Are there any downsides to using Homebrew as a package manager on Linux?
I'm especially concerned about it being somehow broken, unwieldy, insecure or privacy-invasive.
Case in point; at times I have to rely on a Chromium-based browser if a website decides to misbehave on a Firefox-based browser. Out of the available options I gravitate towards Brave as it seems like the least bad out of the bunch.
Unfortunately, their RPM-package leaves a lot to be desired and has multiple times just been awful to deal with. So much so that I have been using another Chromium-based browser instead that's available directly from my distro's repos. But..., I would still switch to Brave in an instant if Brave was found in my distro's repos. A quick search on repology.org reveals that an up-to-date Brave is packaged in the AUR (unsurprisingly), Manjaro and Homebrew. I don't feel like changing distros for the sake of a single program, but adding Homebrew to my arsenal of universal package managers doesn't sound that bad. But, not all universal package managers are created equal, therefore I was interested to know how Homebrew fares compared to the others and if it handles the packaging of the browser without blemishing the capabilities of the browser's sandbox.
P.S. I expect people to recommend me Distrobox instead. Don't worry, I have been a staunch user of Distrobox for quite a while now. I have also run Brave through an Arch-distrobox in the past. But due to some concerns I've had, I chose to discontinue this. Btw, its Flatpak package ain't bad either. But unfortunately it's not official, so I choose to not make use of it for that reason.
I'd advise against using Brave, but that's a different topic.
Just use the Flatpak. Do not care if it's official, most packages in traditional package managers are not packaged officially, yet we use them all the time. Check the Flatpak repo instead to see if there's something wrong.
Maybe check ungoogled chromium too while you're at it.
While there's definitely truth in this, aren't we already trusting the repos of traditional package manager by choosing to use the associated distro? So, by e.g. choosing to use Debian , you've already (somehow) accepted their packages to be 'thrustworthy'. We already trust the developers of the apps/binaries we use. Therefore, we have two sets of parties we trust by default. I would rather not increase the amount of people I have to trust for software, but I can understand why others might differ on this.
Yes, the main source of trust is in the repository and its maintainers when choosing a distro.