If anyone needed convincing that the Chromium browser ain't the Chrome browser, then go no further this URL: http://tinyurl.com/yd5kh5at. It refuses to open in Chromium running on my Raspberry Pi 400 but it will open in Firefox running on the same machine. It will open again quite happily in the Chrome browser running under Linux Mint on my 2013 MacBook Pro.
Why is it so? I simply don't know. I've already mentioned that Chromium also has serious issues accessing Blogger, a Google product. Take my Mathematical blog, Mathematical Meanderings, for example at http:\\voodooguru23.blogspot.com. Trying to open this in Chromium gives the dreaded message shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1
Again, why is it so? By the way, this expression was burnt into my brain thanks to the television series of the same name that I used to watch as a teenager back in the 60's. Professor Julius Sumner Miller was the presenter of this show (see Figure 2). To quote from Wikipedia:
Why Is It So? is an educational science series produced in Australia by ABC Television from 1963 to 1986. The series was hosted by American scientist Julius Sumner Miller, who demonstrated experiments in the world of physics. The series was also screened in the United States, Canada, New Zealand and in Europe.
Figure 2
I'm sure the good professor would have come up with an explanation but, for now, I don't have one. As an aside, but of pedagogical import, he is quoted as saying during an interview in the 1940's that:
We are approaching a darkness in the land. Boys and girls are emerging from every level of school with certificates and degrees, but they can't read, write or calculate. We don't have academic honesty or intellectual rigor. Schools have abandoned integrity and rigor.
I'm sure he would have been appalled at the situation in the 2020's. Meanwhile, the vagaries of the Chromium browser continue to disturb me. Then again, I've just noticed that I cannot open my mathematical blog using Firefox on the Raspberry Pi. Maybe the vagaries lie with the OS. I'll continue to investigate.
The problem with WINE running on a 64-bit operating system, such as I have installed on my Raspberry Pi 400, is that it cannot run 32-bit software like Astrolog without additional software. I successfully installed WINE on my Raspberry Pi OS, or so I thought, but soon discovered there were still many more steps required before I could ever hope to run Astrolog.
Twister OS is 32-bit and seems to include WINE out of the box, so I'm keen to test it out on the Raspberry Pi. All I need is another SD card and was curious to know how much the card currently in my Pi cost. It is a 16GB SanDisk Ultra and can be bought online for under Rp40,000 or about A$4. Not a huge expense!
If I buy several then I can run a variety of operating systems including Ubuntu, UbuntuMate, Twister and Manjaro. The only problem is that the cards are so tiny, it would be easy to misplace them. There is a version designed especially for the Raspberry Pi 4.
I will attempt to install it tomorrow if I can acquire an SD card from the corner shop. It seems that BerryBoot OS will allow me to include multiple operating systems on a single SD card.
For people short on SD cards: Berryboot is a simple boot selection screen for ARM computers like the Raspberry Pi, that allows you to put multiple Linux distributions on a single SD card. In addition it allows you to put the operating system files on an external USB hard drive instead of on the SD card itself.
ADDENDUM:
You need to accept that anything you try in Linux will fail on the first attempt and probably the second and may ultimately fail completely. Such was the case with the much hyped Berryboot. Even though I managed to get it running on an SD card, it would not display the operating system that I wanted, namely Twister. So, useless.
What I did was download the image from the Twister website and then I used Balena Etcher to install it on a newly acquired 16GB SD card. My Raspberry Pi 400 booted into the Twister OS without any problems. My initial reaction to this new operating system was quite positive. Google Chrome came pre-installed and, after some tinkering, I managed to pipe good quality music to my Bluetooth earbuds. Following a reboot however, I could not get any sound out of either wired or unwired earbuds. Finally, the mouse froze up and I gave up. I'm back to the Raspberry Pi operating system.
I really don't want to waste time tinkering with other operating systems just for the sake of it. I want an OS that works. On my laptop, I've got that now with Linux Mint and I'm sticking to it. With the Raspberry Pi, I'll be sticking to its native operating system. That's it. For now.
Copied from my blog on voodooguru.net under the same title.
I’ve only just begun to create the site on which this blog is appearing so there’s more to come as I familiarise myself with its inner workings. I made an attempt to insert some mathematical equations. using a KaTeX plugin, documentation for which can be found here. I did get single line equations working for a while but now nothing works.
I’m gradually getting my head around things. I was hoping to set up a number of blogs on this site and that is possible, although not at all straightforward. The site builder default is one blog only. For the time being I think it’s best to simply link to my Blogger blogs and continue creating blog posts on that platform. I can also link to other sites so that this site acts as a coordinating centre for my various Internet activities.
The photo shows a Raspberry Pi 400 with two monitors connected. It’s not my Pi (I only have one monitor connected) but it demonstrates the impressive capabilities of this little keyboard computer which I purchased about a week ago now.
