Brave browser

[mikewalsh]

Afternoon, gang.

Here's another update for Brave-portable. This is the current stable build - v1.39.111 - released around 6 days ago.....based on the current Chromium release, v102.0.5005.61.

Download link here:-

https://mega.nz/folder/CPxnQQIJ#9jWxpqpaKUWCFjA-ayteQQ

------------------------------

Same as usual:-

• Download

• Unzip

• Move the portable directory anywhere you like, preferably outside the 'save'.

• Click to enter

• Click 'LAUNCH' to run it in 'portable' mode. For greater system integration, scripts let you add a Menu entry.....if required.

Posting from it now. Enjoy.

Mike.

[Dingo]

Afternoon, gang.

Here's another update for Brave-portable. This is the current stable build - v1.39.111 - released around 6 days ago.....based on the current Chromium release, v102.0.5005.61.

Download link here:-

https://mega.nz/folder/CPxnQQIJ#9jWxpqpaKUWCFjA-ayteQQ

------------------------------

Same as usual:-

• Download

• Unzip

• Move the portable directory anywhere you like, preferably outside the 'save'.

• Click to enter

• Click 'LAUNCH' to run it in 'portable' mode. For greater system integration, scripts let you add a Menu entry.....if required.

Posting from it now. Enjoy.

Mike.

it is very far better than palemoon in terms of cpu load. My old Thinkpad L440 stays comfortably cool, in xenialpup64, at 40-44 celsius degrees. browing is also smoother than what I experienced using palemoon

[xenial]

@Dingo
The latest palemoon has severe performance issues with CPU usage on my machine idling at 60-70% with just the browser open so i'm not sure what is happening there.I reverted back to a previous version and i only use palemoon mainly for the flash plugin support.

[Dingo]

@Dingo
The latest palemoon has severe performance issues with CPU usage on my machine idling at 60-70% with just the browser open so i'm not sure what is happening there.I reverted back to a previous version and i only use palemoon mainly for the flash plugin support.

I'm aware of this issue, and because of this I reverted to 0.29 series of pale moon, but brave browser, like other chromium based browsers, are able to run even more quietly

[rockedge]

palemoon has gone CPU intense lately especially on a Bionic64 that has been an absolute champion for a long time now. A real workhorse with hundreds of successful compiles and big time web site conversions across a broad timeline in those web site's software.

palemoon causes very high CPU temps (in the red zone) and idles with high loads. YouTube videos 2 months ago streamed beautifully and now after minutes the machine's fans are at high speed, CPU temps in the red and climbing, loads being reported at 60-90% at all times. palemoon is hardly usable as of late.

I have downloaded the Brave-portable and will test on the same Bionic64 and also test on KLV-Airedale and KLV-Boxer, and will report the results!

[mikewalsh]

@rockedge :-

I'd go so far as to say that this just might supplant all the other clones as my 'go-to', default browser.

A couple of years ago, when I first began playing around with, it had, shall we say, "issues". It needed all sorts of weird '--switches' on the exec line to fire up at all; WideVine implementation was a joke, and various other things just didn't behave themselves.

Fast-forward to today. All outstanding problems seem to have been addressed. It's as simple to write its wrapper-script as any other clone. WideVine is now as flawless as it is smooth. It starts quicker; it resolves URLs faster than other clones. And it does all this while running cooler & placing less demand on the CPU.

I don't know HOW the Brave devs have done it, but I take my hat off to them, I really do..!

Mike.

[geo_c]

@rockedge :-

I'd go so far as to say that this just might supplant all the other clones as my 'go-to', default browser.
Mike.

This is snappy! Runs great in KLV-Airedale. I was having issues with ungoogled-Chromium in KLV.

[mikewalsh]

@rockedge / @Dingo :-

I don't know what's going on with Pale Moon, really I don't. I don't think, myself, that it's entirely Moonchild's fault; I have my suspicions that Tobin chucked a few "spanners in the works" by way of a 'going-away' present, y'know? (There again, it's entirely possible that Moonchild's not really 'up-to-speed' on this stuff; from what I can gather, he used to rely pretty heavily on Tobin for building the new releases every time they were due...)

@xenial will be able to guess better than most of you what I'm talking about, having been a regular on their forums for quite a while....

Mike.

[geo_c]

This is snappy! Runs great in KLV-Airedale. I was having issues with ungoogled-Chromium in KLV.

