Install Brave Browser Ubuntu

Brave browser is an open-source and free web browser designed by Brave Software Inc. and based on the Chromium browser. It is a privacy-focused browser that can automatically block website trackers and online advertisements in its default settings. Also, it gives users a choice to add optional ads that users pay for their attention in the BAT (Basic Attention Tokens) cryptocurrency form.

Then, users can send contributions to content and website creators, which support Basic Attention Tokens in the tips form with the ability to have the cryptocurrency they gained. The headquarters of Brave is in California (San Francisco). Brave reveals to have 57.42+ million active users monthly, 19.3 million active users daily, and a network of 1.6+ million content creators as of August 2022.

BAT (Basic Attention Tokens)

BAT has been described as a cryptocurrency token that is Ethereum-based, made for use as a cryptocurrency, and in a decentralized and open-source ad exchange platform. It works according to the ERC-20 standard.

On 31 May 2017, Brave sold 1 million BAT for 1,56,250 Ethereum (35 million dollars) in less than 30 seconds in a starting coin offering. An extra 500 million BAT was kept by the enterprise to be used for advertising the platform's adoption. The enterprise disbursed at the initial round of the "user growth pool" grants in early December 2017. Three lakh BAT was shared with new customers on FCFS (First Come, First Served) basis.

BAT became present on the Binance Smart Chain in the wrapped BAT form in March 2021. The tokens are enclosed by Binance, and the actual BAT is kept with Binance in "Token Vaults".

History of Brave Browser

CDO Brian Bondy and CEO Brendan Eich discovered Brave Software on 28 May 2015. Brave Software announced the first Brave version with ad-blocking abilities and launched privacy-related ad platform plans on 26 January 2016.

Brave published a pay-to-surf browser test version in June 2018. This Brave version came preloaded along with 250 ads approximately and sent a complete log of the browsing activity to Brave of the user for a short-term aim of checking this functionality.
Brave worked on an Electron fork known as Muon, which they advertised as a "more secure fork" until December 2018. Brave developers switched to Chromium, citing the requirement to the burden of their maintenance.
Brave Software published the final Muon-based edition with the purpose that it would instruct users and stop working on updating because of its end-of-life approach.
Brave began testing a fresh rule-matching ad-blocking algorithm written in Rust, replacing the old C++ one in June 2019. The Ghostery and uBlock Origin algorithms inspired the fresh logic, which Brave ensures to be on average 69 times faster as compared to the old algorithm.
Brave published the 1.0 stable release version on 13 November 2019 while having 8.7 million active users monthly. Approximately it had 3 million daily active users at the time. Brave 1.0 can run on Linux, macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android. Brave announced having 20 million users monthly in November 2020, and it passed 36 million active users monthly in September 2021.

Brave became the initial browser to be included in the Epic Games Store in April 2021. The public beta for Brave Search, the search engine of Brave Software, was launched in June 2021. In June 2022, it quit its beta phase.

Features of Brave Browser

Brave Firewall + VPN

It is a system-wide browser-based VPN and firewall for iOS. It applies The Guardian VPN.

Brave Wallet

It is a crypt native wallet with no extensions needed. It supports every EVM-compatible chain (Avalanche, xDai, Polygon, etc.) and L2 chains. The support of Brave Wallet is restricted to the desktop browser. However, it is planned to be enhanced to mobile browsers. Brave Walled can also be used to keep non-fungible tokens.

Brave Wallet (Legacy)

It is a MetaMask fork, which comes preloaded with Brave.

Brave Search

It is a search engine designed by Brave and published in March 2021 in the Beta form, following the Tailcat acquisition, a secured search engine through Cliqz. Brave Search is a search engine (default) for Brave browser users in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States since October 2021.

It enables the browser to collaborate with many websites that are supporting the MetaMask APIs for signing crypto transactions for Virtual Machine networks of supported Ethereum.

Brave Swap

It is an aggregator for 0x-based cryptocurrency DEX. It enables users to swap Ethereum tokens for many tokens from inside the browser. The Brave browser makes money off it by earning a small fee for the "router". It plans to give 20% of this fee to the customers in the BAT token form.

Privacy

Every user's data is stored privately on the device of the user and is not usable by others. The browsing data is not transferred to the server of Brave, so only the device users can check the browsing data. A study examining browser privacy by the University of Dublin's Professor Douglas J. Leith said that Brave had the highest privacy level of the browsers inspected. Brave didn't have "any use of identifiers allowing tracking of IP address overtime, and no sharing of the details of web pages visited with backend servers".

Brave applies fingerprint randomization to avoid browser fingerprinting, which lets the browser look distinct to websites on browser reboot.
It ensures that the users of Brave can't be uniquely tracked or identified with browser fingerprinting periodically.
Brave revealed a new privacy aspect dubbed "debouncing" on 15 October 2021.
The new aspect is developed to disarm bounce tracking, a technique of internet tracking from intermediary domains that load if users press a link.
Automatically, debouncing will identify when users are going to visit the tracking domain and re-communicates to the user to their desired destination.
Tests planned by Digital Trends saw Brave to be the only mainstream browser that passed the "Cover Your Tracks" test of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Brave revealed the de-AMP aspect in April 2022 that bypasses the AMP system of Google, directing the user to the actual website rather. The company specified it as a privacy aspect, calling AMP "dangerous to the web and users at large".

