Google has caused a controversy these past few days by disabling uBlock Origin in the latest version of Chrome. uBlock is the most widely regarded browser-based ad blocker. “Disabling” may be the wrong word, as uBlock seems to still be partially functional. I won’t go into the details, because there’s plenty of more knowledgeable discussion elsewhere on the web.

What’s clear is that the direction of travel is not good. In my opinion, ad blocking is core browser functionality: it makes many websites more usable, but it also makes them safer by not delivering ad-based malware. So when my Chromebook updated to Chrome version 127 this afternoon, I was contemplating that it might become totally useless for me. I was thinking I might have to wipe it and sell it.

Installing Firefox would be a good solution, but seemed unlikely, if only because the word “Chrome” is right there in the name of the computer. Nonetheless it was worth exploring for lack of other good options. A search of the Google Play Store was not encouraging: there is a mobile Firefox app there, but it is not really suitable for my laptop format.

I then turned to the Debian container on my Chromebook. On Mozilla’s recommendation, I tried installing Firefox through Flatpak, which didn’t work, probably because of my lack of understanding of Flatpak. But then I went back to basics and ran:

sudo apt install firefox-esr

and all of a sudden I have working Firefox in both ChromeOS and in the Debian container! Success. I immediately installed uBlock Origin. The Chromebook lives to see another day.

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