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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

#91

> What's that I hear Hacker News and Reddit cry? "It's a Dev Kit for Windows, you moron!" That may be the case, but Microsoft "Loves Linux", and clearly has worked hard to make WSL2 available out of the box on these devices. If people start buying MS Dev Kits to run Linux CI agents on them this defeats the whole purpose of having a dev kit: getting more people to write programs on and for Windows 11 on ARM.

That's an ARM platform sold by Microsoft. It's supporting Windows alright, but it's a hardware platform at the end of the day. Dev kits are unlimited/unlocked machines by historical definition. They should allow experimentation. Locking Linux behind WSL2 is Microsoft's dream, and being oblivious about it won't help us in the future. People get crazy when people point out that Microsoft is deprecating it's 3rd party C…

> GPLv3 came to being because of TiVO pulled off a similar thing, and required its kernels to be signed by their own private key.

Actually TiVO didn't do that, instead they made their proprietary software running on top of Linux break when you modified Linux. The GPLv3 doesn't prevent that either, even though RMS wanted it to. Also, even GPLv2 requires users to be able to modify, rebuild and reinstall the vendor installed GPLed software.

https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017... https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-t...

Agreed with everything else in your post though.

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#92

> What's that I hear Hacker News and Reddit cry? "It's a Dev Kit for Windows, you moron!" That may be the case, but Microsoft "Loves Linux", and clearly has worked hard to make WSL2 available out of the box on these devices. If people start buying MS Dev Kits to run Linux CI agents on them this defeats the whole purpose of having a dev kit: getting more people to write programs on and for Windows 11 on ARM.

That's an ARM platform sold by Microsoft. It's supporting Windows alright, but it's a hardware platform at the end of the day. Dev kits are unlimited/unlocked machines by historical definition. They should allow experimentation. Locking Linux behind WSL2 is Microsoft's dream, and being oblivious about it won't help us in the future. People get crazy when people point out that Microsoft is deprecating it's 3rd party C…

> The device is mine. I paid for it. I should be able to do whatever I want with it.

You are absolutely right, of course. It just doesn't mean Microsoft should help you run whatever you want on it.

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an ARM platform sold by Microsoft. It's supporting Windows alright, but it's a hardware platform at the end of the day. Dev kits are unlimited/unlocked machines by historical definition. They should allow experimentation. Locking Linux behind WSL2 is Microsoft's dream, and being oblivious about it won't help us in the future. People get crazy when people point out that Microsoft is deprecating it's 3rd party C…

> The device is mine. I paid for it. I should be able to do whatever I want with it. You are absolutely right, of course. It just doesn't mean Microsoft should help you run whatever you want on it.

> It just doesn't mean Microsoft should help you run whatever you want on it.

You are absolutely right, of course. It just does mean I expect Microsoft to not spend effort to hinder the possibilities.

I just don't want a second season to Halloween Documents, that's all. Keep the platform open. We (the developers) will do the rest.

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#94
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

No they don't, this is cargo cult from UNIX FOSS community based on a famous book remark.

No commercial UNIX has ever followed that mantra.

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#95
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am quite certain there are other OEMs on that region as well.

Developer is someone that writes code with a programming language, that is all.

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#96
post #11

Unrealistic and unfair expectations here. Microsoft isn’t doing anything to stop you from booting other OSes on this device. OpenBSD devs did the work, so OpenBSD boots on it. Linux devs now need to do the same if they want to support this dev kit. Not Microsoft’s problem.

Embedded-looking systems usually need an FDT blob for booting Linux, this seems to be the missing piece according to the article. It shouldn't be hard to provide it on the hardware developer's end, while a bit more complicated to infer from the OS developer side.

And yet, somehow, OpenBSD works just fine already. Perhaps relatedly, this device is UEFI based, so unlike most ARM devices, it has a standard boot process and hardware enumeration mechanism.

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#97
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Locking Linux behind WSL2 is Microsoft's dream, and being oblivious about it won't help us in the future. > People get crazy when people point out that Microsoft is deprecating it's 3rd party CA slowly, or making secure boot permanent step by step I've long thought WSL and friends were a stalking horse for precisely the sort of locked-down environment I hate, and I've been expecting this incremental approach ever s…

About 10 or 12 years ago I said that the future of Linux on the desktop is as a VM running under a Windows hypervisor. It took longer than expected but that future is within sight.

That's literally what WSLg is.

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#98
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Star Labs is in UK, but they claim to ship worldwide.

https://starlabs.systems/

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#99
post #97
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 10 or 12 years ago I said that the future of Linux on the desktop is as a VM running under a Windows hypervisor. It took longer than expected but that future is within sight.

That's literally what WSLg is.

The idea behind my statement was that you won't get Linux any other way.

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#100
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Star Labs is in UK, but they claim to ship worldwide. https://starlabs.systems/

Thanks for sharing, I'll look into it. Importing it here will possibly double the price of the system I ordered, but it's again good to know.

Thanks again.

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