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.

  • Krause [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    8 months ago

    I tried Homebrew once in a VM and didn't like it, I felt it was too invasive.

    1. https://github.com/Homebrew/install/blob/85c5f4b57452dbd1c7ebc01a021548d2ceaf2b64/install.sh#L173

    Why does it create another user and put files under /home/linuxbrew/? Answer:

    The script installs Homebrew to its default, supported, best prefix (/opt/homebrew for Apple Silicon, /usr/local for macOS Intel and /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew for Linux) so that you don’t need sudo after Homebrew’s initial installation when you brew install.

    Where's the logic in that? Why not just install to the user's home directory so that you don't even need root access in the first place?

    1. https://github.com/Homebrew/install/blob/85c5f4b57452dbd1c7ebc01a021548d2ceaf2b64/install.sh#L222

    Why is sudo hard-coded? Answer: it's to prevent people from using doas and other sudo alternatives.

    1. https://docs.brew.sh/Installation#untar-anywhere-unsupported

    Why is installing from the tarball unsupported and so frowned upon? FFS isn't this just supposed to be a package manager? Why is everything so complicated and opinionated when compared to pip, cargo, Flatpak, etc? Compare this mess to Golang's install and uninstall process where you literally just need to tar -xzf a file or rm -rf a directory.

    • alt@lemmy.ml
      ·
      8 months ago

      Wow, great comment! Much appreciated!

      Where’s the logic in that? Why not just install to the user’s home directory so that you don’t even need root access in the first place?

      Excellent remark! Wow, that by itself already wrote it off for me.

      Why is sudo hard-coded? Answer: it’s to prevent people from using doas and other sudo alternatives.

      Another home-run! Especially as I've been a staunch user of doas for quite a while now and wouldn't like to give up on that. Thank you so much for informing me on this!

      Your third point is also interesting to ponder upon, though it wasn't as impactful to me personally as the previous two were.

      I would like to thank you once again for your astoundingly awesome insights on this matter! This comment has definitely contributed the most in me letting go of the thought of using Homebrew entirely (while some others already informed me that GUI-apps (mostly) can't be installed from Homebrew to function on Linux anyways).

  • tvcvt@lemmy.ml
    ·
    8 months ago

    My only experience with homebrew is on macOS and I’ve switched to MacPorts there. Homebrew did some weird permissions things I didn’t care for (chowned all of /usr/local to $USER, if I’m remembering right). It worked fine on a single user system, but seemed like a bad philosophy to me. This was years ago and I don’t know how it behaves on Linux.

    I also prefer Firefox, but when I need a Chromium alternative for testing, I opt for the flatpak (or the snap) version personally.

    • alt@lemmy.ml
      ·
      8 months ago

      Nix is definitely cool and I already have it installed on my system. Unfortunately, even Nix has trouble with keeping Brave up-to-date at all times. It's still on 1.59.120, while Brave has had three releases since. It took about 3 days after the release of version 1.59.120 for them to release it on their repos. As you can see, it leaves a lot to desire.

  • Irdial@lemmy.sdf.org
    ·
    8 months ago

    I've been using Homebrew on Linux for several years and never had an issue. As others have said, it will not be able to provide GUI applications (in most cases) as on macOS, but it is a great way to get system and indie software alike

    • alt@lemmy.ml
      ·
      8 months ago

      Thank you for your input, it's heart-breaking to hear that it's not able to provide GUI applications (and thus browsers by extension). But I'm glad to hear that it has provided you a decent experience so far!

  • mufasio@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    8 months ago

    Once x86 macOS became stable around snow leopard I switched from Linux to macOS full time on my mobile machines. For years home brew was a shining light to get a decent tool chain installed to be able to do development. But somewhere around the time they changed to naming macOS releases after places in California, both home brew and macOS started changing in ways that made it harder to maintain a stable development environment. Why and when did it start deciding to upgrade every package I have installed when I try to install a new package? It regularly broke both mine and our developers’ machines and I finally had enough of both. Stay away from home brew if you want your working development environment to continue working 6 months later. It WILL break when you need it most and cost you hours if not days of work to fix. I’ve never ran home brew on Linux but it’s honestly not anything I would ever consider even when it worked well.

    • Atemu@lemmy.ml
      ·
      8 months ago

      I can highly recommend using Nix on macOS! We never randomly update your apps (wtf?)

      • alt@lemmy.ml
        ·
        8 months ago

        I would love to consume Brave as a nixpkgs, unfortunately it's mostly not up to date; which I simply can't accept.

    • alt@lemmy.ml
      ·
      8 months ago

      Thanks for the insights! Do you know if these issues continue to persist?

      Why and when did it start deciding to upgrade every package I have installed when I try to install a new package?

      Is this perhaps related to how for most non-LTS distros (but especially on something like Arch) one is recommended to update all packages before installing a new package in hopes of preventing issues related to dependency hell? I don't know if Homebrew's model of packaging is similar enough to Linux' to make sensible comparisons between the two, but this was just something that came up to me as a thought.

  • stella@lemm.ee
    ·
    8 months ago

    Not sure why you would want to.

    Linux package managers are state of the art.

    • alt@lemmy.ml
      ·
      8 months ago

      Not sure why you would want to.

      😅, it's explained in OP.

      Linux package managers are state of the art.

      I wonder if Nix-users would agree 🤔.

  • Keith@lemm.ee
    ·
    8 months ago

    Brave homophobic though

    It is the best Chromium based browser, in a sense, unfortunately....

    • alt@lemmy.ml
      ·
      8 months ago

      Brave homophobic though

      Its CEO; yes.

      It is the best Chromium based browser, in a sense, unfortunately…

      Agreed.