Provide official support (binaries) for Manjaro and Arch based Linux distro

[srirambv]

We should start officially supporting Manjaro and Arch based Linux distros. There has been an increased user activity on community on these platforms

cc: @kjozwiak @mbacchi @w0ts0n

[t0m3kf]

+1
At the moment it's available in AUR but I personally don't trust AUR that much:/
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/brave-beta-bin/

[cdfa]

That one is also just the beta. I spent most of today (still relatively linux noob) working out ways to install the stable release and the way i eventually did is modify the PKGBUILD from the beta AUR package so it intalls the currently latest stable. Support for this would be really nice.

[ghost]

The stable release from the AUR installs just fine though user namespaces is off by default on arch. The Arch wiki entry on LXC stuff has the solution, that should probably be added to the PKGBUILD.

[maximbaz]

Hi guys, I'm maintaining chromium-vaapi for Arch Linux, and I've started looking into Brave as an interesting alternative. I will be interested to collaborate and eventually add Brave to the official Arch Linux repositories.

VA-API support in a browser is essential to me, so I'm closely following the situation in Brave (#1024, #4039). A committed support for hardware video acceleration from Brave maintainers would just be awesome, I'd switch to Brave in a heartbeat; if on the other hand it proves that VA-API is only available in Chromium, my personal preference would be to stay with Chromium.

#305 is also a blocker to actually get Brave to compile on Arch Linux.

[maximbaz]

To give you an update, #305 is not a blocker anymore, and as for VA-API patch, it is actually simple to apply Chromium patches to Brave, so as long as VA-API works in Chromium, it also works in Brave 🎉

Right now I pushed PKGBUILD for compiling Brave from sources with VA-API patch to AUR/brave as I keep playing around with the browser; if you also want to give it a try but don't want to compile the entire thing yourself, you can grab brave package from my repository.

[Ioannis-Markos-Angelidakis]

To give you an update, #305 is not a blocker anymore, and as for VA-API patch, it is actually simple to apply Chromium patches to Brave, so as long as VA-API works in Chromium, it also works in Brave

Right now I pushed PKGBUILD for compiling Brave from sources with VA-API patch to AUR/brave as I keep playing around with the browser; if you also want to give it a try but don't want to compile the entire thing yourself, you can grab brave package from my repository.

I cant find it anymore :(

[maximbaz]

Sorry, I stopped using Brave (primarily because of #5761), and therefore removed it from my repo. As announced on AUR, the package is looking for maintainers 🙂

[bbondy]

cc @simonhong @bsclifton highly upvoted, maybe we can check it out?

[bsclifton]

Hi folks - sorry if this is a newbie question, but it would be great to know where we can help 😄 (as I'm not familiar with Manjaro or Arch, it's not clear to me)

• Are Arch users able to make use of the .deb or .rpm files that we publish on each release? (if so, does Brave work?)
• Are there problems compiling from source on Arch linux? (seems there could be - Build fails checking linux package deps on other distros when --official-build=false #305 and notes on https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/brave)
• Is the goal of this issue to end up with an official pacman supported version of Brave? or if we were able to solve the other concerns, would we be helping the folks who maintain https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/brave?

Notes from Chromium build instructions, RE: Arch
https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/docs/linux_build_instructions.md#arch-linux

[maximbaz]

I will try to clarify some bits for you 🙂

Are Arch users able to make use of the .deb or .rpm files that we publish on each release? (if so, does Brave work?)

Yes, as in it's possible to automate unpacking .deb file and placing its contents to the appropriate folders, however it's not much different comparing to just using a .zip archive with pre-compiled Brave binary that you are already providing - in fact, AUR/brave-bin is doing exactly this.

Are there problems compiling from source on Arch linux? (seems there could be - #305 and notes on aur.archlinux.org/packages/brave)

I think #305 is not really a blocker, the PKGBUILD file in AUR/brave is able to compile Brave just fine. The biggest problem is that Brave is a resource-hungry and most people just don't have time / resources to compile it.

