In this How-To I review the process of installing the Vivaldi web browser in ALT Linux.

I really had to contemplate whether writing this How-To would be really worth it. Installing Vivaldi’s web browser to my nice shiny new ALT Linux desktop really turned out to be a non-event. It was so easy that it took me all of two commands in a terminal window and less than five minutes to complete (including the download).

Even though it was so easy to do, I thought maybe going through the process may inspire others (here who visit Vivaldi.net) to give the ALT Linux distribution a try, once they see how easy it can be to install something that which they’re so familiar.

For this How-To, I’m installing Vivaldi onto my ALT Linux p9 i586 GNUStep OS, running Window Maker as my window manager. However, I can’t imagine how anything I’m about to demonstrate would differ in any significant way if you were to do this on another ALT Linux system (apart from which version of Vivaldi you’re installing).

First thing I had to do was find the proper version of Vivaldi to install, since I have a 32-bit system. Also, even though ALT-Linux uses Apt as it’s package manager, it utilizes RPM packages. So, after a quick visit to Vivaldi’s download archive, I was able to locate vivaldi-stable-3.8.2259.42-1.i386.rpm.

Before installing Vivaldi, there’s a pre-install package that ALT Linux has made available in it’s Sisyphus repository, called “vivaldi-preinstall”. It will prep the system for the Vivaldi install. To install it, simply open up a terminal window and go into Super User mode with:

su –

Then enter your Super User password.

To install the pre-install program, simply enter the command:

apt-get install vivaldi-preinstall

Once the pre-install is done, you can now go ahead and install the Vivaldi browser download with RPM. You can do this via the command line, like this:

rpm -ivh vivaldi-stable-3.8.2259.42-1.i386.rpm

Of course, you would have to replace the name of the .rpm file in the above command with the one you downloaded.

To install the .rpm file on my system, rather than do it using the command line, I used a little app that I like, called “X File Package”. It’s a simple utility that goes along with the XFE file manager. To use it, first you have to install XFE:

apt-get install xfe

Then you can launch XFP (as Super User) with the command:

xfp

Open the Vivaldi .rpm by clicking on the Folder icon, then navigate to the location to where you’ve downloaded the file. Open it and then you’ll see something like this:

One reason that I like using XFP over the command line is that I have a nice way of viewing the details of the package, along with a list of everything that it contains and where it will install its contents.

Click the Install/Upgrade button and you’re off!

After install, Vivaldi was also successfully added to the Window Maker application menu. However, this version of Vivaldi does not launch successfully on my 32-bit Linux desktop without the addition of the execution flag of –no-sandbox. So, I had to append my Window Maker menu entry with the –no-sandbox flag.

So, how does Vivaldi run on ALT Linux and the Window Maker window manager? Really well. It’s fast (for a Chormium based web browser), responsive and looks great. It’s a great option to have when I have to access those pesky Chrome-only web pages.  However, having to use the –no-sandbox flag is a let-down.  It’s a shame the Vivaldi development team chose to abandon we who still run 32-bit Linux systems.  I’m very glad we still have SeaMonkey.

If you’re curious about XFE, follow this LINK to find out more.  It really is a nice, light file manager for your X Windows system with a lot of useful features.

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