Introduced in 2009, two open source software projects are named Chromium: an operating system and a Web browser.
Chromium Operating System
The Linux-based Chromium OS in Chromebooks is geared for Web applications, and its user interface is essentially the Chromium browser. Various versions have been introduced with names such as Cherry, Zero, Flow and Vanilla Login. In 2012, software that compiles and installs a build for developers on a USB drive was released. See
Chromebook and
Cloud Ready.
Chromium Web Browser
An advantage to Chromium-based browsers is that they use the same extensions. For example, if Chrome users prefer another browser based on Chromium, such as Brave or Vivaldi, they can switch to that browser and download the same extensions they liked in Chrome. Unfortunately, all Chromium browsers do not behave exactly the same, and while most Chrome extensions work, not all do, frustrating users to no end. See
browser engine.
Chromium browser source code is available for Windows, Mac and Linux in two modules: the user interface and rendering engine. The engine interacts with the user interface and executes the Web page in a sandbox to prevent illegal system calls. If a Web app crashes, Chromium is able to cancel that operation and keep running. See
sandbox.