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Chromium vs Brave (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by qwert230839265026494@sh.itjust.works to c/privacyguides@lemmy.one

36 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/5572424

This might have been discussed to death by now, unfortunately I couldn't find any discussion on it on Lemmy. Though I would love to be corrected on that!

How does an always on incognito Chromium with uBlock Origin on medium mode (and other hardening/privacy settings enabled) compare to Brave (with e.g. Privacy Guides' recommended settings) with respect to security and privacy on Linux^[1]^?

Commonly heard whataboutisms:

"With the looming advent of Manifest v3, this discussion might not be very relevant for long." I'm aware.

"Just use Firefox/Librewolf or any other privacy-conscious browser that isn't Chromium-based." I already do, but some websites/platforms don't play nice on non-Chromium-based browsers due to Google's monopoly on the web. Sometimes I can afford to not use that website/platform, but unfortunately not always.

"Brave's [insert controversy] makes them unreliable to take services from." Honestly, I think that if both solutions are as effective that a reason like this might be sufficient to tip the balance in favor of one. Because ultimately this all comes down to trust.

"Just use Ungoogled Chromium." Some more knowledgeable people than me advice against it. Though, I'd say I'm open to hear different opinions on this as long as they're somewhat sophisticated.

"Just use [insert another Chromium-based browser]." If it has merits beyond Brave and Chromium with respect to security and privacy, I'll consider it.

Thanks in advance!

I can be more specific about which distro I prefer using, but I don't think it matters. I might be wrong though*.

all 40 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[+] ReversedCookie@feddit.de 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] qwert230839265026494@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Bounce tracking

TIL.

Fingerprinting

Gosh, I can't believe I forgot about Brave's excellent implementation of fingerprint-spoofing.

Also Brave announced on X/Twitter that they will continue supporting MV2, Chromium won’t.

This is a big thing. Thank you for mentioning that!

if you rly don’t like Brave

I've actually for the longest time used Brave as my go-to Chromium-based browser, but it seems as if the support on Linux leaves a lot to be desired. I don't understand for example why it just isn't included in the repos of Arch, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Ubuntu etc. Sure; the AUR has it -also available as a not up to date nixpkg-, but the others have to either download the .deb or rpm package (which is undesirable due to inability to keep it updated at all times) OR rely on Brave's own repos, that somehow borks itself every once in a while. Which actually just happened a couple of days ago on my device*. I'm on Fedora Silverblue, so it was already quite hacky to get Brave from its own repos. But due to the repos borking themselves, I didn't get any automatic system updates at all for the last couple of days. I only noticed it yesterday when I did my weekly manual update. Perhaps I should setup something that notifies me when the automatic system update fails, but I'll prefer if the repos I rely on don't call it quits whenever they feel like it. Apologies for my rant*.

Vivaldi would be a good alternative, but is weaker than Brave, since it includes not all the protections or alternatives which Brave has.

Would you say that Vivaldi is (at least) better than Chromium for security and privacy?

[–] t0m5k1@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I use arch-btw so I get arch from aur, on other Linux distros the way to get brave is via flatpak if the provided repos are borked for you.

[–] qwert230839265026494@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

on other Linux distros the way to get brave is via flatpak if the provided repos are borked for you.

I would love to use the flatpak if it was endorsed. Privacy Guides says the following about it:

"We advise against using the Flatpak version of Brave, as it replaces Chromium's sandbox with Flatpak's, which is less effective. Additionally, the package is not maintained by Brave Software, Inc."

[–] Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Aur is just repackaging the official Debian package, that’s a very straightforward process. Most distro repositories don’t work that way, they build the binaries themselves. Some interested party would need to put in the work.

[–] qwert230839265026494@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Most distro repositories don’t work that way, they build the binaries themselves.

Interesting. Is this a matter of trust?

[–] chenxiaolong@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I don't understand for example why it just isn't included in the repos of Arch, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Ubuntu etc.

For the most part, these distros all require that packages are built from source vs. repackaging prebuilt binaries. While Brave is open source, if you compile it yourself, you'll be missing tons of API keys for accessing Brave's services: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Build-configuration. While I suspect most folks wouldn't care if eg. the cryptocurrency things stopped working, other things that break include Brave Sync and the downloading of the adblocker filter lists.

Brave currently does not provide a way for 3rd parties to generate API keys to access these services: https://community.brave.com/t/does-brave-allow-the-distribution-of-self-compiled-or-distro-compiled-binaries/457833. Outside of reverse engineering their prebuilt binaries to extract the API keys, you're pretty much out of luck (if you care about these features working).

For websites that only work in Chromium, I've switched to just using plain old Chromium from Fedora's repos. Being able to build the browser from source without losing features is pretty important to me (eg. I rebuild Fedora's Chromium with the patches for enabling hardware video decoding on Wayland).

[–] furzegulo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

firefox/librewolf

[–] qwert230839265026494@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

firefox/librewolf

“Just use Firefox/Librewolf or any other privacy-conscious browser that isn’t Chromium-based.” I already do, but some websites/platforms don’t play nice on non-Chromium-based browsers due to Google’s monopoly on the web. Sometimes I can afford to not use that website/platform, but unfortunately not always.

😅. Thanks anyways 👍.

