Installing Brave Browser on Linux Systems

What is the most annoying thing you encounter while using the internet?

Let me guess. Annoying pop-ads or inappropriate ads that has littered the web space. Most of these ads are merely a distraction and spoil the user experience. When I say user experience, I mean the reading experience. Because of these ads, the tech-savvy people use ad-blocker plugins in their browser.

Apart from the advertisement, one more thing which is ignored by masses is tracking cookies. Cookies are a concern of privacy for long but most people don’t really care for that because cookies do help in improving the browser experience.

Brave: A browser that blocks tracking by default

Keeping privacy, security, performance and ad-annoyance in mind, ex-CEO of Mozilla and creator of JavaScript, Brendan Eich started a new open source web browser Brave.

The main promised features of Brave are focused on three points:

  • Fast browsing: by blocking trackers and intrusive ads that slows down the browsing
  • Secure browsing: blocks harmful advertising and redirects sites to HTTPS using HTTPS Everywhere
  • Privacy: blocks tracking Pixels and tracking Cookies

That sounds more like the features of a browser plugin, rather than a full-fledged browser, isn’t it?

Brave promises that users will be getting a faster, secure, clean and ad-free web browsing. But you cannot simply kill ads from the website. After all, the publisher rely on the income from the ads, don’t they?

Brave rewards publishers with its own payment system

Initially, Brave planned to replace the websites’ ads with its own ‘cleaner ads’. That didn’t happen. Instead, Brave introduced a payment system that allows readers to pay certain amount to their favorite websites either automatically or manually.

Brave is also working on an option to enable users to ‘opt for ads’ for their favorite websites.

If you start using Brave on our invitation, It’s FOSS will get some reward points from Brave.

Install Brave browser on Linux

Brave used to provide a snap package but it has been discontinued. You’ll have to install it through the package manager of your distribution.

Installing Brave browser on Ubuntu and Debian based distributions

For Ubuntu and Debian based distributions, here’s what you need to do.

First, install curl and allow apt over HTTPS:

sudo apt install apt-transport-https curl

Add the Brave repository key to your system:

curl -s https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/brave-core.asc | sudo apt-key --keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/brave-browser-release.gpg add -

And then add the Brave repository in the sources.list.d directory:

echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list

Now update the system and install Brave:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install brave-browser

Since the Brave repository is added to the system, your installed Brave version will be updated when you update your Ubuntu system.

How to remove Brave browser from Ubuntu and Debian
sudo apt remove brave-browser

You should also remove the leftover packages with the autoremove command:

sudo apt autoremove

Now, the Brave repository is still added along with its GPG key. You may leave it as it is (so that you can install Brave later) or you may delete them.

sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list*

You may also search and find its GPG key and delete it.

Installing Brave browser on Fedora, CentOS and Red Hat

Follow the following commands one by one:

sudo dnf install dnf-plugins-core

sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://brave-browser-rpm-release.s3.brave.com/x86_64/

sudo rpm --import https://brave-browser-rpm-release.s3.brave.com/brave-core.asc

sudo dnf install brave-browser

Installing Brave browser on SUSE Linux

Use the following commands one by one:

sudo zypper install curl

sudo rpm --import https://brave-browser-rpm-release.s3.brave.com/brave-core.asc

sudo zypper addrepo https://brave-browser-rpm-release.s3.brave.com/x86_64/ brave-browser

sudo zypper install brave-browser

You can also install it from source code. You can find source code of Brave on its GitHub repository.

Brave is also available on other platforms like Windows, macOS and mobile platforms like Android and iOS.

How’s your experience with Brave Browser?

Do you use Brave browser regularly? Do you think it can replace Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome? What’s your view on the Brave payment system?

Share your views with the rest of us in the comment section.

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