brave was the lightest browser on Windows at 943 MB but the third heaviest on Ubuntu, and Opera went from the heaviest on Ubuntu to third heaviest on Windows. The browser that’s light on one OS isn’t automatically light on the other, so read the column for the system you actually use.
How I tested
Both systems ran as VMs on one Proxmox host with an Intel Core i7-1165G7, each with 4 vCPUs, 8 GB of RAM and the CPU type set to host. Only one VM ran a benchmark at a time, so they never fought over the same cores. There’s no GPU passthrough, which means graphics work falls back to the CPU and absolute scores sit below what a laptop with a real GPU gets. Treat the numbers as a ranking on identical hardware, not as what your machine will score.
- Speedometer 3.1: a local copy of the browserbench.org suite served from 127.0.0.1, started with
?startAutomatically=true, median of 5 runs per browser. - JetStream 3.0: the same local setup, with the score taken as the geometric mean of all 77 test scores the suite reports. Median of 3 runs.
- Memory: YouTube, Wikipedia, GitHub, Reddit, BBC News, CNN, Amazon, Stack Overflow, MDN and this site opened as ten tabs, read after 90 seconds, median of 3 runs. On Ubuntu it is the USS of the whole browser process tree. On Windows it’s the private working set of every process with the browser’s executable name. The two methods don’t measure the same thing, so compare within one OS only.
- Ad blocking: the adblock.turtlecute.org test (a maintained fork of the old d3ward test, which now shows an archived notice) on the second launch of a fresh profile, default settings, no extensions added.
Every browser got a fresh profile, and nothing was changed except the one LibreWolf preference already mentioned. The suites are copies of the browserbench.org pages, served locally so each score could be posted to a small collector script. JetStream does that natively, and Speedometer got a few lines of reporting code that read the final score off the results page. The server also sends cross-origin isolation headers so the WebAssembly tests get the same features they’d get on the public site.
Two parts of my own setup were broken the first time, and both are easy to repeat in a homelab. My Ubuntu VM started on Proxmox’s default kvm64 CPU type, and every browser hung at JetStream’s transformersjs test, with this in the console:
Error: no available backend found. ERR: [wasm] Error: WebAssembly SIMD is not supported in the current environment.kvm64 hides the CPU’s SIMD extensions, so I switched the VM to host and threw away every number taken before that. The second problem was memory. Reading /proc/<pid>/smaps_rollup as the desktop user silently skipped Edge’s sandboxed renderers, which Chromium-based browsers mark as non-dumpable. Edge came out at 443 MB with ten tabs open when the real figure, read as root, was 1,729 MB. Chrome happened to be readable either way, so the bug was easy to miss. All the Ubuntu memory numbers above are from the root-read rerun.
Windows had its own trap. My first Windows pass ran into the screen’s sleep timer. Once the display went off, Firefox and LibreWolf stalled partway through Speedometer and sat there until my 30-minute timeout, while the Chromium browsers kept going. Turning both timers off fixed it, and I threw away that pass:
powercfg /change monitor-timeout-ac 0
powercfg /change standby-timeout-ac 0One run in the final Windows pass also failed. Edge’s second JetStream round never posted a score in the full hour I allow per run. No crash was logged, and Edge’s version hadn’t changed, so I reran that round at the end of the campaign and it finished in 110 seconds, like the other two. Every other Windows run completed the first time.
On Windows, every browser came from winget, installed machine-wide. This is the exact command I ran, shown for Brave; swap in the ID from each browser’s section:
winget install --id Brave.Brave -e --scope machine --silent --accept-package-agreements --accept-source-agreements --disable-interactivityOn Ubuntu, every vendor repo below was added with the commands shown, as a regular sudo user on a clean 26.04 system and again on a clean 24.04 system. All of them use wget, curl or gpg, so install those first:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y wget curl gpgOnce every repo was in place, sudo apt update finished with no warnings or errors on both releases, as long as the Opera step below is followed exactly.
1. Brave
Brave is the one I’d put on most machines. It scored 20.4 on Speedometer and 195.1 on JetStream on Ubuntu, close enough to Chrome that you won’t feel the gap, and it was the only browser that stopped most of the ad blocker test (63%) without anything installed. Shields are built into the browser rather than shipped as an extension, so Chrome’s Manifest V3 rules do not weaken them. Brave also hosts the MV2 build of uBlock Origin itself, at brave://settings/extensions/v2, if you want the full filter engine on top.
