Thinking about installing Brave on Linux Mint, any advice?

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I am thinking about installing the Brave on my Linux Mint (I am still very new). I want to know if you have any recommend or disrecommend about this.

Anyway, I looked on the Brave website and found the help section on how to install it on Linux Mint. I copied the guide instruction to the bottom of this post and  I want to know if this guide is fully kosher. What exactly does each line do? What would curl and echo command do?  If so, then I should press enter after each line, correct? Just wanted to be sure. 🙂 Thank you!

sudo apt install apt-transport-https curl

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 -

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

sudo apt update

sudo apt install brave-browser

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Well, nothing to it, let’s just go over this line by line… I don’t use Mint myself but it should be close enough to Ubuntu here.

First, two recurring commands here, “sudo” essentially means ‘run the rest of this as administrator’ and “apt” is the tool that installs software packages and updates, and keeps track of what you have available for those.

anonymous wrote:

sudo apt install apt-transport-https curl

This part may or may not actually do anything, depending, but just in case. It installs two tools used by the rest of the procedure if you didn’t have them already.

Your system may not be set up to use https instead of http for package downloads. Using SSL-secured traffic was traditionally not considered important because all packages are automatically verified before install anyway, using gpg and prepackaged keys.

So this installs – probably from Mint’s official repositories if you haven’t done this kind of thing before – the SSL-secured version of package download function (apt-transport-https), and another tool that can be used to do various network-related tasks from the command line (curl). Those are selected by name, and no version number specified means install latest known that is available in registered repositories. Any other packages they need as prerequisites would also get installed.

If you already had latest “known” versions of one or both, they don’t get reinstalled.

And sudo because you have to be administrator to be able to install stuff.

So yes, this part looked about right…

anonymous wrote:

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 –

This uses the curl tool (which was installed on the previous line if you didn’t have it already) to retrieve Brave’s software verification key, and then “pipes” it (with the ‘|’) to a command that marks it as trusted for checking software packages after download. Just in case someone manages to get past the SSL protection later.

And you don’t need to be administrator to fetch a file from the ‘net but to mark that as trusted you do have to… so sudo only in the latter part.

Same result could be had by getting the key file by browser, using “save as”, and then as administrator feeding that file into a specific location in the verification keyrings.

Probably don’t absolutely need to specify the keyring file explicitly for this to work but this is the better way, looks legit.

anonymous wrote:

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

This is again two commands piped together, to add the actual Brave software repository to your system’s collection of lists of software repositories. That collection is in folder /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ and consists of text files with the .list extension, so you can check what’s already there…

So, “echo” just outputs what is fed to it, then there’s the pipe that feeds things to another command again, then “sudo” because you need to be an admin to write to the list of repositories, and “tee” writes íts input to other places.

Alternatively you could just go write a brave-browser-release.list file in there with your favorite plaintext tool, as administrator. (What does Mint recommend for that anyway? There’s a million of “Notepad copies” and such.)

The .list file syntax then has package format (“.deb” type files), processor architecture (yes, normal 64-bit PCs are called “amd64”, as opposed to Intel’s Itanium that failed in the market, remember?), then location of repository (see the https in there, many of the other .list files would have plain old http instead, hence the apt-transport-https previously), and then subcomponents of that repository that you’ll be using.

So if you wanted to do pre-release testing to see if the newest Brave is ready for public release, you might put something like “testing” in the subcomponent parts instead of or in addition to “stable”… depending on how the Brave project names their branches.

Yes, this looked right.

anonymous wrote:

sudo apt update

This will in essence update the locally cached listing of software names and versions available in repositories. Sort of like “check for updates without installing anything at all”. And have to be administrator to tell it to do that.

And since the Brave repository is now new in there, it gets added to the internal list of what’s available and cached.

You use this exact command every time you want to manually “check for updates” from the command line. Also the thing probably runs that in the background if you’re set to check for and maybe even install security updates automatically.

anonymous wrote:

sudo apt install brave-browser

1) “sudo” = as administrator,
2) “apt” = use package management,
3) to download and install package named “brave-browser”, and its prerequisites, from whatever repositories we know about and have cached lists of contents of. (By default, install newest version number available. There’s a way to specify package version number if you want other than default, but…)

Yes, this is right if you want to do that.

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mn– wrote:

This uses the curl tool (which was installed on the previous line if you didn’t have it already) to retrieve Brave’s software verification key, and then “pipes” it (with the ‘|’) to a command that marks it as trusted for checking software packages after download.

Oh yes, this one thing… trusted really does mean that. By strict security, you should always manually verify these keys.

I understand that most home users don’t actually do that and probably don’t even know how.

Still, this is one thing where there’d usually be room for improvement…

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There’s a very simple ways of doing it if you’re not allergic to snaps:
https://snapcraft.io/install/brave/mint

or, without snaps:
https://computingforgeeks.com/install-brave-web-browser-on-ubuntu-linux-mint/

Although not always true, usually repositories designed to work with a particular Linux distro provide a higher probability of success vs. the manufacturer’s site which often has long, involved terminal entries.  Often the opposite is true for Windows.

Installing Firefox ESR on a distro that comes with the release version, even though ESR is essentially a stripped version of release can be a huge challenge.

When I started experimenting with a slew of distros from different branches, how differently they behaved was a bit surprising.

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[OscarCP]

It must be noted that, unless one follows a procedure to avoid doing it all the time, one has to enter one’s login password every time one gives a ‘sudo’ command (unless has set up things to do so with a ‘sudo’ password — also all the time).

The procedure for not doing this all the time is explained here:

https://www.tecmint.com/run-sudo-command-without-password-linux/

Although it looks to me as rather elaborate and not for beginners: I’d just enter the login password and be done with it, unless one is going to use ‘sudo’ often. Most people would only do it on very few and far apart occasions, so they need not bother.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by OscarCP.

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DrBonzo

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OscarCP wrote:

It must be noted that, unless one follows a procedure to avoid doing it all the time, one has to enter one’s login password every time one gives a ‘sudo’ command (unless has set up things to do so with a ‘sudo’ password — also all the time).

Actually at least over here, Ubuntu’s build of sudo (1.8.21p2-3ubuntu1.2, on Xubuntu 18.04) by default remembers the password for 15 minutes, on the same pseudoterminal (approximately, same command prompt session window).

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Thank you very much for your help! 😀

I do have a question. An Anon provided a link for non-snap brave install on Mint.  The first instruction looks different from the first I has posted here. Is there any real difference between both?  Anyway next two instructions look the same as posted here.  The last instruction has it as “sudo apt install -y brave-browser”, which add -y as compared to the last instruction I have posted here. Is there any difference in adding -y?

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The -y is not an option of apt, but of apt-get, a similar tool supposedly easier to use. This option allows one to work non-interactively: if a prompt appears, stopping the installation of some software package, asking if one wants to continue (for example), -y will result in the answer : “y” (yes) being given automatically, making the process non-interactive and easier on the user. The apt options and also its differences with apt-get (there is a link to the relevant page) are explained in the following document for Ubuntu Linux and, probably, this information also applies to other Debian-derived distributions of Linux, such as Mint:

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/en/man8/apt.8.html

To get to this type of document on a given line command from Terminal, when using Linux, enter ” man xxx” and hit “return”; here “xxx” is the name of the command one wants to learn more about; in this case one would write ” man apt”; “man” is short for “manual.”

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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DrBonzo

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In terms of the web browser itself, I use it extensively on a Mac. I prefer it to Safari and Chrome. It gives me Chrome-compatibility with additional privacy. Go for it.

Nathan Parker

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