Returning to my LaTeX problems, I’ve tried three different plugins: WP-KaTeX, KaTeX and QuickLaTeX and none of them work. It amazes me that there is such lack of support for LaTeX from the most popular blogging platform on the planet. Blogger may be out of fashion nowadays as a blogging platform but I’ve never had any problem inserting LaTeX into the posts on my mathematical blog.
There is definitely something weird about the Raspberry Pi and Blogger. Using Chromium, I tried to access my Pedagogical Posturing blog on Blogger but all attempts failed. I checked if Blogger was down and it wasn't. I checked on my Staying Healthy blog on Wordpress (that I haven't used since August 2020) and it opened instantly. So did the BBC website. I opened Firefox and things were exactly the same.
It's not the browser then, it's to do with the interaction between the Raspberry Pi OS and Blogger. I recently created a post titled From Blogger to WordPress? in which I discussed the possibility of switching from the former to the latter. This current experience has only strengthened my resolve. I don't think Google is properly supporting its blogging platform and that may be the reason for my difficulties.
Figure 1
Anyway, I switched to my 2013 MacBook Pro running Linux Mint and tried to access my Pedagogical Posturing blog using Chrome. It opened instantly. This means that for the moment I'll be doing my blogging on the laptop and not the Raspberry Pi. To be honest, the monitor to which the Pi is attached is ready to be replaced. It's very hard on the eye and there are no speakers for the HDMI connection to take advantage of. There are some good monitors out there for about A$200 so that is a likely purchase in the not to distant future. Figure 1 shows a Raspberry Pi 400 running dual monitors.
As for getting Netflix to run on the Raspberry Pi, it's not easy. There's a lot of help out there but all of my efforts failed using the Chromium browser. I then switched to Firefox and encountered the same problems. In the end I gave up. I can run Netflix on my iPhone, my laptop and TV so it's not a big deal. However, it was frustrating to not be able to get it running.
You can't say that there's no technological excitement in my life. I finally had to abandon the use of Ubuntu on my 2013 MacBook Pro. The keyboard, trackpad and mouse freezes were becoming too frequent and numerous reboots were required to activate these devices. Finally no amount of rebooting could activate them and so I turned to Linux Mint.
The installation went smoothly enough but the boot up process was, and continues to be, interrupted by a series of error messages. That is a minor irritation but far worse was to come. I discovered that the OS didn't recognise the WiFi adapter in the laptop. So, for the moment, no WiFi but thankfully I have an Ethernet connection. I had an old TP-LINK WiFi dongle that must be at least a decade old and I tried that out but no luck. Perhaps a can buy a more up-to-date dongle that works. This is a matter for deeper investigation but for the moment, as long as the keyboard, mouse and trackpad don't freeze up on me, I'll be happy.
My initial attempt to install the Chrome browser failed but then I was reminded that flatpak is built into Linux Mint and, by using that, the installation of the Chrome browser and also Calibre was straight forward. So far, after a couple of days of using Linux Mint, I've had no problems and I hope things stay that way.
I've put out a request for help on the Linux Mint Forums and hopefully help will be forthcoming. So far 20 views but no comments. However, it's been up less than an hour.
I'll add an addendum if help arrives.
ADDENDUM
... and help did arrive! A user called sleeper12 offered two suggestions. The first was:
inxi -Fxxxrz && rfkill list && iwconfig && mokutil --sb-state
This had no effect but the second suggestion did the trick:
This is great news and my laptop is now fully functional, apart from the webcam that I assume is still not working. I should ask for help with that on the forums as well.
The Chromium browser is fast and responsive on the Raspberry Pi. However, it cannot deal with my Google identity which is odd considering that it the base on which the Chrome browser is built. I have subscribed to YouTube Premium and, while I can log into YouTube and YouTube Music, the advertisements still play and my identity is quickly forgotten as I navigate about. Gmail can be accessed briefly until it drops out and I'm asked to confirm my identity yet again.
Other websites are accessed without difficulty but the browser seems incapable of handling my Google credentials. I was so frustrated that I downloaded an alternative browser called Vivaldi. However, I quickly uninstalled it because it was painfully slow in accessing websites or simply timed out. Attempts to install Chrome failed and that's probably a good thing as this browser is resource intensive and would probably end up performing like Vivaldi given that I only have 4GB of RAM. It looks like I'm stuck with the Chromium browser.
There's surprisingly little help online regarding my problem but I've only just begun looking so something may show up ... and just after writing this something did show up! Figure 1 shows the crucial setting.
Figure 1
Under "Other Google services", there is the toggle "Allow Chromium sign-in" with the comment that "By turning this off, you can sign into Google sites like Gmail without signing into Chromium". The toggle is turned OFF now but it was ON by default and that was the source of all my troubles. Chromium is now behaving a Chrome does allowing me to access Gmail, YouTube, YouTube Music etc. without any problems. It was a huge relief to overcome this nagging problem.
