SRWare Iron: Chromium without the data-mining

[Ryan Oram]

On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 7:49 PM, Dylan McCall <dylanmccall at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I've posted this on the debian-devel mailing list as well. This was
>> posted out of a concern that Canoncial is thinking about switching
>> over to Chromium in later releases as Lubuntu has done already. I have
>> seen articles of this possibility as well. I don't feel making
>> Chromium the default browser is appropriate until the privacy issues
>> are addressed. I also feel that taking care these issues before a
>> switch to Chromium is even seriously considered is beneficial to
>> everyone.
>
> Given that the privacy concerns have been neatly documented[1] by
> Google including instructions on disabling the offending features, I
> can't shake the doubt that they could ever be addressed in some
> peoples' opinions.
> [1] http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=114836&hl=en-GB
>
> Granted, I may just be ill informed. Is there some detail being missed
> in that document?
>
> It's not that I have anything against Iron, of course, though I am
> slightly wary of their website and apparent lack of a source
> repository. Doesn't feel brilliantly maintained. Maybe they just need
> a gentle nudge in Launchpad's direction.
> With regards to packaging, there is a Launchpad PPA with daily builds
> of Chromium, so they surely have sorted out any installation and
> packaging quirks in that source repository. Perhaps you can get a diff
> with Iron's changes, and if you're incredibly lucky it'll apply
> smoothly. Could save you some work :)
>
>
> Dylan
>

A Launchpad PPA of SRWare Iron would solve all my concerns.

Also, quite a few of the issues could be resolved by disabling certain
features in Chromium by default. This includes disabling the URL
suggestion features and the DNS pre-fetching features. These features
are best left as opt-in IMO.

Thanks,
Ryan