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12

How to view CHM files in Ubuntu?

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13 Answers 13

up vote 40 down vote accepted

chmsee is no longer available in Ubuntu, as it is no longer being maintained. Here is the announcement on the project site:

Stop maintain

ChmSee is not being developed anymore.

I haven't read CHM documents more than a year, new and update IT books are pdfs or epubs, so it's right time to end this chm viewer.

chmsee Install chmsee

alt text

https://code.google.com/p/chmsee/

sudo apt-get install chmsee
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4  
Thanks. Note: apt.ubuntu.com/p/chmsee gives "You don't seem to be running Ubuntu" from Ubuntu 10.04/Chrome. – Olivier Lalonde Oct 20 '10 at 12:30
4  
Unable to locate package chmsee on Ubuntu 14.04 :( – Salman Abbas Apr 12 '14 at 0:13
    
@borjacampina, HOW to install it in ubutnu 14.04? – shgnInc Apr 26 '14 at 6:15
1  
@shgnInc ubuntuupdates.org/package/getdeb_apps/trusty/apps/getdeb/chm‌​see Download 32-bit or 64-bit deb file depend on arch.. install it using sudo dbpg -i <filename> – Shashi May 2 '14 at 7:27
    
I has been using chmsee for many time, but is no more mantained... See code.google.com/p/chmsee – Pisu May 8 '14 at 7:36
up vote 41 down vote

xChm Viewer Install xchm

Install the xChm Viewer for viewing CHM files:

sudo apt-get install xchm

enter image description here

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up vote 24 down vote 
apt-cache --names-only search chm

gives several results.

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11  
+1 for helping people to find their own answers. But a more verbose answer, explaining the results would be better. – Javier Rivera Oct 19 '10 at 8:26
up vote 8 down vote

Use browser extensions

What could be better than a web-browser to view web-pages?

CHMFox is an excellent CHM file reader. It is much better than all the third party programs that others are suggesting, which are mostly lacking many web-browser capabilities that Firefox and alike have.

I initially suggested the CHM reader extension for Firefox, but it isn't actively maintained anymore.

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5  
There is a new firefox add-on called ChmFox 1.2. Supposed to be a replacement for the old CHM reader project. you can find it at addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chmfox – Julio Jul 21 '11 at 20:33
    
Cannot install CHM reader, but ChmFox is good. – Pisu May 8 '14 at 7:39
    
Thanks for the recommendation. I have installed the add-on (ChmFox) but firefox doesn't open the file, it just tries to re-download it from the local storage. Would you please suggest what should I do to fix this? – arman_aegit May 10 '17 at 6:12
up vote 4 down vote

kchmViewer Install kchmviewer

The main advantage of kchmviewer is the best support for non-English languages. Unlike other viewers, kchmviewer in most cases is able to correctly detect the chm file encoding and show it. It correctly shows the index and table of context in Russian, Spanish, Romanian, Korean, Chinese and Arabic help files, and with new search engine is able to search in any chm file no matter what language it is written.

kchmviewer

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up vote 3 down vote

I like the reader that comes with wine! (hh.exe?)

Open hh.exe that comes with wine and browse for your CHM file from it.

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up vote 2 down vote

extract_chmLib does a very good job of converitng chm (compiled html) files into htm format. It is in the ubuntu repository in the package libchm-bin
extract_chmLib maintains the full functionality of the original.. However, I did need to rename files to lowercase, for one .chm (becaue chm is a Windows format which is not case senseitive like Linux), but the overall result is ideal for me...

Here are a coupld of links...

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up vote 2 down vote

Also a plugin called CHM Reader exists for Firefox.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3235/

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here addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3235 – hhlp Oct 28 '10 at 17:44
up vote 2 down vote

In alternative, since CHM format is not very popular you can convert it to PDF using chm2pdf:

sudo apt-get install chm2pdf
chm2pdf --webpage your.chm

This will produce a your.pdf file. In alternative you can use --book or --continuous options instead of --webpage, more info here http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-convert-chm-files-into-pdf-files-in-ubuntu.html

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up vote 2 down vote

In addition to the Firefox extension(s), there's a neat Chrome app called Chumium that does the job.

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up vote 1 down vote

There are a lot of CHM reader, you can find in Software Center, just type chm

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up vote 0 down vote

I prefer GnoCHM.

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1  
gnochm isn't available in maverick 10.10 – hhlp Oct 19 '10 at 16:02
1  
why gnochm is any more on Ubuntu repository? – neuromancer Apr 7 '11 at 10:19
up vote 0 down vote

In Ubuntu Software Center you can do a search for "chm" (no quotes) and find some decent chm viewers.

However, while using them, I'm always missing the scaling features in firefox (to make everything bigger - not just fonts).

Therefore, my favorite CHM viewer is Firefox itself via the ChmFox extension.

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