Just the other day, my favourite browser started acting up on Linux Mint 10: whenever I started google chrome or chromium, the entire window would lock up and I’d have to kill the process using xkill.

I decided to start with a fresh set of preferences which is no biggie as google chrome’s nice sync feature makes it a snap to restore one’s favourite bookmarks, accounts and so on, so here’s what I did:

Open up a shell and type the following commands (make sure neither chromium nor chrome are running beforehand):

$ cd ~

$ mkdir backup

$ mv .config/.chromium .config/google-chrome backup/

Start google chrome, and you should be greeted by the familiar welcome screen.

Caveat: Only tried this on Linux Mint 10 (Ubuntu based), YMMV depending on the distro of your choice.