Brave and Chrome on the same test page, both on default settings:
Chrome stopped 10 of the same 132 requests:
On Windows, Brave scored 21.1 on Speedometer and 201.1 on JetStream, again a step behind Chrome. Memory depends on the OS. On Windows it was the lightest browser I tested, at 943 MB for ten tabs, where Chrome used 1,876 MB. It ran 21 to 23 processes there, against 56 to 82 for Chrome. I checked a Windows run while it was open: all ten tabs had loaded, the Shields badge was counting blocked requests, and Brave had 14 renderer processes. On Ubuntu it was a different story. Brave held 2,348 MB with ten tabs open, about 700 MB more than Chrome, across 47 to 49 processes. I didn’t find out why Brave runs twice as many processes on Linux, so don’t count on the Windows figure there. The other catch is the extras Brave turns on by default (Rewards, Wallet, the Leo assistant and a VPN upsell), which you’ll want to hide in settings on the first day. On a fresh profile the first page load also scored only 10% on the ad test, most likely because the filter lists hadn’t downloaded yet, so give it a minute before judging.
On Ubuntu, Brave publishes its repo as a ready-made .sources file, so there’s nothing to type by hand. Fetch the key and the repo file:
sudo curl -fsSLo /usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg
sudo curl -fsSLo /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.sources https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/brave-browser.sourcesThen refresh the package index and install it:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y brave-browserConfirm the build:
brave-browser --versionBoth Ubuntu releases pulled the same version:
Brave Browser 154.1.96.60On Windows the winget ID is Brave.Brave. winget’s manifest trailed GitHub by one patch release on test day (1.96.59 against 1.96.60), which is normal and closes within a day or two. I’ve kept a separate walkthrough for installing Brave on Ubuntu if you want the GUI side covered too.
2. Mozilla Firefox
Firefox is the pick if you want the full uBlock Origin and a browser that is not built on Google’s engine. Mozilla has said it has no plans to drop Manifest V2, and uBlock Origin’s own README says it works best on Firefox. On speed, it scored 18.7 on Speedometer, a little behind the Blink pack, but 132.7 on JetStream, roughly a third below them. You’ll notice that gap in heavy web apps far more than in everyday browsing.
It was also the heaviest browser on Ubuntu after Opera, at 2,483 MB for ten tabs, and second heaviest on Windows at 2,523 MB, behind Vivaldi. On Windows it scored 18.5 on Speedometer and 134.1 on JetStream, the best Gecko JetStream score on either system. On Ubuntu, Firefox ran 47 to 86 processes across my three runs, and the run with 86 also spiked to 3,390 MB, so its memory use swings more than the others.
On Ubuntu, skip the snap and use Mozilla’s own APT repo. Add the signing key, the repo line and a pin, so Ubuntu’s snap transitional package never wins:
sudo install -d -m 0755 /etc/apt/keyrings
wget -qO- https://packages.mozilla.org/apt/repo-signing-key.gpg | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/packages.mozilla.org.asc > /dev/null
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/packages.mozilla.org.asc] https://packages.mozilla.org/apt mozilla main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mozilla.list
printf 'Package: *\nPin: origin packages.mozilla.org\nPin-Priority: 1000\n' | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/mozillaInstall it with --allow-downgrades. The reason is in the next subsection:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y --allow-downgrades firefoxOn a desktop install, remove the snap afterwards so you don’t end up with two Firefox icons:
sudo snap remove firefoxThen check which build you got:
firefox --versionMozilla’s repo shipped the current release on both Ubuntu versions:
Mozilla Firefox 157.0Firefox stays on the snap even with the Mozilla repo pinned
On the Ubuntu 26.04 desktop, my first install without the flag left the snap in charge, even though apt-cache policy firefox showed Mozilla’s build as the candidate:
firefox:
Installed: 1:1snap1-0ubuntu9.1
Candidate: 157.0~build1Ubuntu’s transitional package carries an epoch (1:), so apt sees 157.0~build1 as a lower version and won’t move to it without permission. --allow-downgrades gives that permission, and the apt history then records Downgrade: firefox:amd64 (1:1snap1-0ubuntu9.1, 157.0~build1). It isn’t really a downgrade, just epoch math. On the server images I used for the 24.04 run, Firefox wasn’t preinstalled, so the flag did nothing there and caused no harm. The winget ID on Windows is Mozilla.Firefox, and there is an older Firefox on Ubuntu guide if you’re on a release before 24.04.
3. Google Chrome
Chrome was the fastest browser I tested on Ubuntu, at 21.6 on Speedometer and 199.8 on JetStream, and it was lighter than I expected at 1,623 MB for ten tabs. On Windows it had the top JetStream score, 205.3, and its 22.3 on Speedometer was just 0.2 behind Edge. If you live in Google Docs, Meet and other heavy web apps, it’s still the safest choice, because those apps are tested on Chrome first.
