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Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

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Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#11

Post by rzzzt »

realgeniushere wrote: post #7

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.

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#12

Post by realgeniushere »

tyingq wrote: post #8
realgeniushere wrote: post #7

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.

>OpenBSD devs did the work It doesn't appear they did anything specific for this kit, nothing obvious in the changelog anyway. Perhaps just some combination of things they've done for other UEFI bootable Arm64 hardware. OpenBSD arm64 uses u-boot, so also maybe just some support that was already there.

Okay. Anyway, OpenBSD works, proving that there’s nothing stopping Linux from working except the time and interest of Linux developers. I’m sure they are interested and the necessary modifications will be made soon enough.

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#13

Post by orthoxerox »

> 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.

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#14

Post by atemerev »

What an interesting device. Sadly, it is available only in the US and maybe a few other countries. If you try to access the MS store page from, say, Switzerland, they are very passively-aggressively saying "Page not found". I hate so much these availability restrictions.

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#15

Post by bayindirh »

orthoxerox wrote: post #13

> 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 CA slowly, or making secure boot permanent step by step, or systemd slowly adds support for closed down hardware platforms which doesn't allow running unsigned/unsanctioned kernels.

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

Now why we allow another company do it and applaud them for doing so?

If we want general computing to live, we need to have mechanisms to allow us to tinker with our own devices, and shouldn't need a company to sanction a specific kernel behind closed doors.

It's 90s all over again, sigh.

> If people start buying MS Dev Kits to run Linux CI agents on them this defeats the whole purpose of having a dev kit

We're running Linux on computers bundled with Windows out of the box. So, are we defeating the purpose of the devices we buy with our own money? Same for installing ROMs to android devices, and Jailbreaking iOS devices.

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

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#16

Post by adrian_b »

zinekeller wrote: post #5
tyingq wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though the article mentions this: "Patrick Wildt, an OpenBSD maintainer replied to one of my tweets and told me he had OpenBSD 7.2 up and running on his, so I thought I would at least try that out." And on twitter he mentions it's unmodified OpenBSD... "@bluerise told me OpenBSD would work just by flashing a USB pen drive. He was right..." So it's likely possible with some experimentation.

I guess that there's something weird that trips the Linux kernel, but at least it's possible to boot third-party OSes.

It is very good that it is possible to boot non-Windows OSes.

Nevertheless, using this computer will require a lot of reverse-engineering work for various devices, e.g. the GPU, the WiFi interface and many others. For now, OpenBSD can use only a frame buffer for display.

There was not long ago a presentation from Lenovo about the support of Linux on their products.

They make a laptop with the same Qualcomm chip. After some efforts, their Linux team has succeeded to boot Linux on it, but many of the peripherals are not working yet and they do not intend to provide official support for Linux on it, because there is no help or documentation from Qualcomm.

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#17

Post by trelane »

bayindirh wrote: post #15
orthoxerox wrote: post #13

> 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…

> We're running Linux on computers bundled with Windows out of the box.

No all of us are. Fortunately, it's not the 90s, let alone the early 00s. We have the option of buying Linux preinstalled. It would be nice if we didn't collectively squander the opportunity.

The wider point, though, is spot on. Hardware should obey its owner, not the company or companies that made it. Fortunately, the hardware that best supports Linux also often best supports user modification, so the two interests go well together.

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#18

Post by belltaco »

I really enjoyed the post till this:

> Whilst I enjoy this kind of tinkering, it was disappointing that a "Dev Kit", built for developers can neither boot Linux, nor enable a custom Linux Kernel for WSL2.

> 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 something is named "Dev Kit" does it have to revolve around supporting a monoculture right out of the box? Secure boot is trivially unlockable, and Microsoft is losing money on the R&D and probably hardware as well. Someone will probably figure out how to get Linux natively running.

Looks like they're just not happy that they're not able to immediately (ab)use the hardware meant for Windows on ARM developers for dozens or hundreds of cheap CI/CD machines for their commercial operation, which would prompt MS to raise the price for everyone or make it closed for verified Windows devs only(like Xbox Dev kits).

I respect the grind, and Hacker News is all about using and abusing hardware in unintended ways, but I don't like the attitude and expectations in the quoted parts that everything should revolve around their niche use case of being able to run cheap CI/CD servers just because it has dev in it's name.

Re: Attempting Linux on Microsoft Dev Kit 2023

#20

Post by trelane »

raesene9 wrote: post #3

FWIW whilst it doesn't run Linux directly at the moment, it runs WSL2 just fine, and you can setup Windows OpenSSH server to launch WSL2's bash on connection, so you can use it for remote Linux work ok.

Or you could buy hardware that comes with and supports Linux, instead of relying on Microsoft's walled garden for your Linux needs.
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