Brave Browser and other apps that "can't" be installed on Silverblue

I have questioned whether Brave is worth all the effort as well. I’ve been running the latest nightly and am very pleased with the performance, love that I can use Chrome extensions, and certainly am sold on “Brave Rewards,” so I am using it for now.

However, I do have some reservations:
1 - From an aesthetic standpoint, it doesn’t integrate that well with Gnome. It’s on par with other Chromium clones and with Firefox, but still breaks up my desktop experience a bit. Epiphany’s latest release is the best I have seen from an integration/aesthetics standpoint.

2 - I use a 2 in 1 laptop and browse often in tablet mode. Unless I am browsing full screen, I need to enable the system titlebar in order to drag browser windows, which, well - see my point above. Epiphany doesn’t have that problem.

3 - Not Wayland. Not even sure they know what Wayland is. I have been hearing for a while that work on Chromium Wayland is “close” but that doesn’t mean it will make it to Brave.

Ha. I think I just convinced myself to give Epiphany another spin :slight_smile:

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I feel like Flatpak is maturing rapidly. The amount and quality of available applications on Flathub is growing steadily and thus so will the priority for upstream developers. I’d expect a pivot in developer mentality pretty soon, where upstream developers are only going to focus on and support Flatpak and/or Snap packages and not bother with providing and suporting DEB/RPM package installation. Fedora could speed this transition up by switching all default apps available on Flathub over to Flatpaks on vanilla Fedora Workstation…

In the mean time my strategy for all applications like this (e.g. with alternatives) is to do without, put it on my wish-list and monitor application issue trackers for progress. Like Brave, most unavailable applications have a feature request for Flatpak packaging by now. Don’t feel like polluting my Silverblue deployment with a lot of layered packages!

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@kcalvelli

hm, epiphany is available as flatpak, but quite outdated. is the “normal” - version more up-to-date?

the browser is the most used software (for regular users). and currently there is no alternative (except ff, which i don’t want to use) if you don’t want google to spy on you.

the “ungoogled-chromium” appimage is based on an ancient chromium version and contains a questionable extension which can’t be removed and the (previously excellent) irdidium - browser won’t be further developed (as it seems). brave indeed looks horrible (from the mentioned aesthetic point of view) on sb/gnome. it’s a pain in the eyes. also there were/are some other problems with brave: special facebook-connections not blocked, a questionable header, et cetera. maybe this has already been fixed because of the bad press - i don’t know.

so one has no choice but to use ff at the moment (and plays around with the config for half an hour) or go to the very dark side of power and layer chromium (and i won’t go into google chrome at all).

ps: i guess, only the non-official ff - nightly flatpak can handle wayland at the moment. but I read somewhere here, that this version is also outdated and updates are not possible.

so one have to wait and see - how @toMeloos has written… .

Brave did offer an explanation re: the Facebook thing and has made some other changes based on that bad publicity you mentioned. I am running the binary out of my user dir but am not 100% happy with that. I want to run all of my apps from Flatpak if I can.

As for Epiphany, I installed the tech preview from gnome-apps-nightly and it seems to meet about half of my browsing needs. It definitely looks great, but the lack of webRTC functionality limits my ability to switch over completely. Note: to install the tech preview, you need to remove your existing Epiphany flatpak and install the Devel version, iirc.

thx @kcalvelli , yes, i have read yesterday on github (or was it reddit or both) similar statements concerning brave. i remember - even b. eich has written a comment. but … you know … trust has to be earned. this is a long process and trial/error is included. and this was a huge error.

at the moment i’m using ff, but try epiphany from gnome-apps-nightly, as you described. i removed the flatpak anyway.

webrtc is imho a security/privacy - risk. especially when using a vpn. therefore, one option less on ublock origin, one option less on firefox (config) or one extension less on brave (as far as webrtc is concerned).

let’s take a look at epiphany. these are only temporary solutions anyway.