I am noticing now after booting it a few times that in KLV at least it does seem to hang for a good minute or two before operating normally. It may be the settings I have engaged, pretty heavy on the privacy, some of them which I do not fully understand.

But once it's up and running it's super fast.

[rockedge]

I was having issues with ungoogled-Chromium in KLV.

Can you describe the problems? I am running the ungoogled-Chromium-portable so far with no problems in KLV-Airedale-beta14 and KLV-Boxer-alpha2

[geo_c]

I was having issues with ungoogled-Chromium in KLV.

Can you describe the problems? I am running the ungoogled-Chromium-portable so far with no problems in KLV-Airedale-beta14 and KLV-Boxer-alpha2

Well, I just booted Ungoogled Chromium Version 101.0.4951.41 (Official Build, ungoogled-chromium) (64-bit) to give a report, and it seems to be doing the same thing that Brave is doing, which is it kind of freezes for 1-2 minutes, and becomes completely unresponsive. For instance, when I boot to my local html bookmarks home page, and scroll down, it gets stuck in the middle for a good while, then it lets me scroll to the bottom, and when I try scroll back up, it gets stuck again. Then at some point it levels out and runs fine.

I noticed yesterday, being on a 10 year old Dell Precision laptop, that KLV appears to being defaulting to xorg, rather than wayland, which I think I remember reading in the earlier posts that this is the way it's supposed to work. My uneducated guess is my older video card might have something to with the strange behavior of the Chromium based browsers. I don't have any such issues with LibreWolf.

[mikewalsh]

@geo_c :-

The clones can be quite fussy in some respects, though once you have them set correctly, they'll run solidly for ever.

This sounds like a hardware acceleration issue to me. Every Chromium-based browser I've ever run, has two settings that need investigating. In Brave's case, hit the hamburger menu button top right->Settings->Additional settings->System. You'll see a pair of options:-

• Continue running background apps when Brave is closed

• Use hardware acceleration when available

The first one, you should always, always un-check it. Due to the tab_sandbox model the Chromium 'clones' use, the browser can be closed, yet an individual tabbed process may have been spawned in the background by something else during your browsing session.....and it'll carry on silently running in the background, gobbling-up resources. Unchecking this prevents that from happening.

The second one is more trial & error, really. On the old Compaq rig, with integrated GPU and only 3 GB of 'shared' RAM, I found everything ran smoother - for me - if this was unchecked. On the new HP rig, with all that RAM, dedicated GPU with its own RAM, and just generally much newer with a lot more resources & capabilities, I now leave this in the default, checked position.

Right from day one, the clones have always made use of a 'default', raster graphics process by which they render & draw the screen. In recent years, the Chromium Project have done an awful lot of work on how the browser uses available GPU processes, and how it optimizes itself IF these extra abilities are available. Consequently, if you have a dedicated GPU it's best to use them; if not, and you have limited resources, it's best to disable hardware acceleration.

Maybe that'll help.....maybe not. Let us know what happens, please!

Mike.

[geo_c]

@geo_c :-
This sounds like a hardware acceleration issue to me. Every Chromium-based browser I've ever run, has two settings that need investigating. In Brave's case, hit the hamburger menu button top right->Settings->Additional settings->System. You'll see a pair of options:-

• Continue running background apps when Brave is closed

• Use hardware acceleration when available

Mike.

Thanks @mikewalsh, I always do keep 'run background apps' unchecked, and I always have 'use hardware acceleration' checked and active. I will try to uncheck it in KLV, but it occurs to me now, after running Ungoogled Chromium Portable and Brave Portable in Fossapup, that this stuck behavior only happens in KLV.

So next I will try them both in KLV with the hardware acceleration off and see how they do.

[mikewalsh]

@geo_c :-

Yeah, I too have small issues with running any of the clones in KLV.....especially when they were last started in Puppy.

First launch in KLV, all the fonts on the tabs and bookmarks are 'greyed-out', and all is very hard to read. Shut-down, and re-start, and everything is fine again.

Re-opening them back in Puppy, despite being closed-down correctly, on the first run they always insist they were NOT "shut down properly". A re-start, and everything behaves itself again.

'Twould appear to be a difference in the way Puppies and Void handle browsers.....though it's just a minor inconvenience, really.

(*shrug*)

Mike.

[geo_c]

@geo_c :-

Yeah, I too have small issues with running any of the clones in KLV.....especially when they were last started in Puppy.