The problem is blocking. Google removed the remaining Manifest V2 extensions from the Chrome Web Store on August 31, 2026, and uBlock Origin now shows as “Removed” there. uBlock Origin Lite is the replacement. It works, but it uses Chrome’s MV3 rule limits, so it can’t run the full dynamic filtering the original does. On default settings Chrome stopped 8% of the ad blocker test.
On Ubuntu, Google’s .deb sets up its own repo during install, so one download covers updates too:
wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
sudo apt install -y ./google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.debAfter the install, /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.sources exists and points at Google’s stable channel. Check the version:
google-chrome-stable --versionThe same build landed on both releases:
Google Chrome 154.0.8037.92The winget ID on Windows is Google.Chrome, which installed 154.0.8037.93, one patch ahead of the Linux build that day.
4. Vivaldi
Vivaldi came second on Ubuntu Speedometer at 20.8, ahead of Brave, and posted 189.4 on JetStream. On Windows it tied Brave on Speedometer at 21.1, scored 195.9 on JetStream, and was the heaviest browser at 2,629 MB, with one run reaching 3,680 MB. It’s the browser for people who want to rearrange everything: tab stacks and tiling, a mail client, a calendar and a feed reader all built in. It has its own ad and tracker blocker too, but on the profile I tested it stopped only 8% of the test requests, so check its privacy settings before relying on it.
One thing to know before you pick it: Vivaldi 8.2 tracks Chromium’s 152 extended-stable branch with security fixes backported from 154. So it is patched, but it’s two Chromium versions behind on new web platform features.
Add Vivaldi’s key and repo on Ubuntu:
wget -qO- https://repo.vivaldi.com/archive/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/vivaldi-browser.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/vivaldi-browser.gpg arch=amd64] https://repo.vivaldi.com/archive/deb/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vivaldi-archive.listInstall the stable package:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y vivaldi-stableVivaldi’s package then adds a second repo file of its own, vivaldi.sources, pointing at https://repo.vivaldi.com/stable/deb/ with a different key file. Both files point at Vivaldi’s repo, and apt update stayed clean with the two side by side on 24.04 and 26.04, so I left them alone. Check the version:
vivaldi-stable --versionIt reported:
Vivaldi 8.2.4133.80 stableOn Windows it’s Vivaldi.Vivaldi. The full setup, including Fedora, is in the Vivaldi on Linux guide.
5. Microsoft Edge
Edge is already on every Windows 11 machine, and that is where it shines: 22.5 on Speedometer, the top score on Windows and a hair ahead of Chrome, plus 204.9 on JetStream. On Ubuntu it was the odd one out: 188.5 on JetStream, right in the Blink group, but only 16.8 on Speedometer, behind every browser except Chromium and LibreWolf. It was also light on memory at 1,712 MB on Ubuntu and 1,837 MB on Windows. The slow Speedometer score did not show up on Windows, so it looks like a quirk of Edge’s Linux build rather than of the engine. Edge still lists the MV2 uBlock Origin in its own add-on store, but Microsoft is phasing out MV2. Its developer timeline started warnings in August 2026 and still lists the store cutoff date as TBD, with consumer support widely expected to end around the turn of the year.
Microsoft does not publish a manual repo line for Edge, but this one works and the package takes over from it during install:
curl -fsSL https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/microsoft-edge.gpg
echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/microsoft-edge.gpg] https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/edge stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/microsoft-edge.listInstall the stable channel:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y microsoft-edge-stableAfter the install, my microsoft-edge.list was gone. Edge’s package replaced it with microsoft-edge.sources, which points at packages.microsoft.com/repos/edge-stable and reuses the same key file. That’s expected, so do not add the line back. Check the version:
microsoft-edge-stable --versionBoth releases installed:
Microsoft Edge 154.0.4258.48winget: “the install technology is different from the current version installed”
Running winget against Microsoft.Edge on Windows 11 doesn’t update the copy that ships with the OS. It found the inbox install, tried an upgrade, and gave up with exit code -1978335090:
Found an existing package already installed. Trying to upgrade the installed package...
A newer version was found, but the install technology is different from the current version installed. Please uninstall the package and install the newer version.Don’t uninstall Edge to get around it. The inbox copy updates itself through Edge’s own updater (Settings, then About Microsoft Edge), and it was already on 154.0.4258.48 when I checked. Leave Edge out of your winget scripts on Windows 11.
