How to Install Vivaldi Browser on openSUSE Leap 15

Vivaldi is a freeware, cross-platform web browser developed by Vivaldi Technologies. It had grown from the downfall of Opera with many disgruntled when it changed from the Presto layout engine to a Chromium-based browser. This platform angered traditional Opera users. Since then, Vivaldi has become one of the most popular alternative Internet Browsers amongst the big three Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.

Vivaldi promotes itself as a leading browser with faster navigation, clever bookmarking, more intelligent browsing, extensive tab management, and a more visual approach.

In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Vivaldi Browser on openSUSE Leap 15.

Prerequisites

• Recommended OS: openSUSE Leap – 15.x.
• User account: A user account with sudo or root access.
• Required Packages: wget

Update Operating System

Update your openSUSE operating system to make sure all existing packages are up to date:

sudo zypper refresh

Once refreshed, run the update command.

sudo zypper update

The tutorial will be using the sudo command and assuming you have sudo status.

To verify sudo status on your account:

sudo whoami

Example output showing sudo status:

[joshua@opensuse ~]$ sudo whoami
root

To set up an existing or new sudo account, visit our tutorial on adding a User to Sudoers on openSUSE.

To use the root account, use the following command with the root password to log in.

su

The tutorial will use the terminal for installation found in  Activities> Show Applications > Terminal.

Example:

Create & Import Vivaldi Browser Repository

By default, Vivaldi Browser does not come included in the openSUSE repositories. However, you can quickly import the official repository on your system with the following method.

First, import the repository using the following command.

sudo zypper ar https://repo.vivaldi.com/archive/vivaldi-suse.repo

Example output:

Adding repository 'vivaldi' .........................................................[done]
Repository 'vivaldi' successfully added

URI         : https://repo.vivaldi.com/archive/rpm/x86_64
Enabled     : Yes
GPG Check   : Yes
Autorefresh : Yes
Priority    : 99 (default priority)

Next, import the GPG to verify the authenticity of the package.

sudo rpm --import https://repo.vivaldi.com/archive/linux_signing_key.pub

Now refresh your repository cache to make sure everything is in working order.

sudo zypper refresh

If you followed the tutorial and already imported the GPG key, this should work quickly without any prompts for GPG importing.

Install Vivaldi Browser

Now that you have imported the repository, you can install Vivaldi using the following command.

sudo zypper in vivaldi-stable

Example output:

Type Y, then press the ENTER KEY to proceed and complete the installation.

Confirm the version and build of the Vivaldi Browser version installed on your operating system using the following command:

vivaldi --version

Example output:

Vivaldi 5.0.2497.32 stable

How to Launch Vivaldi Browser

With the installation complete, you can run Vivaldi in a few different ways.

First, while you are in your terminal, you can use the following command:

vivaldi

Alternatively, run the Vivaldi & command in the background to free up the terminal:

vivaldi &

However, this isn’t practical, and you would use the following path on your desktop to open with the path: Activities > Show Applications > Vivaldi.

If you cannot find it, use the search function in the Show Applications menu if you have many applications installed.

Example:

The first time you open Vivaldi, you will be greeted by the following landing page to customize your browser.

You will have a series of about five pages of quick setting options to customize your Vivaldi experience. Overall, it should take 1 to 5 minutes at most, depending on how much customizing you would like to do.

Note, you will be able to choose a color theme, the Dark theme is quite popular along with Hot Pink, but others are available.

Example Dark:

Example Hot Pink:

Once done, you will see the final landing page, and you are good to go browsing.

Congratulations, you have successfully installed Vivaldi Browser on your openSUSE Leap 15 desktop.

How to Update Vivaldi Browser

To update, run the zypper refresh & update command in your terminal as you would check your entire system for any updates.

sudo zypper refresh

If one is available, use the upgrade option:

sudo zypper update

How to Remove (Uninstall) Vivaldi Browser

To remove the Vivaldi Browser, execute the following terminal command:

sudo zypper remove vivaldi-stable

Note that this will remove any unused dependencies originally installed with Vivaldi Browser.

Remove Vivaldi Browser Repository

To remove the repository from your openSUSE system, use the following command.

sudo zypper rr https://repo.vivaldi.com/archive/vivaldi-suse.repo

As above, this time, you are using “rr” instead of “ar”, to check if this was successful, use the following command to see if the Vivaldi repository remains in your repo list.

zypper lr -d

Comments and Conclusion

In the tutorial, you have learned how to import the Vivaldi repository and install the web browser on openSUSE Leap 15.

Overall, Vivaldi is a pretty good alternative to Firefox and Google Chrome, and its main rival is undoubtedly Brave Browser. However, Vivaldi comes with more features, and Brave is focused more on the privacy of its users. A new feature for Vivaldi is the tab management feature; by selecting multiple tabs, you can put them in a “stack,” which saves valuable real estate on the tab bar. Once in a stack, the tabs can be “tiled,” meaning the browser window is divided between the tabs, letting you work with several web pages simultaneously.