mart

Agreed. Still … I’m willing to give Brave the benefit of the doubt here based on Eich’s involvement. In fact, I just layered Brave with rpm-ostree using the instructions here: Installing Google Chrome on Fedora Silverblue - #2 by JohnMH

uh … is that now possible … even with brave & without

vi /etc/yum.repos.d/

? well, if this is really the case i just try it - but from now on always with what happened in mind; therefore firefox won’t be “override remove(d)” anymore & epiphany remains an option (when another technical problem i just have is solved).

thx @kcalvelli & @JohnMH @sb-team @gnomealex

You can’t install via the repo. You need to download the rpm direct (so no prod) from Releases · brave/brave-browser · GitHub

@kcalvelli awsome, thx! simple to “layer” and works perfectly. now i have

LocalPackages: brave-browser-dev-0.64.37-1.x86_64

in the ostree. is the dev version of brave stable enough, do you have any experience with it? how about updates (rpm-ostree update = brave updates too (as a local package?)

ps: & the mentioned privacy-problems have been fixed (preferences → social buttons and logins) + one can still install umatrix and check brave’s block - behaviour more closely.

I haven’t experienced any stability issues at all running the dev version, but … it’s still the dev version, so your mileage may vary. This installation method does not allow for auto-updating, since we installed the rpm directly as opposed to from a repo. You will need to update on your own when a new release becomes available.

@kcalvelli

manual updates, ok. well, it is only temporary. until a flatpak comes out. that will be necessary even for brave. let’s see & try it out. the first bug: if, for example, you want to manage cookie-blocking, not all options are displayed in the menu, but they appear when the mouse pointer is above them. nothing earth-shattering. + brave://gpu = video decode : unavailable - still. but very low cpu - load compared to firefox or chromium (+ IPFS - seems to be interesting).

ps: css exfil

Okay, I’m wrong! I rebased to silverblue 30 from rawhide, and was able to add the repo by creating it manually in /etc/yum.repos.d. Previously when attempting to add the repo via the link provided on the Brave website, I was getting the read-only filesystem error. Not sure why I never thought to add it manually!

I still haven’t figured out how to add the gpg keys using the link provided on the brave website, so I’m running with gpgcheck=0 which is horrible, I know.

But updates work.

uff. and i had to execute rpm-ostree reset , to finally solve my other problem (non-functional software-center/packagekit error message). and now, brave has disappeared from the tree & and my problem isn’t solved either. therefore, it is just good to read that it is possible via /etc/yum.repos.d . (almost) the same way, as with the iridium - browser a few months ago.

however, the goal is near… .

edit: well, it’s there (the software - center too). after a complete new installation of fsb30 beta. & brave: i simply added the (stable release) rpm via rpm-ostree install after rpm-ostree cleanup -m (the brave dev is too experimental & i have no time for /etc/yum.repos.d/ experiments).

brave stable

thx 4 your reference/work @kcalvelli & again thx 4 the work of every fsb & co. (+ gnome) worker (ladies and lads). something good has been created out of a slightly inclined position (as far as “google chrome” itself is concerned) :wink: .

The GPG key problem turned out to be an issue with libdnf. See the comments on this issue - can't install rpms from repo with gpgkey=http(s) · Issue #1094 · coreos/rpm-ostree · GitHub

@jlebon submitted a fix upstream - Also add subkeys when adding GPG keys by jlebon · Pull Request #711 · rpm-software-management/libdnf · GitHub

Just need to wait for a new build of rpm-ostree to include that fix from libdnf.

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Good news everyone! It seems the first web browser is available as Flatpak: Eolie is now available on Flathub

Eolie has been there for quite a while now…

Sorry, did not know that. I monitor the “new & updated apps” and it popped up. Apparently as an update, not because it was new. All in all Flathub has jumped to 547 applications, which means its growing nicely. Brave and others will hopefully follow soon. Can’t wait until it hits 1000!

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I’ve read through this thread, but I’m a bit confused. Is there a recommended way to install Brave on Fedora Silverblue, with it being able to get updated? Thanks.

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No, not at this time.

Try these instructions:
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/7710#issuecomment-730015999