6. Opera
Opera scored 19.3 on Speedometer and 187.7 on JetStream on Ubuntu, and 20.7 and 200.2 on Windows, so it is fast enough. Where it lost me was memory on Ubuntu: 2,968 MB for ten tabs, the most of any browser there and about 1.3 GB more than Chrome on the same pages. On Windows it used 2,412 MB, third heaviest of the eight there, behind Vivaldi and Firefox. It also ships the most extras of the nine, with sidebar messengers, a free browser VPN and the Aria assistant. Opera has an ad blocker built in. On the ad test its first-run setup wizard covered the result on both launches, so I don’t have a clean default-settings number for it.
The Ubuntu install has a trap, so run all four lines, including the debconf one:
wget -qO- https://deb.opera.com/archive.key | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/opera-browser.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/opera-browser.gpg] https://deb.opera.com/opera-stable/ stable non-free" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/opera-archive.list
echo "opera-stable opera-stable/add-deb-source boolean false" | sudo debconf-set-selectionsNow install the package:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y opera-stableVerify it:
opera --versionOpera prints just the version number:
136.0.6008.80E: Conflicting values set for option Signed-By regarding source https://deb.opera.com/opera-stable/
Without the debconf line, Opera’s install script adds its own opera-stable.list next to yours, with no signed-by. Ubuntu 24.04’s apt refuses two entries for one source with different keys, and every later apt update fails:
E: Conflicting values set for option Signed-By regarding source https://deb.opera.com/opera-stable/ stable: /usr/share/keyrings/opera-browser.gpg !=
E: The list of sources could not be read.That breaks updates for the whole system, not just Opera. If you’ve already hit it, delete the file Opera added with sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/opera-stable.list, run the debconf-set-selections line so the next Opera upgrade doesn’t add it back, and apt update works again. I reinstalled Opera afterwards to check, and it didn’t put the file back. The Windows winget ID is Opera.Opera, and Opera GX (Opera.OperaGX) now has a Linux build too. There is also a separate Opera on Ubuntu guide.
7. Zen Browser
Zen is Firefox with an Arc-style layout: vertical tabs, workspaces and split view, on a Gecko build that is one release behind Firefox (156 against 157). Its scores track Firefox almost exactly, at 18.7 on Speedometer and 132.1 on JetStream on Ubuntu, and it used a little less memory at 2,317 MB. On Windows it fell slightly further behind Firefox on Speedometer (17.3 against 18.5) while matching it on JetStream at 133.9, and it used 2,187 MB. If you liked Arc but need Linux, this is where I’d look, and I’ve covered Zen on Ubuntu in more detail separately.
There’s no APT repo. The recommended Linux build is the Flathub one from the Zen team, which I installed system-wide on 26.04:
sudo apt install -y flatpak
sudo flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
sudo flatpak install -y --noninteractive flathub app.zen_browser.zenCheck what Flathub gave you:
flatpak info app.zen_browser.zen | grep -E "Version|Branch|Origin"The version still carries a “b” suffix, even though the project calls it a stable release:
Branch: stable
Version: 1.22.3b
Origin: flathubOn Windows the winget ID is Zen-Team.Zen-Browser.
8. LibreWolf
LibreWolf is Firefox with the telemetry stripped out, uBlock Origin preinstalled and Firefox’s fingerprinting resistance switched on. It was the lightest browser I tested on Ubuntu, at 1,534 MB for ten tabs (it ran 22 processes in every sample, where Firefox ran 47 to 86), and second lightest on Windows at 1,755 MB, behind Brave. It was also the slowest, because that fingerprinting resistance costs real speed.
Speedometer: “One or more subtests produced no duration”
Stock LibreWolf runs Speedometer for about 20 seconds and then stops on this screen:
The cause is privacy.resistFingerprinting, which LibreWolf ships set to true. It rounds off the browser’s high-resolution timers, so short subtests measure as zero. For the benchmark rows I made a second profile with one line in its user.js, user_pref("privacy.resistFingerprinting", false);, and that profile finished every run (16.2 on Speedometer and 124.5 on JetStream on Ubuntu, 15.8 and 129.3 on Windows). Windows threw the same Speedometer error with the protection on. JetStream does finish with it on, scoring 116.2 on Ubuntu and 116.5 on Windows in a single run each. I wouldn’t turn the protection off for daily use, since that’s half the reason to run LibreWolf. Just know that some web apps that time things in the page will act strangely.
