Tried to log in to my Google Account from Chromium browser recently and got some weird "this is not an authorized browser" type message. Same thing happened with the mobile Lightning Browser (which is based on Chromium). Google trying to force me to use Chrome, specifically, rather than just Chromium-based browsers?

At least I can still log in via Firefox (for now), as needed. If they cut that off, too, I'll just have to fully abandon Google, because I'm not installing Chrome on my home PC.

Is there even a Linux repo for Chrome? I'm not sure I'm even *able* to add Chrome to my device, unless I put Chromium OS onto a bootable SD card, but that's a lot of trouble just to access my Google Drive.

@ink_slinger yes, they provide upstream repositories for apt and rpm/yum based distros, see https://www.google.com/linuxrepositories/

@kepstin Good to know. I'd still rather not install it, but it's good to know the option is there if I ever change my mind.

@ink_slinger @kepstin Uhhh, while the repo for Chrome works perfectly fine and I've been using it for years, those repos will definitely NOT work on the PineBook Pro. AFAIK Google only releases x86 builds (maybe not even 32-bit, it might only be AMD64 these days, although don't quote me on that), not ARM builds.

I'm guessing the Chromium version you're having trouble with is the one installed on the PineBook Pro. (On all my x86-based Linux desktops, Chromium works fine for signing into Google. I'm not sure if the problem on the PBP is the architecture, or the Widevine installation, or somehow something else; I just know I ran into the same problem.)

To make it work, in the default installed user's profile (that you accidentally blew away, hence the problem) has a shortcut in the MATE panel for running Chromium that has an additional argument used to mask the user agent. After figuring this out myself, I made a copy of that shortcut, and slightly renamed so that it'd show up distinctly in menus. If you download https://keithzg.ca/binary/chromium-browser-user-agent-masked.desktop and put it in `~/.local/share/applications` you should see "Chromium Web Browser (Masked)" in your application listings, and launched from that you should be able to log into Google.

@ink_slinger There's enough tiny little solvable but perhaps non-obvious things like this building up that I'm probably going to write up a page for the PineBook Pro on my personal wiki, heh, even if just to have a handy reference in case I want to start from scratch on it or something!

@keithzg When it makes sense to do so, you should also contribute to the Pine64 wiki.

@ink_slinger Oh definitely; I figure the pipeline is basically

Me fumbling around with this stuff > me writing up some notes and trying to collate it all > me writing up that stuff in detail for my own usage (and recommendation for others) on my wiki > taking anything that can be generalized and/or universalized and putting it on the Pine64 wiki. (Maybe a close relationship with the last two steps, since I'll probably be consulting and linking to the Pine64 wiki when writing up my own stuff, but that's the general idea.)

We'll see how far I get into that . . . my "actually get around to things" quotient is wildly inconsistent! (Still haven't put together that Canjo . . . .)

@keithzg Ha! I was actually going to ask you about the canjo the other day, but got distracted and forgot.