First launch in KLV, all the fonts on the tabs and bookmarks are 'greyed-out', and all is very hard to read. Shut-down, and re-start, and everything is fine again.

Re-opening them back in Puppy, despite being closed-down correctly, on the first run they always insist they were NOT "shut down properly". A re-start, and everything behaves itself again.

'Twould appear to be a difference in the way Puppies and Void handle browsers.....though it's just a minor inconvenience, really.

(*shrug*)

Mike.

So the final report, after unchecking 'use hardware acceleration' in both browsers (Brave-portable, Ungoogled Chromium) in Fossapup and rebooting in KLV:

Both Browsers running normally again!

I've been sharing a lot of applications between the two different OS's and most work. But the chrome-based browsers don't handle the hardware acceleration on this particular machine in KLV.

Another application that I cannot share config files is Calcurse and I attribute that to the fact that I compiled Calcurse 4.8.0 separately for both Fossapup and KLV. I am able to symlink the actual data files, calendar 'apts' file and 'notes' folder, so that's convenient.

I've also been symlinking gtk themes to both OS's to a folder outside the persistent save, which is an experiment, and it works, though I get a few brief flickers on the monitor at times.

And perhaps this next report should go in the KLV-Airedale discussion, but ever since the first boot of KLV, I've noticed an anomaly, which is when KLV first initializes xorg, it seems to dump whatever was in the graphics processor's ram on to the screen for half a second or so. So in other words, when I boot KLV after running Fossapup, I see a brief flicker of Fossapup on the monitor!

[gychang]

Mike: just trying out the brave on FP64, and notice on my rig sound does not play from youtube and other web sites.
any fix for this?

[geo_c]

Mike: just trying out the brave on FP64, and notice on my rig sound does not play from youtube and other web sites.
any fix for this?

So I'll dovetail this as @gychang's post prompted me to try out Brave's audio in KLV. I am getting sound, however it's coming out my laptop speakers as opposed to the USB interface. I checked the pulse audio gui and I don't see any options there or in Brave to route the Brave audio. LibreWolf appimage automatically routes to the the USB interface. I haven't worked with Pulse audio much, and I'll add, from what I've read and seen, I'm not that crazy about it, but it looks like it might be around for awhile, so I'd like to get the lay-of-land with Pulse.

My question is: How do I get Brave to show up in Pulse audio?

I will search online as this is more of a Pulse/Brave/Void Linux question, and @mikewalsh can't be expected to solve every issue in every portable that's not related to his portable build!

EDIT: This looks interesting and relates to Void Linux - KLV-Airedale: https://docs.voidlinux.org/config/media/pulseaudio.html

[mikewalsh]

@geo_c :-

And perhaps this next report should go in the KLV-Airedale discussion, but ever since the first boot of KLV, I've noticed an anomaly, which is when KLV first initializes xorg, it seems to dump whatever was in the graphics processor's ram on to the screen for half a second or so. So in other words, when I boot KLV after running Fossapup, I see a brief flicker of Fossapup on the monitor!

Sounds very familiar. I get it too, so it's not just my GPU. Which is good to know.....

Me, I don't worry about it. I used to get the same thing every time I booted back & forth between Slacko 5.7.0 and Tahrpup 6.0.5 on the old Dell lappie, years ago. I suspect it's summat to do with the way Linux handles GPU-related stuff in specific set-ups......more so when using the in-kernel "nouveau" or "intel" drivers. It won't happen to everyone, and will be strictly hardware-dependent if it does.

(Thinking about it, yes; it only ever happens to me when running Puppies that are using the reverse-engineered kernel GPU driver modules. Never happens with the Nvidia proprietary drivers.....so there's a clue, I guess.)

And thank YOU for recognising that I can't be expected to solve every problem in my 'portable' builds. You're one of the very few that has. As you quite rightly say, I only re-package code that's been written/developed/compiled by others. I'm NOT the developer.....just a "packager".

Although audio issues could be related to apulse, of course.....

Mike.

[xenial]

I keep seeing and hearing a lot of hype for this browser and my old whiskers are twitching to have a go lol.I might drink the kool-aid and give it a whirl in my fossapup install.

In regard to palemoon.the forum is full of people having problems with websites and a couple of people have rage-quitted and gone over to other browsers.
With moonchild more or less on his own now i can see this becoming more of a problem with the passage of time as tobin did most of the inner coding for the browser.