The ad blocker test also gets LibreWolf wrong. It scored 7%, while the uBlock Origin badge on the same page showed 88 requests blocked:
My best guess is uBlock Origin’s habit of swapping a blocked script for a harmless stub instead of failing the request, which a page that only checks whether each request loaded would count as not blocked. So read the 7% as a limit of the test, not of LibreWolf. On Ubuntu, LibreWolf’s documented install goes through extrepo, which is in the Ubuntu archive on both releases:
sudo apt install -y extrepo
sudo extrepo enable librewolf
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y librewolfextrepo writes /etc/apt/sources.list.d/extrepo_librewolf.sources and keeps the key under /var/lib/extrepo/keys/. Check the version:
librewolf --versionLinux had the Firefox 157 build on test day:
LibreWolf 157.0-1Windows lags here. winget’s LibreWolf.LibreWolf installed 156.0-1, one Firefox release behind the Linux build.
9. Chromium
Chromium is Chrome without Google’s sync, crash reporting and licensed codecs, and on Ubuntu it’s snap-only. The chromium-browser package in both 24.04 and 26.04 is a transitional stub that installs the snap. On test day that snap was on 153.0.8010.47 while Chrome was on 154, a full major version behind. It scored 190.4 on JetStream but only 16.5 on Speedometer, a full five points behind Chrome on the same engine. I didn’t track down why. Memory was low at 1,592 MB.
One command installs it:
sudo snap install chromiumConfirm the channel and revision:
snap list chromiumOn my 26.04 VM it showed:
Name Version Rev Tracking Publisher Notes
chromium 153.0.8010.47 3537 latest/stable canonical** -There’s no official Chromium build for Windows. The Hibbiki.Chromium package in winget is a community build, so I did not benchmark it. If you need a deb instead of the snap on Debian or Mint, the Chromium install guide covers the options.
Also considered
These were on my list, or on the old version of this page, and I dropped each one for the reason given:
- Arc: The Browser Company stopped building new features, and arc.net now says Arc gets Chromium updates only. There is no Linux build. The Arc install guide still works for macOS and Windows.
- Dia: the company’s AI browser is macOS-only for now, with Windows “coming soon”. See the Dia on macOS guide.
- Ladybird: no release yet. The project is targeting an alpha in 2026 for Linux and macOS, and today it’s source builds only (building Ladybird).
- Thorium: stalled. The last full release is M138 from February 2026, and the September M154 tag says it “does not contain a new version”.
- ungoogled-chromium: active, but the project publishes source only. Every binary is community-built and marked “NOT official”.
- Waterfox and Floorp: both are Gecko forks. Waterfox sits on Firefox ESR 153 and its Ubuntu repo path is tied to the release number. Floorp tracks Firefox 157 but turns off its new interface. Zen covers the Firefox-fork slot better.
- Midori: it is now a Gecko browser from Astian, and its APT repo is served over plain HTTP (
http://repo.astian.org). - Yandex Browser: it was on the old list and its Linux repo is live, but it’s amd64-only on Linux and built around Yandex accounts and search. I didn’t test it.
- Tor Browser and Mullvad Browser: both are built to look identical to every other user, on Firefox ESR 140, which makes them the wrong tool for a speed test. Note that Tor’s Windows code-signing certificate expired on September 1, 2026, so fresh Windows installs of 15.0.21 and later show signature warnings. The Tor Browser on Ubuntu guide has the Linux setup.
On Fedora, the hardened Trivalent browser is worth a look if you’d otherwise pick LibreWolf. It is Chromium-based, so it avoids the timer breakage covered above.
Pick a browser by what you do all day
Most people should install Brave. It finished within 6% of Chrome on Speedometer and within 3% on JetStream on both systems, it was the lightest browser on Windows, and it’s the only one that blocked 63% of the ad test before I touched a setting. Turn off the crypto and AI extras on day one and it is a quiet, fast default on both Windows and Linux.
If ad blocking is the deciding factor and you don’t want a Chromium browser, use Firefox with uBlock Origin. It gives up about a third of Chrome’s JetStream score in exchange for the only mainstream engine with no MV2 end date. If you live in Google Workspace or build web apps that have to work in Chrome first, run Chrome itself. It won both tests on Ubuntu and JetStream on Windows, and you can pair it with uBlock Origin Lite.
Pick Vivaldi if you want a cockpit of panels and tab tiling, Zen if you miss Arc and need Linux, and LibreWolf if privacy beats speed and the RAM budget is tight (lowest on Ubuntu, second lowest on Windows). On a work PC that’s locked to Edge, you lose nothing on speed, since it topped Speedometer on Windows. Just plan for Microsoft’s MV2 phase-out, which could land within months. I’d skip Opera unless you actually use its built-in VPN and messengers, because 2,968 MB for ten tabs on Ubuntu is a lot to pay for the sidebar.
