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Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

blog.alexellis.io

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Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#81

Post by bayindirh »

kenjackson wrote: post #79
bayindirh wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're putting this Dev kit to the same category with non-general computing devices' dev kits, the outlook becomes a much more bleak: So, Windows is not a general computing OS and the platform running Windows is not a general computing device anymore. So, we're ending the era of most ubiquitous general computing platform (PC), and the general computing itself, and converting Windows to a firmware for a very closed…

Windows is a general computing OS. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that it's not. Even in the article it states that WSL2 seemed to run fine. The issue is if the DevKit is intended for any and everything. My point is that they never were. Were the original iPhone dev kits set up to easily run Windows Mobile? Are car devkits that can accomodate Apple Car Play or Android Auto, easily able to run their Window…

All the dev kits you point are not dev kits for general purpose computing devices. So, the point is moot.

If Windows is a general computing OS, the hardware is also general computing hardware. If the hardware is not intended to be used for general computing, then the thing running on it is not a general computing OS, but just a firmware to fulfill some tasks.

My argument is accepting that "Microsoft Dev Kit" is built to run a specific piece of software brings us to a slippery slope that any and every Windows certified system is also won't be a general computing hardware from now on, esp. on ARM platform.

Hence we can see that Dev Kit 2023 is the first step of locking down the platform for once and for all.

If we see the platform as a general computing platform, and Windows as a general computing OS, then we shouldn't get offended by the effort to run Linux or other OS on it, and similarly we shouldn't get offended by the request.

WSL is just a virtualization platform. Accepting that WSL2 works fine also brings us to the slippery slope that future hardware doesn't need to support Linux on bare metal, because we have already have WSL2.

What happens when (not if, but when) the 3rd party CA expires/gets discontinued or Microsoft discontinues (or intentionally breaks) WSL2 or both to cripple or block Linux from running on bare metal on consumer devices?

Will we run x86 servers at home to run Linux, then?

I don't believe that Microsoft envisions a future where Windows capable platforms have the ability boot anything other than Windows. It'll be a firmware in the proverbial sense, not an OS, because we won't have a general computing platform which can run any OS which understands that hardware.

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#82

Post by trelane »

com2kid wrote: post #66
trelane wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> does it have to revolve around UNIX clones as if there aren't any other kind of developers? The irony of saying this in the context of Windows is thick enough one could cut it and use it to build a sizeable home.

Windows was the dominant operating system for developers for nearly two decades. Up until about a decade ago, Microsoft arguably made the world's only good IDE. (ignoring some relics from the 80s!) It isn't as if Windows is some developer wasteland.

> Windows was the dominant operating system for developers for nearly two decades.

This is rather my point.

It's still the case that, in many businesses, nobody got fired for buying Microsoft. And, despite the increasing importance of Linux on the server, there's a _lot_ of software that ties its users to Windows. Too nad WSL doesn't live up to its name.

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#83

Post by yellowapple »

com2kid wrote: post #66
trelane wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> does it have to revolve around UNIX clones as if there aren't any other kind of developers? The irony of saying this in the context of Windows is thick enough one could cut it and use it to build a sizeable home.

Windows was the dominant operating system for developers for nearly two decades. Up until about a decade ago, Microsoft arguably made the world's only good IDE. (ignoring some relics from the 80s!) It isn't as if Windows is some developer wasteland.

> Up until about a decade ago, Microsoft arguably made the world's only good IDE.

If you're referring to Visual Studio then I think you and I have very different definitions of "good".

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#84

Post by zozbot234 »

alexellisuk wrote: post #68
zozbot234 wrote: post #19

Tl;dr: it boots OpenBSD successfully already, so getting Linux to run can't be that hard even though mainline support is obviously not here yet. Someone will figure out how to boot a Linux kernel on this, probably the PostmarketOS or Asahi folks.

Mainline support is available, we are missing the device tree blobs for this specific unit. OpenBSD AFAIK boots in APCI mode so doesn't require them.

So Linux ought to boot on this hardware if acpi=force (documented at https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/arm64/arm-acpi.html ) is used?

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#85

Post by pjmlp »

bayindirh wrote: post #73
pjmlp wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tuxedo and System 76 come to mind, as lots of local OEM vendors. My Asus 1215B netbook for travel purposes has been sold with Linux on it.

Tuxedo and System76 are nice. Too bad that I don't live in the US. It's literally impossible to find such system here. So I always had to roll my own. Netbooks are nice devices, but they were never intended for developers.

Tuxedo is an European brand.

Developers use whatever they can, including crap Chromebooks as thin clients to cloud instances.

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#86

Post by kenjackson »

bayindirh wrote: post #81
kenjackson wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows is a general computing OS. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that it's not. Even in the article it states that WSL2 seemed to run fine. The issue is if the DevKit is intended for any and everything. My point is that they never were. Were the original iPhone dev kits set up to easily run Windows Mobile? Are car devkits that can accomodate Apple Car Play or Android Auto, easily able to run their Window…

All the dev kits you point are not dev kits for general purpose computing devices. So, the point is moot. If Windows is a general computing OS, the hardware is also general computing hardware. If the hardware is not intended to be used for general computing, then the thing running on it is not a general computing OS, but just a firmware to fulfill some tasks. My argument is accepting that "Microsoft Dev Kit" is built…

The HW is intended for and can be used for general purpose computing. I think you seem to think that for something to be general purpose it has to be able to run everything. I've never heard that definition before and honestly, if that's the case then there is no general purpose computing HW in existence. The standard definition is that it can run, in a reasonable way, most consumer/productivity workloads. It's not about saying "This HW doesn't run Linux" or "It doesn't run Adobe Premiere 12.2".

