this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
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I'm especially concerned about it being somehow broken, unwieldy, insecure or privacy-invasive.

Case in point; at times I have to rely on a Chromium-based browser if a website decides to misbehave on a Firefox-based browser. Out of the available options I gravitate towards Brave as it seems like the least bad out of the bunch.

Unfortunately, their RPM-package leaves a lot to be desired and has multiple times just been awful to deal with. So much so that I have been using another Chromium-based browser instead that's available directly from my distro's repos. But..., I would still switch to Brave in an instant if Brave was found in my distro's repos. A quick search on repology.org reveals that an up-to-date Brave is packaged in the AUR (unsurprisingly), Manjaro and Homebrew. I don't feel like changing distros for the sake of a single program, but adding Homebrew to my arsenal of universal package managers doesn't sound that bad. But, not all universal package managers are created equal, therefore I was interested to know how Homebrew fares compared to the others and if it handles the packaging of the browser without blemishing the capabilities of the browser's sandbox.


P.S. I expect people to recommend me Distrobox instead. Don't worry, I have been a staunch user of Distrobox for quite a while now. I have also run Brave through an Arch-distrobox in the past. But due to some concerns I've had, I chose to discontinue this. Btw, its Flatpak package ain't bad either. But unfortunately it's not official, so I choose to not make use of it for that reason.

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[–] Helix@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Brave is known to take privacy (and security) more seriously than its contenders.

Nice, their marketing works. If you really cared about privacy you'd probably use something like Librewolf, which is not proprietary.

Excellent extensions like uBlock Origin heavily rely on Manifest v2 in order to do their bidding. Unfortunately, Chromium intends to stop supporting it.

It works without issues in Firefox and similar browsers like Librewolf.

[–] alt@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nice, their marketing works.

You can't deny its merits. At best you can question their integrity based on bad business-practices in the past. Their CEO being "X" and doing "Y" does not inherently make the software bad.

If you really cared about privacy you’d probably use something like Librewolf, which is not proprietary.

From OP: "at times I have to rely on a Chromium-based browser if a website decides to misbehave on a Firefox-based browser"

[–] Helix@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can’t deny its merits.

Yes, yes I can. It's proprietary and doesn't do anything better than Firefox or Librewolf. The latter even has an active community on Lemmy.

Their CEO being “X” and doing “Y” does not inherently make the software bad.

I didn't even mention the CEO, you must have confused my reply. It's the product being X and doing Y which I don't like.

[–] alt@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

doesn’t do anything better than Firefox or Librewolf.

Besides the fact that some sites misbehave on Firefox(-based browsers), it does if you're actually security sensitive; Chromium's sandbox is simply superior to Firefox'.

I didn’t even mention the CEO, you must have confused my reply. It’s the product being X and doing Y which I don’t like.

It's true that you didn't mention anything regarding its CEO, but I assumed your comment might be related to it. It seems not to be the case; my bad for assuming and mentioning it and thank you for clearing yourself from that 'allegation'!

Would it be fair to assume that your primary gripe with Brave is its (at best) controversial stance regarding the 'open' source nature of their product?

[–] Helix@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yes, and the business practices of the company making it which broke my trust to the point of me assuming they wouldn't be above breaking the law in compiling spyware or other malware into their closed source product for profit.

[–] alt@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Thanks for clarifying!

they wouldn’t be above breaking the law in compiling spyware or other malware into their closed source product for profit.

I might misremember this, but wasn't it only something like a key (or something similar) that they held to themselves? And if so, is it even sensible that spyware can be put in their 'key'?