Instructions on installing the Vivaldi browser in Vanilla OS through apx (AUR container)

vanilla-os_installing-vivaldi.md

Installing Vivaldi on Vanilla OS

Requirements

• Vanilla OS
• Willingness to learn :P

Credits

• Vanilla OS handbook

• Vanilla OS community (hyperlink leads to their Discord) for patiently answering my noob questions, especially:

  • Feng Lengshun
  • Dharun Krishna
  • Monster
  • xrandr

• ArchWiki

Initialising and entering the apx Arch (AUR) subsystem container

(Don't worry, we're not actually using Arch)

This guide explains how to set up subsystem containers in-depth, but here's a TL;DR for setting the AUR container.

GUI way

1. Open Vanilla OS Control Center (VSO).
2. Go to the Sub System tab.
3. Press the + button beside the box labelled Arch Linux Sub System.
4. A terminal window will open, showing initialization.
5. After some time, you will be in the AUR container labelled as

username@apx_managed_aur~$

The Sub System tab in Vanilla OS Control Center (VSO). Credit: Vanilla OS handbook.

CLI way

1. Open a terminal.
2. Type in:

apx init --aur

3. After some time, the container should be ready to use.
4. Enter the container with

apx enter --aur

5. After some time, you will be in the AUR container labelled as

username@apx_managed_aur~$

To exit the container, simply type in exit in the terminal before closing the terminal window (applies to both ways).

Installing Vivaldi

1. Install the browser. If you want to use the snapshot version, replace vivaldi with vivaldi-snapshot.

apx install --aur vivaldi

• During installation, you will see a prompt asking for font installation. I chose the default value, which is 1 (gnu-free-fonts), but feel free to experiment at your own risk.

2. Install the proprietary codecs needed for video and audio to play. If you installed vivaldi-snapshot, then install vivaldi-snapshot-ffmpeg-codecs instead.

apx install --aur vivaldi-ffmpeg-codecs

Installing Pipewire for Vivaldi (and basically any other AUR program)

This step is also important so your desktop knows how to route the audio properly to your audio devices.

1. Install pipewire-audio:

apx install --aur pipewire-audio

2. Install pipewire-pulse:

apx install --aur pipewire-pulse

• During installation, you will see a prompt for pipewire-session-manager. Again, I chose the default value, which is 1 (wireplumber), but feel free to experiment at your own risk.

Now Vivaldi should be functioning perfectly!

Limitations

Tested with the both stable and snapshot version.

• (Only applies to snapshot) Icons in the status bar (the bar at the bottom of the browser) do not show up and function properly.

• A new Vivaldi icon will open for each window, regardless of whether the icon in the Application Menu is pinned to the dock or not.

Added clarification regarding the difference between stable and snapshot.