By the way, AUR/brave produces a slightly different binary comparing to what you release on Github, as it also follows extra/chromium to include all Chromium patches from that package (to keep Brave as close to official Arch Linux Chromium package as possible) and VA-API patch from AUR/chromium-vaapi (because how can we refuse Linux users to enjoy smooth energy-efficient video playback!). But if you don't want these changes, it's trivial to adapt PKGBUILD file.

Is the goal of this issue to end up with an official pacman supported version of Brave? or if we were able to solve the other concerns, would we be helping the folks who maintain aur.archlinux.org/packages/brave?

I'll let others comment on the desired outcome of this issue, I will only clarify the available alternatives:

• Add brave to one of the official Arch Linux repos (e.g. [community]): for that to happen someone from the Arch Linux staff must get interested in using and maintaining this package, there isn't something actionable for you to do here (just keep doing your awesome work and eventually it will happen 🙂).
• Add brave to an unofficial Arch Linux repo (e.g. you can host your own): this will require some configuration from users to enable your repo in their pacman config and an additional effort on your end (learning how to do it, setting up a file hosting, etc.), but otherwise it will be the same as if the package was available in one of the official repos.
• Keep releasing .zip file with pre-compiled Brave binary and let people continue using AUR/brave-bin package. The biggest downside perhaps comparing to the other alternatives is people must review PKGBUILD to ensure the binary is indeed is being downloaded from your Github release and someone didn't tamper with it and didn't modify the source of the .zip archive, but all Arch Linux users should be well trained in this anyway 😉 , and there are some existing tools that help doing this.

[bsclifton]

Thanks for the in-depth explanation, @maximbaz 😄

We have a few similar requests:

• Snap Package for Brave Snap Package for Brave #1007
• Make brave available through Flatpak and Flathub Make brave available through Flatpak and Flathub #1000

We can definitely help resolve blockers that are preventing packaging 😄 I encourage folks to raise those issues here. But I don't think we have the resources to provide official support at the moment (ex: maintain the Arch package)

[reis-victor]

@bsclifton Hi! Since "sudo pacman -S brave" works properly for Manjaro, I think that would be good to add the instruction in the wiki. If needed, I could help with the wiki documentation.

[fmarier]

Hi! Since "sudo pacman -S brave" works properly for Manjaro, I think that would be good to add the instruction in the wiki. If needed, I could help with the wiki documentation.

Sorry we missed your suggestion a few months ago. There is now an issue open for exactly that: #8690

[fmarier]

In terms of creating our own repo, a user has made a list of options with varying levels of difficulty: https://community.brave.com/t/archlinux-manjaro-missing-on-download-page/110997/14

It's possible we could automate this as part of our existing builds. More details at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/creating_packages.

[flsap]

Hi guys, I'm maintaining chromium-vaapi for Arch Linux, and I've started looking into Brave as an interesting alternative. I will be interested to collaborate and eventually add Brave to the official Arch Linux repositories.

VA-API support in a browser is essential to me, so I'm closely following the situation in Brave (#1024, #4039). A committed support for hardware video acceleration from Brave maintainers would just be awesome, I'd switch to Brave in a heartbeat; if on the other hand it proves that VA-API is only available in Chromium, my personal preference would be to stay with Chromium.

#305 is also a blocker to actually get Brave to compile on Arch Linux.

Oh yes, we definitely need another browser with VA-API support that can utilize the GPU ability to decode a video (a feature that is available since the dinosaurs walked the earth), wonder why not many distros add this patch, as obvious that google doesn't care about energy saving on linux devices.

@maximbaz you have no idea how much your work means to some of us. Without that patch it would be impossible to run basic youtube on low-end devices, and I personally do not have the time or knowledge to patch chromium my self. Keep up the good work, thank you.

[catfluoride]

I also agree that not distro-specific binary packages (i.e. a simple .zip file) should be available. This way, one could manually use Brave by simply extracting the .zip in his/her home or in /opt.

Thank you for your amazing work.