About Time

Per The Verge:

You can download Chrome for Linux, and you can download Chrome for Arm devices — but if you’ve got a computer running Linux on Arm, not so much! Now, Google says it’s finally bringing Chrome to ARM64 Linux machines in Q2 2026, following Chrome for Arm Macs in 2020 and Chrome for Windows on Arm in 2024.

I'm not going to try to sell you on Chrome.

I happen to prefer Chromium -- which Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Brave, and Vivaldi are (or in some versions have been) based on.

Chromium is more naturally private (it doesn't send analytics data to Google), and it's open source for those who want to customize.

On the other hand, Chromium can be a little more work -- it doesn't come with some media codecs, etc. pre-configured and the updates are manual rather than automatic.

There are also, I understand, some browser extensions that demand Chrome rather than Chromium to work, but the reverse is also true -- Chrome does the "walled-garden" thing to keep you from running extensions Google hasn't approved.

The reason I say "about time" is a market thing. Low-end Arm Linux may not be a huge market segment, but its occupants are people who tend to throw money at offerings within the segment. They're always buying special add-ons, accessories, etc. that will work with their machines where generic stuff from Best Buy might not. Why would Google leave money on the table by making it harder to identify and reach those users more directly through its proprietary browser?

I guess there are counter-arguments to be made. Is someone whose "daily driver" PC is a Raspberry Pi really that likely to want Chrome? In this day and age, running a low-end Linux PC is kind of an attitude indicator, and that attitude problably correlates strongly with anti-Google sentiments. Those machines, in addition to Chromium, can also run Brave, Vivaldi, Firefox, etc. So maybe it really is an afterthought kind of thing.

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.

The One Indispensable Hardware Accessory for Your Raspberry Pi 4B

I love my Raspberry Pi 4B. Love it. I've worked entirely online, 8+ hours per day, for more than two decades, and my 4B (the CanaKit Raspberry Pi 4 Extreme Kit, 8 Gb of RAM, 128Gb mcro SD card "hard drive," $139.99 at Amazon, not an affiliate link) is my "desktop daily driver."

Unless you require special/proprietary software that's only available for e.g. Windows, the Pi can probably handle your desktop PC needs, at least if you go with something like my "high-end" kit. Kits with less RAM and less storage are still useful, but if you're planning to use a Pi as your main computer, go big.

Most kits come with everything you need to get started: The actual computer, which is just a stand-alone circuit board; a heat sink, and possibly a fan, both of which snap on easily; a case to cram that stuff in; an AC power adapter/cable; Mini HDMI to HDMI cables to connect up to two monitors (you'll need adapters or different cables if you're running VGA, DVI, etc.); and a micro SD card with NOOBS pre-installed on it (NOOBS lets you choose which of several operating systems to run, including the Raspberry Pi OS and some others).

But most kits don't include one absolutely, positively indispensable accessory:

A USB Hub

The Pi 4B sports four USB ports -- two of them USB 2, two of them USB 3.

Now, you may only use two of those ports on a regular basis -- one for your keyboard, one for your mouse.

But you know you're going to want to plug other stuff into the machine now and then. A USB flash drive. A USB hardware key for logging into "two-factor authentication" sites. A USB cable to charge up some other device. You might even want to keep a USB headset or webcam plugged in all the time, which would use up additional ports.

And the ports on the Pi are really cramped for space. They're all located on one end of the box, and right next to each other.

Here's the basic 4B, not yet installed in a case (photo by Michael H. („Laserlicht“) / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0). Keep in mind that the whole thing in a kit-provided case is about the size of a pack of cigarettes:

As you can see, with even two of the ports already in use, maneuvering something into the third or fourth (let alone the third and fourth) is going to be a real pain.

So, when you order your Raspberry Pi, do yourself a favor and throw a decent USB hub with a cable several inches long into your shopping cart at the same time. Having several open USB ports hanging out away from the case will save you from several seconds of irritation every time you want to connect or disconnect something.

You're welcome.

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.

Raspberry Pi OS, Strike Three

Yesterday, I had a little time to mess around, and also needed to remove the USB hub from my Raspberry Pi 4 anyway (I'm putting together my gear stack for working outdoors, need a USB hub, and discovered when the one I ordered arrived that I hadn't been paying attention and it was USB C on the computer side), so I decided to test my theory that my off-brand el-cheapo USB hub was the cause of 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS's "freezes up" behavior.

It wasn't.

As with my two prior attempts (one with the OS installed on a USB drive, the second on an SD card), the machine eventually just locked up -- no mouse movement, no response to keyboard shortcuts, etc. -- and required a hard reboot. I think this time it went for about 45 minutes.

I still don't think it's a software problem. Or, rather, I think that if it's a software problem, the software is the OS itself, not e.g. some rogue browser extension. Last time around, I added no extensions to my preferred browser, Chromium-based Vivaldi, and the time before that the browser wasn't even running when a freeze occurred.

On the other hand, I am now down to pretty basic peripheral hardware. Two small HDMI TVs as monitors -- the machine's default output is HDMI -- a regular old USB keyboard, and an ergonomic mouse that doesn't have any special drivers or anything like that. There doesn't seem to be anything for the new OS to stumble on, hardware-wise.

I'm wondering if it might have to do with the Raspberry Pi hardware itself. That seems like a strange possibility since it's a Raspberry Pi machine and the Raspberry Pi OS, but my machine is not the basic build. It's the Canakit (I'm pretty sure the most reputable Raspberry Pi kit company) "Raspberry Pi 4 Extreme," which has 8Gb of RAM.

Per Wikipedia, the 8Gb version of the Pi 4B "has a revised circuit board," and "[i]n mid-2021, Pi 4 B models appeared with the improved Broadcom BCM2711C0" (as opposed to whatever previous ARM processor was used). I bought my machine in mid-2021 and don't know if it uses the older or newer CPU.

So I suppose there may be a bug running around that has to do with the "revised circuit board" in the 8Gb model as opposed to the 2Gb default, or with the CPU change. If so, I suspect it's rare, as none of the stuff I've found with web searches on Raspberry Pi freezes resembles my own specific situation.

I must say that the 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS seems to get better (until the freeze comes) with each update. Starting and running a browser keeps getting faster and smoother. It's becoming very noticeable versus the 32-bit version.

But the number of times the 32-bit version has frozen up on me is zero, and I have yet to finish a long session on 64-bit without a freeze. I can't  have my computer freezing right in the middle of some unsaved work. So 32-bit it shall remain, until the next time I get around to updating to latest version of 64-bit and seeing what happens.