Turn a Raspberry Pi into a Chromebook
THE BEAUTY of single-board computers is that they can be switched between operating systems easily—it’s just a case of swapping a microSD card over and switching it back on. The operating systems are easy to install too, flashed to a card from your PC with a user-friendly piece of software.
Recently, we showed you how you can use a full 64-bit operating system—Ubuntu—on a Raspberry Pi, and get real work done on a diminutive PC. This time, we’re going to do the same thing, but to the opposite extreme. Chromium OS—an open-source version of the Chromebook OS—is as minimal as things come without being a command line, as it’s just the Chrome browser. But that doesn’t mean it’s particularly limited. There’s a full office suite in there, cloud storage, image editors, e-book readers, and all sorts of other apps that are available as web apps. With no flashy interfaces or 3D games to distract you, working like this is a low-powered way to get everyday computing tasks done.
It’s also quite responsive, which isn’t something you can say for some of the heavier operating systems available for the Pi. We’re using a Raspberry Pi 4 with 8GB of RAM here, but it will also run on a Pi 400, 3B or 3B+ model. –IAN EVENDEN
1 FLASH
You’ll need the Raspberry Pi Imager app to flash the ChromeOS build to a blank microSD card (Chromebooks typically come with 16 or 32GB of local storage, but this version only gives you 4GB, no matter how large a card you use— there’s a way around this, though). The app runs on Windows, Ubuntu, Raspberry Pi OS, or macOS, and can be found at www. raspberrypi.org/software. Once that’s installed, head to http:// bit.ly/MPCaprfydeOS and download the Chromium OS image for your particular Pi model.
>> If you want to build the OS image yourself, head to the project’s main Github page, and you’ll find all sorts of discussion about that sort of thing, along with some known issues, one of which is important and we’ll come to later. In the Imager, choose a custom OS, [ Image A] then point it toward the IMG file you downloaded from Github. Choose the card you want to use, and set it working. We’re using R86r2, released on December 30, 2020, but there may be newer releases by the time you read this.
2 BOOT
Put the newly flashed card into your Pi’s slot, and switch it on. The first boot can take a little while, but you’ll soon be taken through the basic setup routines for the OS, including connecting to Wi-Fi. Chromium OS requires a Google account to sign in with, and if you’re a Chrome browser user you get all your bookmarks and extensions synced across. We often find that there’s a period of nonresponsiveness on the password screen, but it usually clears after 30 seconds so you can log in. It’s a minimalist
UI, with a Mac-like dock at the bottom and the browser taking up the rest of the screen—but what more do you need?
3 EXTENSIONS AND APPS
Remember that important issue we told you about? The first thing you should do is open the Chrome Web Store and install the Keep Awake extension [ Image B]. When that’s done, set it to Sunny Mode, which stops your Pi from going to sleep. The developers of this Chromium fork haven’t quite worked out the Pi’s sleep system, and if it goes to sleep it won’t wake up again. Or if it does, the keyboard input doesn’t work, and you can’t type your password.
>> Browse the Web Store and see if there’s anything else you need to install—the Chrome Web Store is packed with extensions, though not all of them are compatible. The image editor Polarr wasn’t when we checked, but Photopea, which is reminiscent of Photoshop, runs fine, albeit with a large gray bar down the right-hand side. Graphic design app Canva works too [ Image C] .
4 GOOGLE DOCS
Working with Google Drive and Docs is exactly the same as in any other Chrome browser. Just open them in a new tab, and you’ll get the familiar experience.
We tried Microsoft Office Online too, and while it worked, it was an altogether slower experience.
>> A Chromebox is very much an online entity, with little local storage, so you’ll need to get used to storing documents in the cloud—especially as there’s such a small amount of local storage included. If you find you need to increase the amount of storage available to the Chromebox, you can expand the filesystem to the full size of the card through the developer shell. Press Ctrl + Alt + T from the desktop, and a browser tab will open containing crosh. Type “Shell”, and you’ll be in Bash [ Image D]. Type “sudo rm /mnt/stateful_ partition/.autoexpanded” and reboot the OS.
5 MEDIA
You’d expect browser-based streaming services to be accessible through Chromium OS, but they’re hit and miss. Being a Google project, YouTube is of course prominent, and we were able to watch a SpaceX capsule arrive at the International Space Station live and without jerkiness [ Image E]. Attempting to watch hilarious Eddie Murphy movie Comingto America on Amazon Prime, however, failed on every attempt with an unhelpful error. The Matrix Revolutions failed in the same way, but admittedly felt like less of a loss. This was due to the Widevine DRM system for Chrome not being supported in Chromium OS. There’s a way around it, which is linked to from the “Issues” page of the Chromium OS for Raspberry Pi Github.
6 SETTINGS AND SHORTCUTS
The Settings app is the blue cogwheel icon in the dock, and opens into a comprehensive set of options for your device. It’s where you go to connect to a new Wi-Fi network, add a new user to the Chromebox, or pair a new Bluetooth device, as well as adjust the screen resolution and scaling. On a 4K display, we found things much easier to use if we boosted it up to 175 percent of the usual scale. Settings also contains options for personalization (see the box) and, under the “Apps” heading, you can choose which apps are pinned in the dock. Some, like
Photopea, open in their own windows, while others, such as Google Drive and Canva, open in a browser tab.
7 QUICK SETTINGS AND POWER
Click the gray lozenge at the bottom-right corner, and you’ll get a pop-up menu with quick settings, such as turning Bluetooth on and off, changing the volume, locking the screen, and turning the system off [ Image F]. Being a Raspberry Pi, the unit does not have the ability to switch itself off, so you’ll have to cut the power yourself once the OS has finished shutting down. Most Raspberry Pi kits come with a handy switch on the power supply lead for this purpose.