I think you simply want to run other OSes on a device. That's a fine thing to want, but I think you're conflating that desire with other concepts.

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#87

Post by bayindirh »

pjmlp wrote: post #85
bayindirh wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tuxedo and System76 are nice. Too bad that I don't live in the US. It's literally impossible to find such system here. So I always had to roll my own. Netbooks are nice devices, but they were never intended for developers.

Tuxedo is an European brand. Developers use whatever they can, including crap Chromebooks as thin clients to cloud instances.

Nice. Having a manufacturer on this side of the pond is good, however I’m not in Europe, either. :)

Not every developer can/want to use cloud instances, like not every developer is $OS_OF_CHOICE developer.

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#88

Post by com2kid »

yellowapple wrote: post #83
com2kid wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows was the dominant operating system for developers for nearly two decades. Up until about a decade ago, Microsoft arguably made the world's only good IDE. (ignoring some relics from the 80s!) It isn't as if Windows is some developer wasteland.

> Up until about a decade ago, Microsoft arguably made the world's only good IDE. If you're referring to Visual Studio then I think you and I have very different definitions of "good".

> If you're referring to Visual Studio then I think you and I have very different definitions of "good".

Go to 2010 Linux and find me an IDE with:

1. A functioning graphical debugger that works across multiple languages, both native and JITed

2. A fully featured WYSIWYG UI editor that can generate backing code in multiple languages

3. Comes with a SQL engine setup and ready to use for development, that it can seamlessly connect to for testing out code locally[1]

4. Can step from your code into SQL statements and back again

5. Can step from code you are debugging on a remote box, to SQL code running on yet another machine, and back again

6. Has functional, production ready, data binding that works with arbitrary data sources, that also fully integrates with the GUI builder

7. Integrates with source control

8. Integrates with task/work item management

9. Enables the workflow of you get an email about a fault on a server in a test environment, you click a link, and the IDE connects to the remote machine, downloads symbols, and starts up in the debugger

10. Automatically fetches the proper debugging symbols for the version of code you are debugging

And again, this was all doable across a multitude of languages.

IIRC Eclipse was the nearest "competitor" and it was slower than molasses and didn't have anything near the same feature set.

Visual Studio is an impressive piece of software. Has it had some buggy releases? Yeah. Does it feel super outdated now? Yes it does, in comparison, VS Code's ability to navigate around files/projects is incredible.

But I had a better developer experience using Visual Studio and C# a dozen years ago (!!!) than I have with Node JS now.

[1] The modern cloud version of this is such a disaster.

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#89

Post by ungamedplayer »

com2kid wrote: post #88
yellowapple wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Up until about a decade ago, Microsoft arguably made the world's only good IDE. If you're referring to Visual Studio then I think you and I have very different definitions of "good".

> If you're referring to Visual Studio then I think you and I have very different definitions of "good". Go to 2010 Linux and find me an IDE with: 1. A functioning graphical debugger that works across multiple languages, both native and JITed 2. A fully featured WYSIWYG UI editor that can generate backing code in multiple languages 3. Comes with a SQL engine setup and ready to use for development, that it can seamles…

This may be obvious to you, and I am trying not to put words in your mouth.

Linux and UNIX doesn't build tooling this way, because they believe that you make one tool to do one thing well, and these things you mention while related are not one thing. You'd use the OS as an IDE in this context.

The mindset is changing over time, systemd, vscode, etc.

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#90

Post by yellowapple »

com2kid wrote: post #88
yellowapple wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Up until about a decade ago, Microsoft arguably made the world's only good IDE. If you're referring to Visual Studio then I think you and I have very different definitions of "good".

> If you're referring to Visual Studio then I think you and I have very different definitions of "good". Go to 2010 Linux and find me an IDE with: 1. A functioning graphical debugger that works across multiple languages, both native and JITed 2. A fully featured WYSIWYG UI editor that can generate backing code in multiple languages 3. Comes with a SQL engine setup and ready to use for development, that it can seamles…

Having lots of features != being of high quality. If Eclipse was "slower than molasses", then VS was a brick - as many a poor computer of mine from back then can attest, fans a-spinning at speeds that made hurricanes feel like gentle breezes all because I'd double-click on some random file that VS decided "hey I can open this therefore I should be the default" (and thanks to all that feeping creaturism, that was a lot of files).

Meanwhile, Emacs worked fine. Netbeans worked fine. Eclipse worked okay. Qt Creator existed (though I can't attest to how well it worked then). There were definitely options, and while sure, they lacked a lot of those fancy bells and whistles, at the end of the day were those really worth turning computers into passenger jets?

> But I had a better developer experience using Visual Studio and C# a dozen years ago (!!!) than I have with Node JS now.

That bar is so low that even ants have to duck to get under it.

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