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Running Chromium on a Pi


Raspberry Pi 400

A while back, I blogged that I had bought a Raspberry Pi 400 and that I was really pleased with it. Since then, I have experimented with several operating systems from the default Raspberry OS to Ubuntu MATE and now Chrome OS. It's easy to do and if you have a few microSD cards, it's not destructive, simply insert the one you're in the mood for and boot up.


So why Chromium OS?

Because I've been so pleased with the Pi400, I am selling my Mac mini. I love that mini, but it is frustrating with forgetting my keyboard, booting to a blank screen and several other niggles. I can't complain about the operation, but with a work Mac, my iPad Air 4 (with keyboard) and the Pi400, it is sort of surplus. Oh, and I have an old 2013 MacBook Air used for roasting and it's still working perfectly.

I've been using Raspberry OS as the main OS on the Pi 400 for a week of two and it's been fine. I've configured it the way I want it and to be honest, no complaints. However, at work, I've also been writing quite a lot of writing on Chromebooks. Chromebooks obviously run Chrome OS and since there are ARM based laptops, I wondered if I could run it on the Pi. I thought it would be useful to use it myself and get a better appreciation for this stripped down OS.

ChromeOS is based on ChromiumOS, which is an open source operating system written by Google. It's very efficient and mostly runs apps from the browser. I could go into it more, but suffice to say, it runs very well on a Raspberry Pi. 

It is worth noting that Chromium is not exactly the same as ChromeOS. ChromeOS is Chromium with a Google layer on top, so whilst you can run Android apps on a Chromebook, you can't on a Pi. Also, as I write this, ChromeOS is on v89, but the version on my Pi is v86 so we are not completely up to date, but close.


Installing Chromium OS

Equipment required:

  • Raspberry Pi 3, 4, 400 (ideally you want 4GB memory)
  • 8GB microSD card minimum
  • A microSD card reader
  • A second computer
  • A Google account.


Method

  1. Install Etcher. Etcher is a program that lets you make a bootable USB stick or microSD card with a downloaded disk image. There are versions for macOS, Windows and Linux.
  2. Download Chromium. This is a project by the wonderful people at FydeOS. Be sure to download the right version - the Pi400 has a slightly different version. Remarkably, it's only about 500-600Mb!
  3. Insert your microSD card into a USB port. It's best to format the card to avoid any errors writing to it. It doesn't really matter what format, I chose FAT32.
  4. Load Etcher and click Select image, probably in your Downloads folder. Then click Select drive, which is your microSD card and then Flash! Etcher will then image your microSD card with ChromiumOS. It will then verify to check everyone has worked.
  5. Then eject the card and insert it into your Pi.
  6. Power up the Pi and in a few moments, you will be facing Chromium OS. I noticed the first time did take a bit longer.

Then all you need to do is follow the setup journey, choosing language and Wi-Fi and finally log in with your Google account.

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