[–] nutbutter@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I have only seen people saying this, but have never come across such a website that does not work properly on Firefox.

I have only seen the issue that Jitsi does not support e2ee on Firefox.

[–] qwert230839265026494@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just a few days ago I tried to pay for flight tickets on flypgs.com. Multiple attempts on Firefox didn't work, while the first attempt on a Chromium-based one did. It might have been a fluke, but every so often issues like these do happen. And for some reason switching the browser does bear a positive result. YMMV though.

[–] empireOfLove@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Change your user agent to Chrome/Windows. 99% of the time, weirdness will go away.

I have daily driven Firefox for about 8 years now. There is exactly 1 (one) site that I've had not work in FF because of an actual incompatibility that user agent switching didn't fix. Is one single site worth feeding Google's monopoly?

[–] Carter@feddit.uk 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Brave is a buggy browser from a scummy company.

[–] qwert230839265026494@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

Brave is a buggy browser

Honestly my experience on Brave (on Fedora) hasn't been great 😅. So I can definitely attest to that. I'm willing to deal with it as long as its merits are substantial, which so far seem to be the case 😭. But thank you for confirming that I'm not the only that has experienced difficulties while using it!

[–] t0m5k1@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I've only ever had issues with the sync feature. I see many people have issues with rewards but I'm not into monetisation and have always just disabled the rewards part of it.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 7 points 1 year ago

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/

The privacy guides article does discuss brave in detail.

[–] bug@lemmy.one 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Cromite is a fork of the seemingly-abandoned Bromite, which used to be the only browser recommended by GrapheneOS (other than their own Vanadium). It's relatively new though so I don't think that much has been written about it for comparison.

[–] qwert230839265026494@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks a lot for mentioning this! I didn't know someone took over the good work from Bromite. I'll definitely check into it! Am I correct to assume that (like Bromite), this is a browser exclusively meant to be used on Android devices? I guess I might get it to work on Waydroid as well, not sure if I would like to commit to that yet though. Nonetheless, this input of yours has been much appreciated!

[–] Lemongrab@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Iirc cromite supports Android and windows ATM. Check the repo here: https://github.com/uazo/cromite

Updating using obtanium works good.

[–] qwert230839265026494@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

No Linux, I feel left out 😭. Though it would be awesome if I could get it working in Wine (read: Bottles).

Update: I wasn't able to make it work in Wine. I assumed the chrome.exe file was the browser. Though, I might be wrong. I would love others to chime in on this!

[–] Lemongrab@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

Yea I get it. I have to use ungoogled instead

[–] bug@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

Ah, I missed the part where you said "Linux", sorry!

load more comments (-1 replies)

[–] t0m5k1@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Chromite/Bromite is primarily an android browser, even on windows it looks and behaves just like a mobile app.

Whilst I like the feature set as an alternative to Brave the fact they refuse to fix the PWA situation as it's "Of no interest" to the dev is a no go for me.

[–] bug@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

Ah, I missed the part in the OP where it said "Linux", whoops

[–] Boomkop3@reddthat.com 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ungoogled chromium isn't as bad as the post makes it seem. Most of the described issues aren't a risk on any modern operating system, and a quick google search finds you an extension that re enables updates and the chrome web store

[–] qwert230839265026494@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Did you mean this "chromium-web-store" extension?

[–] Boomkop3@reddthat.com 2 points 1 year ago

I'm not at my pc rn, but that looks like the one I'm running. Tho the updates are semi auto according to the readme

[–] t0m5k1@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I've used brave since it came out. I use tampermonkey, edit this cookie and bitwarden extensions. Additionally I use pihole/unbound+roothints.

I tend not to let Brendan's controversies affect my choice because if I did I'd have to avoid JavaScript.

Brave provides me with a more secure chrome with extra bells and whistles. I'm a heavy user of app windows as I refuse to use electron based apps due them being pure chrome. When other browsers do this with the same protection as brave I'll consider moving.

[–] qwert230839265026494@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

~~Brendan’s~~ Brave's controversies

I assume?

app widows

A google search didn't give me any useful pointers. Did you perhaps meant to convey PWAs?

[–] t0m5k1@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mentioned Brendan specifically because people like to lump in his flaws as reasons for not using brave in these discussions.

Yes I was referring to pwa's, ssb's, app windows, whatever you want to call them. Firefox used to have xulrunner and prism to provide them but now Firefox doesn't provide a way other than a JavaScript popup via bookmarklet.

[–] qwert230839265026494@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I mentioned Brendan specifically because people like to lump in his flaws as reasons for not using brave in these discussions.

True. His name didn't stick with me as his controversies and the fact that he is co-founder and CEO of Brave weren't necessarily reasons I would forego Brave for. Feelings have to be put aside IMO in favor of merits.

Firefox used to have xulrunner and prism to provide them but now Firefox doesn’t provide a way other than a JavaScript popup via bookmarklet.

It's really unfortunate that Firefox did this. This is actually one of the reasons why I like to have a Chromium-based browser around. I might eventually switch over to Epiphany for that.

[–] t0m5k1@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've not used GNOME for over a decade and have not used GNOME web for even longer lol. I'll stick with brave as it fits my needs.

[–] qwert230839265026494@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Fair 👍.