When searching through Google's list of products, it's interesting that Blogger is never displayed. I use Blogger frequently and have several blogs that I maintain on that platform. I never get any comments for any of my posts and that's alright as I use these blogs as a way of organising my thoughts on various topics. I am most active on my mathematics blog. It never occurred to me that very few people were actually using Blogger anymore. I started using it back in 2006 or 2007 and, except for one blog in WordPress that I abandoned, it's the only service I've ever used.
This article appeared in TechCrunch back in May of 2018 and it really opened my eyes:
Blogger, the blogging platform Google acquired back in 2003, is somehow still alive and kicking, even though few people remember it still exists. But alive it is — and it’s even getting some updates to its Google+ integration that will see all those 20 people still on Google+ rejoice.
After a year of inactivity, Blogger’s own news blog sprung to live this morning with a brief update that lays out the changes. Google calls this a “spring cleaning,” and we all know what that means: shutting down features.
You probably don’t care, but gone from Blogger are support for third-party gadgets, the Next Blog feature and the polling widget. Soon, OpenID support will be gone, as well, and Textcube.com is also shutting down. What is Textcube.com, you ask? It’s a Korean blogging service Google acquired back in 2008.
But there are also new features, which I’m guessing the sole two engineers still working on this project slaved over for the last year.
Blogger’s Google+ widget integration (yes, try not to laugh) will be transformed into HTML widgets to “give you more flexibility in how you share and see your followers.” Fifteen years after acquiring the service, Blogger now also supports logging in with multiple accounts. Google also today noted that the Blogger infrastructure has moved to Cloud Spanner, Google’s newest database service.
In the near future, you can expect a new video management feature, too. Exciting stuff.
It’s surprising that Blogger is still around. I can’t remember the last time I saw a Blogger site in my searches, and it sure doesn’t have a lot of mindshare. Google also has let the platform linger and hasn’t integrated it with any of its newer services. The same thing could be said for Google+, too, of course. Google cuts some services because they have no users and no traction. That could surely be said for Blogger and Google+, but here they are, still getting periodic updates. I think the writing is on the wall, though, and I wouldn’t expect them to survive the next major Google spring cleaning.
This could account in part for the complete lack of comments on any of my blogs. It also prompts me to consider perhaps migrating to other blogging platforms. What if Google decides to shut down Blogger as the article above suggests it might? I don't mind Blogger as a platform probably because I'm so familiar with it but I particularly dislike Google Sites. I find it clunky and awkward.
WordPress.org is touted as the best web/blog hosting service with the following advantages (according to this review):
WordPress.org gives you control over every aspect of your website.
You can grow your blog and add extra features like forums, online store, paid memberships, and sell online courses. This makes WordPress the best blogging platform to make money.
There are thousands of free themes available for WordPress. This allows you to create a beautiful website that stands apart from the crowd. Most popular WordPress themes come with built-in customization options that gives you full design control.
You also get access to more than 59,000 free WordPress plugins. These plugins are like apps for your WordPress blog that allow you to add features like contact forms, galleries, etc. See our list of must have WordPress plugins for all websites.
WordPress is search engine friendly. You can easily create SEO friendly URLs, categories, and tags for your posts. Plus, there’re a good number of great SEO plugins for additional optimization.
You can easily enable Google Analytics powered website analytics in WordPress, so you can see the stats that matter. This helps you grow your new blog traffic and subscribers.
Last but not least, WordPress’ drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to create any type of content on your blog site. It also has options to embed dynamic content like videos, social media feeds, Google Adsense, graphs, charts, and more without any technical know how.
The same review also clarifies the distinction between WordPress.org and WordPress.com:
WordPress.org is the world’s most popular blogging software. Started in 2003, WordPress now powers more than 43% of all websites on the internet.
Note: It’s easy to confuse WordPress.org with WordPress.com, which is a blog hosting service mentioned later in this list. See our guide on the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com.
WordPress.org is an open source free blogging platform that allows you to build your website or blog within minutes.
It is a self-hosted solution which means that you will need to sign up with a WordPress hosting provider. WordPress is a great option if you want to have full control over your blog’s future.
The review also suggests BlueHost as the best starting point which involves choosing a domain name which costs money annually to maintain but its relatively inexpensive and the domain name voodooguru.net is available. This article explains how to migrate a blog on Blogger to WordPress.org.
The idea is appealing but I should consider whether I even want to keep blogging, let alone have a dedicated hosting site. It's something to sleep on. At the moment, I'm preoccupied with Raspberry Pi and Linux Mint so any decisions will have to wait. Meanwhile, this video provides a good introduction to bluehost for anyone, like myself, who is considering using it. The guy speaks very fast so I found that lowering the speed to 0.75 makes it easy to listen to what he's saying. A non-native speaker might well find him incomprehensible.