Brave Talk

Brave Talk is a privacy-focused browser-based video conferencing tool that is Jitsi-based. In September 2021, it was accommodated into Brave. By default, the widget of Brave Talk was created to be visible on the New Tab Page.

Brave Shields

It is an engine encouraged by uBlock Origin and many others, which blocks trackers and third-party ads in a similar way to many extension-based ad blockers. These advertisement blocking aspects are activated by default. Customers are given control to manage ad blocking, cookies, and script settings in the browser's Shields and Privacy section. Also, Brave Shields can avoid fingerprint tracking with a method known as "farbling", permitting all browser sessions to look unique.

Tor windows

Brave offers Tor bridges, .onion, and Tor support in its desktop edition. Users can move to Tor-enable browsing by pressing the hamburger menu of the browser.

Brave Rewards

The Brave browser users can prefer the Brave Rewards aspect since April 2019, which enables them to earn BAT as a reward to view privacy-preserving ads and utilize earned BAT in several ways. Users can get BAT by seeing advertisements shown as notifications by the OS of their device or computer or as a native pop-up window. The advertising campaigns are the same as users by interface through their browsing history; it is locally carried out, with no personal data transmission external to the browser.

Users may select to transfer BAT micropayments to content and website creators in the ecosystem. Site creators and owners must register themselves on Brave as a publisher. Either users can turn on the auto-contribute features, which automatically categorizes monthly contributions in the percentage of the time spent, or they can send a selected amount manually while visiting the creator or site. Alternatively or in addition, users may pull back their BAT to a valid Gemini or Uphold wallet.

The first micropayment version aspect was announced in 2016 under the "Brave Payments" name and utilized Bitcoin. Ads were displayed in a different browser tab.

Other aspects

IPFS (InterPlanetary File System): Brave became one of the initial web browsers to provide a native union with a peer-to-peer networking protocol in January 2021.
SugarCoat: It is a tool developed in Brave since the 4th quarter of 2021 that automatically substitutes tracking libraries using a privacy-preserving and spoofed replacement to enhance site compatibility using adblocking scripts.
Blockchain domain names: Brave provides its support for decentralized domains, especially the ones given by ENS (Ethereum Name Services) and Unstoppable Domains.
News aggregator: Brave developed a personalized news reader aimed at user privacy in the browser in December 2020. It was retitled to Brave News from Brave Today in 2021. Also, the new feed contains promoted articles that are brave ads platform-based as of June 2021.
Wayback Machine Integration: The Wayback Machine was assimilated into the browser in February 2020. Upon encountering an http 404 error, the Wayback Machine is queried to show the cached page version automatically.
Brave Playlist: It is an iOS aspect that enables users to establish playlists containing data from a range of media sources, such as video and audio streams.
de-AMP: Brave started to roll out an upgrade to its mobile clients that would bypass the AMP pages of Google automatically in May 2020.

Brave Controversies

Brave collecting charities in support of content creators

Tom Scott, a British content creator for YouTube, stated that he had not got any charities gathered by Brave on his behalf in December 2018.

DNS leaks "Private Window with Tor"

The disclosure stated that Brave was transferring DNS requests to user ISPs rather than routing them from the Tor network. Hence, permitting ISPs to have an understanding of the business sessions of the user.

Referral code insertion

A Twitter user said that Brave added affiliate referral codes while users communicated with Binance on 6 June 2020.

How to Install Brave Browser on Ubuntu?

Brave is a free and open-source browser to securely browse the internet. It provides excellent data privacy and doesn't permit others to use the data.

Also, Brave is available free to install on every operating system, such as Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Ubuntu. This browser claims better privacy and performance than other browsers. It uses less memory and faster loads the content with less battery utilization.

Installation Process

We need to follow the following steps in order to install the Brave Browser in Ubuntu.

Step 1: Launch the Terminal

We need to open our terminal window to get the Brave browser with the help of the shortcut keys, i.e., Ctrl+Alt+T.

Step 2: Install Dependencies

We need to execute the following command in our terminal window to install a few needed dependencies before completing the installation of the Brave Browser:

We need to click the y key and enter to proceed with the installation process. The needed dependencies are now successfully installed.

Brave browser isn't available in the Ubuntu 22.04 Official APT repository if we are using the 22.04 version of Ubuntu. We need to import the GPG keys and add the Brave browser repository.

Step 4: Importing GPG Keys

We will run the below command for importing the GPG keys:

$ sudo curl -fsSLo /usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg

Step 4: Add Browser Repository

We will execute the below command for adding the repository to download its packages for the installation process:

$ echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg arch=amd64] https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list