Install and use Google Chrome without using my limited /opt?

[ant]

If you have another partition available with more space, then why not mount it onto "/opt"?

Just create an empty "/opt" directory, and add an entry for it to your "/etc/fstab" file--something along the lines of:

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UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxx   /opt   ext4   defaults   0   2

To obtain the UUID value, you can run the blkid command.
Alternatively, instead of the UUID, you can just specify the device name for the partition--e.g., something like "/dev/sdXY".

I do have existing bigger EXT4 partitions that I would like to put Chrome's /opt into:

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$ df
Filesystem     1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1         944120    699100    179844  80% /
udev               10240         0     10240   0% /dev
tmpfs             411588     22368    389220   6% /run
/dev/sda8       49851100   7007204  40288504  15% /usr
tmpfs            1028964        68   1028896   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs               5120        12      5108   1% /run/lock
tmpfs            1028964         0   1028964   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda6        4673664   2053404   2359808  47% /var
/dev/sda9       49882844  10741464  36584404  23% /home
/dev/sda5         944120      1284    877660   1% /tmp
tmpfs             205796         8    205788   1% /run/user/1000

Hence why I was trying to do a symbolic link into my /home/google. apt-get install/upgrade Chrome went to my tiny / partition.

[ant]

...As for Chromium, doesn't it also change some settings too? Are the user agents the same? SeaMonkey and Firefox don't use the same user agents and I run into issues with SeaMonkey that worked fine in Firefox.

I use chromium daily and have Chrome installed, but my chromium cache and config directories are just symlinks to their Chrome counterparts. Been running that way for years with no issues. Cache, cookies, config and extensions are shared between the two applications.

What about Chrom*'s installation files? Where did you put yours (Chrome) from apt-get? Did it end up in your /opt?

[ant]

Thanks to William Unruh's e-mail from alt.os.debian and alt.os.linux.debian newsgroups for the help:

> mkdir /home/google
> Anyway, now do
> mv /opt/google /home/
> ln -s /home/google /opt/google


OK, that is fine but the problem is that apt-get's uninstall removes my
/opt, its, symbolic link, and /home/google/chrome when uninstalling
Chrome. (Re)Installing it puts data files back into /opt again instead
of the /home/google I made!

I tried manually creating opt in / root directory with sudo command and
then "ln -s /home/google /opt/google". So, my manually recreated "google
-> /home/google" symbolic link exists in /opt. And then I did a "sudo
apt-get install google-chrome-stable" command. Now, it installed
correctly after seeing and testing its installation:

$ sudo apt-get install google-chrome-stable
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
google-chrome-stable
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/65.5 MB of archives.
After this operation, 273 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Retrieving bug reports... Done
Parsing Found/Fixed information... Done
Selecting previously unselected package google-chrome-stable.
(Reading database ... 250093 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../google-chrome-stable_61.0.3163.79-1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking google-chrome-stable (61.0.3163.79-1) ...
Processing triggers for menu (2.1.47) ...
Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.13.3-6) ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.22-1) ...
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.58) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.0.2-5) ...
Setting up google-chrome-stable (61.0.3163.79-1) ...
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable to provide /usr/bin/x-www-browser (x-www-browser) in auto mode
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable to provide /usr/bin/gnome-www-browser (gnome-www-browser) in auto mode
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable to provide /usr/bin/google-chrome (google-chrome) in auto mode
Processing triggers for menu (2.1.47) ...
localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/locale: 0 KiB
localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/man: 0 KiB
localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/gnome/help: 0 KiB
localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/omf: 0 KiB
localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/doc/kde/HTML: 0 KiB

Total disk space freed by localepurge: 0 KiB

Scanning processes...
Scanning kernel images...
Running kernel seems to be up-to-date.
No services need to be restarted.


I hope the future apt-get upgrades for future Google versions
will work correctly. Now, I regained 30% of disk space.

Thank you, (W/B)ill and everyone else.

[luvr]

Hence why I was trying to do a symbolic link into my /home/google. apt-get install/upgrade Chrome went to my tiny / partition.

Well, that’s precisely why I suggested setting up a mount point for your ‘/opt’ directory, since that would entirely eliminate this kind of issue (assuming that you have a big enough partition available—which seems to be true in your case). Everything under ‘/opt’ would, then, automagically get stored onto the mounted partition, and you wouldn't have to juggle with symbolic links. In fact, I'm thinking about setting up a mount point for the ‘/opt’ directory, too, because I would like to experiment with the current Firefox release as available directly from the Mozilla download site, and ‘/opt’ is the perfect location for such experimentation.