Raspberry Pi (and Other Computer) Updates

So, second time was the charm on getting an image of Manjaro Linux with the XFCE desktop (instead of the KDE Plasma version I'd been using) to write to an SD card and actually boot up. The first time, I just got a bunch of boot errors.

This time it worked, and I've got all my stuff configured (e.g. installing Chromium, uninstalling Firefox, and not bothering, at least yet, to install Vivaldi). Based on a few readings (using psensor), I think I'm running a lower CPU temperature and consuming fewer CPU resources and less RAM with XFCE, which was the whole point. It's not as pretty as KDE Plasma, but you know, it's not like I spend a lot of time looking at window change animations and such.

As to how I handled the SD card thing, the previous method was

1. Download a disk image.
2. Ask my son to loan me his SD card reader and walk me through the command line stuff that I can never remember.

The new method is:

1. Download a disk image.
2. Use the new Chromebook to write the image to an SD card (it has a built-in card reader) from the "ChromeOS Recovery" utility, which allows writing any local image, not just ChromeOS.

Speaking of the new Chromebook, I think it was a hell of a deal for $65.

It's got a small (11.6") screen and a not especially fast processor (Intel Celeron at 1.1GHz), but it sports 8Gb of RAM, can run Android and Linux stuff, and can also double as a large tablet because it has a touchscreen. With my second "travel" monitor, USB hub, real keyboard and mouse, it should be a good "travel" machine and a good "work outside instead of at my desk because the weather's nice" machine. With its Android capabilities, I may be able to use it instead of my phone for Callin or Twitter Spaces podcasting as well. We'll see.

Raspberry Pi Travails Part N: Try, Try Again

So, after three attempts to get the 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS to work on my, um, Raspberry Pi (4, with 8Gb of RAM) without going into permanent freeze at random times, I'm going in another direction.

I've installed Manjaro Linux (a fork of Arch Linux) on an SD card. I chose the version with the KDE Plasma desktop, since that's what I'm comfortable with. I've also removed Firefox and installed Chromium and Vivaldi. While I don't think Vivaldi was the problem on the previous OS (it froze even when that application wasn't running), I'll probably stick with Chromium for at least a little bit.

So far, so good, but I've only been running it for half an hour or so.

Update, 20 hours or so later: Still so far, so good. I went ahead and got Vivaldi set up and am running that now. If I start getting system freezes again, I'll pretty much know it's involved. But I've been messing with it for an hour or so with no problems. Manjaro doesn't feel quite as fast/smooth as the 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS, but faster/smoother than the 32-bit version. And it seems to actually work reliably. Fingers crossed.