Brave

grooveman · Veteran Joined: 24 Feb 2003 Posts: 1196

I have just become aware of a new Web browser called Brave. It looks like it is based on chromium, but allegedly has some very powerful privacy features. It claims also to be 8x faster... they all claim to be faster, so I'm not going to hold my breath on that count... but private by default interests me.

I notice that there is no ebuild in portage for it... I'm wondering if anyone has tried it... any thoughts... opinions... and of course, if it ever will be brought into mainstream portage.

Anyone want to weigh in?

G
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fedeliallalinea · Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2020 1:12 pm Post subject:

There is an ebuild in brave-overlay but look it
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Budoka · l33t Joined: 03 Jun 2012 Posts: 745 Location: Tokyo, Japan

I've been using it for some time now on my mobile devices and I like it so far. Privacy by default is nice but I am on the fence about the Advertising model. I find it a bit confusing but one can opt-out of it.

It also doesn't do anything, privacy/security-wise, that I wasn't getting done in Chrome and Firefox but with carefully selected extensions. For those that don't want to tinker too much with their browser of choice, I think Brave is a reasonable alternative.

I have been testing out the overlay binary. I really don't like running applications on my box that I can't build from source but at the moment this is the only option for we Gentoo users.

I actually also had some concerns about Overlay QA and integrity that I asked about in another thread. I was satisfied with the replies I received and would give Hu's reply particular consideration. AntP also seems to have some concerns about Brave but I didn't ask him to expand on it. Take a look and feel free to commnet.

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8411520.html#8411520

Juippisi · Developer Joined: 30 Sep 2005 Posts: 510 Location: /home

grooveman · Veteran Joined: 24 Feb 2003 Posts: 1196

thanks. I just wanted to check it out... but I don't think I will be doing an overly. Every time I do that, I wind up in dependency hell at update time and I simply don't have the time to dwell there. It isn't that important to me

I'll look at it on another system, or just wait.

I don't really have high expectations of it. It sounds like consumer-grade BS to me... but I was asked about it from an executive, so I thought I would check into it.

Thank you all for your input.

G
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dhinds · n00b Joined: 05 Jul 2014 Posts: 15

I have Brave and Opera Touch installed on an Android cel.

Opera Touch will link with Opera (also now based on Blink with privacy features) on a desk or laptop machine.

A.S. Pushkin · Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2020 6:33 pm Post subject: Howto

How do you install Brave?

I've also heard another browser called Tracefree. Anyone know anything about that?

Linux Mint offers still another called Tor Browser. I run that on my laptop, Linux Mint, but have not been able to install
this browser.

Thanks
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philmb · n00b Joined: 13 Feb 2020 Posts: 5

hi folks! I have made a Brave ebuild for gentoo. Testing it now, it is pretty speedy and seems to work fine.

You can use my overlay at https://github.com/sinetek/gentoo-overlay

I'm looking for people with *fast* internet connection to test it.

You will need about 20GB of network bandwidth to pull in all the sources, and around 60 GB to build the software. To be safe make sure you have 100GB free space.
I made it so the build uses your local tools and also it will pull in your own CFLAGS. For now only GCC is supported but if there's a request i might change that.

I haven't had the time to fill in properly the Dependencies so, sorry about that. make sure you have 'nodejs' installed and all the dependencies needed for a normal chromium build..
last thing, you might need to turn off the network filter because the emerge sandbox will prevent the installation to fetch the sources properly via git.
something like FEATURES="-network-sandbox" in your make.conf or just before the emerge command will do.

Happy testing!

philmb · n00b Joined: 13 Feb 2020 Posts: 5

should "+widevine" be on by default?? I think it's nicer to have it in so people don't need to go recompile when they need to watch video.

philmb · n00b Joined: 13 Feb 2020 Posts: 5

Added disk and memory check, and proper dependencies.

Budoka · l33t Joined: 03 Jun 2012 Posts: 745 Location: Tokyo, Japan

Juippisi · Developer Joined: 30 Sep 2005 Posts: 510 Location: /home

Juippisi · Developer Joined: 30 Sep 2005 Posts: 510 Location: /home

philmb · n00b Joined: 13 Feb 2020 Posts: 5

tnt · Veteran Joined: 27 Feb 2004 Posts: 1183

Almost a year later, Brave seems regulary mainteined and pops up in many comparisons as one of the "top 5" browsers in general.

Any plans to add an official ebuild?
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imajica · n00b Joined: 11 Jan 2021 Posts: 3

kajzer · l33t Joined: 27 Nov 2014 Posts: 897

atrix · n00b Joined: 25 Jun 2016 Posts: 4

TheGreatMcPain · n00b Joined: 30 Oct 2019 Posts: 1

I wonder if it would be possible to set up pre-patched tarballs of brave and then use a modified version of the chromium ebuild to compile/merge it.

That would avoid the need to download 30GB of unneeded git history.

Also, I've been trying to reduce the initial 'npm run init' download by adding '--no-history' into the places in 'brave-browser' and 'brave-core' where gclient is being called, but despite it only downloading 1GB from chromium initially it still fetches 30GB of git history anyway.