Chromium v48.0.2564.109 for Ubuntu 12.04

That Ubuntu package was published via a PPA. PPA's are not enabled by default on Ubuntu systems, because they are NOT official Ubuntu repositories and because they can contain unstable/buggy software.

If you want to take the risk and test this build, you will need to activate this specific PPA using these commands:

It is risky and I cannot recommend it....

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:canonical-chromium-builds/stage

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

When you run the first command, you will see this message:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:canonical-chromium-builds/stage
[sudo] password for .:
 Testing site just before upload to Ubuntu main. Things here are either new and broken and not ready to use, or landing in the distro anyway in a few days. You shouldn't use this unless asked to.
 More info: https://launchpad.net/~canonical-chromium-builds/+archive/ubuntu/stage
Press [ENTER] to continue or ctrl-c to cancel adding it

So it clearly states that this package is new and may not be fit for use or fit for purpose....

You have been warned :-)

Ubuntu 12.04 is LTS.
I expect LTS means that security bugs should be fixed.

Unfortunately, this does not happen with chromium, even though builds succeed as i mentioned earlier.
I am sure you will agree with me that using such an old version (v37) is not secure at all.
People use chromium v37 and this is not safe.

The solution to the problem is not to tell everyone to add another repo or to install another browser eg. chrome.
12.04 is LTS, so there should be new versions published every now and then (versions that fix these vulnerabilities), just like it was happening in the past and just like it is happening on all other supported Ubuntu versions.

Yeah I know 12.04 is LTS. I did some more searching and found that there is already a bug open for this:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/precise/+source/chromium-browser/+bug/1441960

I suggest subscribing to that bugreport....

There are already several bug reports related to delayed update of chromium-browser for Ubuntu 12.04, e.g.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/+bug/1468666
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/+bug/1520568

One problem seems to be an incompatibility with the newest libnss3 version.

I do not think that the libnss3 updates has to do with the delayed updates on chromium for precise.
This issue exist with chromium v37.

Reading through the bug reports, i saw people with 14.04 or 15.10 having the same issue with newer chrome or chromium versions.
Some say they had chromium installed, and the libnss3 problem got fixed by switching to chrome and some the opposite.

The must be another reason that chromium does not get the succeeded builds.
Unfortunately, noone from the team has ever posted that reason. (or at least i haven't found it)

The libnss3 problem apparently has been sorted out.
Still there is no newer version for precise than 37.* with all its vulnerabilities.

I see that there is work being done:
A build for chromium-browser - 48.0.2564.109-0ubuntu0.12.04.1.987 on https://launchpad.net/~canonical-chromium-builds/+archive/ubuntu/stage/+packages has, however, failed for some architectures.
(I haven't verified whether the successfully built i386 and amd64 versions of that package work at all.)

Remark, the 48.0.2564.109-0ubuntu0.12.04.1.987 version on https://launchpad.net/~canonical-chromium-builds/+archive/ubuntu/stage does not work, but fails with messages like
/usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.18' not found (required by /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser)
 /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.18' not found (required by /usr/lib/chromium-browser/libs/libnet.so)
 /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.19' not found (required by /usr/lib/chromium-browser/libs/libskia.so)