Brave Now Compiles for ARM!

Hardware Librem 5
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See issue here: https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/15349

Can’t wait to try it out!

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anyone got this to run on the librem 5 yet ?

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Yeah, I run the display at 150% otherwise the url/search bar is not large enough. It is fast and smooth. I just download the nightly .deb off of Github and install. Runs even better than the ungoogled-chromium flatpak.

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I must be missing something, but the only .debs that I can find (at https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases) are for amd64. Where do you download the arm .debs from?

Thanks for any info,
P.

Edit: found them - they are in only some of the 1.48.x series, in the builds which have a large number of assets - at least 72 I think. The most recent ones at the time of writing have 44 assets, and the arm .debs aren’t there. Hopefully the wrinkles will be sorted out in time and the arm builds will appear more reliably.

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yeah actual releases would be good… but the nightly does work ok…

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Yes! I’ve been waiting for this for a while. They need to do some more work on it still but this is a good sign. I have it running on my L5. It works reasonably well.

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I just installed this on my Librem and OMG it destroys Firefox ESR.

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Glad it’s working for you!

On Mobian, I got an error about brave-keyring not being installable. Did you see that on PureOS?

Did you install with these commands?

sudo dpkg -i <"brave .deb filename">
sudo apt --fix-broken install
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Not sure about Mobian. I didn’t get a keyring error on PureOS though, and if I did, yes I would think a

sudo apt -f install would do the trick.

The issue I had with Brave on the L5 was that it wasn’t really adaptive. Has this changed?

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It’s not adaptive but I mostly use it with my nextdock. It’s workable on the small screen but not ideal.

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I doubt it, firefox fits the Librem 5 because there is a package called: firefox-esr-mobile-config that applies the necessary patches to make it fit a 5 inch screen.
I would imagine that brave would need something similar.

You can also use:

sudo apt install ./package-name.deb

It auto magically resolves and installs dependencies. And makes sure nothing gets broken in the install

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On the L5 (Byzantium) I found that the standard install instructions for linux worked perfectly. Is Mobian close enough to Debian for those to work for you?

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Thanks! I prefer using a repo myself to ensure timely updates, and I too found that the standard instructions for installing on Linux worked perfectly on the L5. That is just awesome!!!

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Now all they need is to make an adaptive build.

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Following the Firefox trail:

I have found Brave really performant on the L5 as well. I have also tried the Android version under Waydroid and it isn’t bad at all, but an adaptive/small-screen version of the Linux/ARM build would be far better of course. I know very little about all this, but I wonder what the best approach would be? Could it be done with libadwaita, or would the controversy about theming be a problem? Maybe something could be done with a Chrome extension?

We could put in a feature request, but I guess that we would need to make a compelling case to attract developer interest.

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Well I asked the CEO on Twitter about it, but I doubt that will have much of an effect.

One thing I’ll say, is that as is, the browser is very usable. Only if you need to access the brave menu or something else to the far right it becomes a problems. Since the little dropdown arrow is there for open tabs, you don’t have an issue switching tabs.

I think Brave runs probably the best on there, so it is what I am using now.

Let’s hope an adaptive version does come, but even if it doesn’t I like it.

Also this version does NOT come with widevine. That should make some of you happier about using it as well.

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So just a little update on Brave as it pertains to the L5: I am finding Brave to work really well. However it does not handle suspend and resume well. It has caused my L5 to crash a bunch of times. I say that because it is the only thing different about what is running as per the norm. When I use Firefox instead the phone will resume and suspend as per normal.

So the advice I can say is to either make sure you close Brave before suspending. Other than that, it is great having Brave on the L5.

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I installed Brave and opened a “private” window (which uses Tor). I pasted in a working Onion address, naively thinking I might get lucky, but the page never loaded. Brave just sat there doing nothing. :cry:

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Just thought I’d post in here, I discovered that Brave leaves up an active connection on your wwan0 interface (mobile data) even when you’re connected on wifi which it also has a connection. I was trying to figure out how 1 week into my monthly 5GB data plan I’m already over 3GB…Brave was keeping up this connection even when I closed the app. So be aware if you have a limited plan it’s going to gobble up your data.

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