Running Ubuntu Linux on Virtualbox

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capellan
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Running Ubuntu Linux on Virtualbox

Post by capellan » Thu Sep 20, 2018 7:47 pm

Hi All,

Recently, an electrical brownout damaged the Ram memory
of my Ubuntu Linux computer. Until I repair the hardware
and recover my data, will use Ubuntu Linux on VirtualBox.

Which Ubuntu version plays better with LC9?

Thanks in advance!

Al

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Re: Running Ubuntu Linux on Virtualbox

Post by FourthWorld » Thu Sep 20, 2018 7:58 pm

The latest LTS is always the best version unless you have a specific reason to use something earlier. Currently that's Ubuntu 18.04.
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capellan
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Re: Running Ubuntu Linux on Virtualbox

Post by capellan » Thu Sep 20, 2018 10:58 pm

I will try first Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. If it does not works out-of-the-box
then will try 16.04 LTS. The purpose of this installation is learn
and practice some bits of Assembler as explained in this ebook.

www.egr.unlv.edu/~ed/assembly64.pdf

Al

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Re: Running Ubuntu Linux on Virtualbox

Post by bwmilby » Thu Sep 20, 2018 11:09 pm

I have VMs with both 16 and 18. If not trying to compile from source, then 18 works well. It has been a month (or more) but I was not able to link on 18 when I installed it.
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capellan
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Re: Running Ubuntu Linux on Virtualbox

Post by capellan » Fri Sep 21, 2018 10:54 pm

Thanks a lot for this advice! I will check this
feature to learn why it does not work.

Al

Olaf Hamann
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Re: Running Ubuntu Linux on Virtualbox

Post by Olaf Hamann » Thu Apr 18, 2019 11:40 am

I'm running LC9 without problems in Ubuntu-18.04 as a VirtualBox 5.2.20 guest. Host is a LinuxMint19 Xfce.
Hint: uncheck View->Backdrop in the LC9 menu.
With checked Backdrop I do only see a grey screen.

Unfortunately I was not able to get LC running stable under Xfce.
I had some Tools Palette flickering effects after opening Message Box and trying to type commands in.
Message Box was unusable.

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Re: Running Ubuntu Linux on Virtualbox

Post by FourthWorld » Thu Apr 18, 2019 6:12 pm

FWIW I have LC 9 running on Ubuntu 16.04, 18.04, and on an older machine with Lubuntu 16.04 - all three work well.
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Re: Running Ubuntu Linux on Virtualbox

Post by bogs » Thu Apr 18, 2019 9:03 pm

My question would be, are you running it as it shows up out of the box as it were, or are you running the engine with Devolution as the IDE. Just curious really.
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Re: Running Ubuntu Linux on Virtualbox

Post by FourthWorld » Thu Apr 18, 2019 11:09 pm

bogs wrote:
Thu Apr 18, 2019 9:03 pm
My question would be, are you running it as it shows up out of the box as it were, or are you running the engine with Devolution as the IDE. Just curious really.
Being a plugin, I run LC once to register the program before installing Devo.

Being a simple plugin, I can't imagine how it could have any significant event on how the engine interacts with the OS.

And being a useful plugin, I rarely run any LC install more than once without it. :)
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Re: Running Ubuntu Linux on Virtualbox

Post by bogs » Fri Apr 19, 2019 10:08 am

FourthWorld wrote:
Thu Apr 18, 2019 11:09 pm
Being a simple plugin, I can't imagine how it could have any significant event on how the engine interacts with the OS.
I suspect the engine isn't the problem most people would have with the current distro :)

But thank you for the confirmation, it was pretty much what I had guessed.
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Re: Running Ubuntu Linux on Virtualbox

Post by FourthWorld » Fri Apr 19, 2019 3:35 pm

bogs wrote:
Fri Apr 19, 2019 10:08 am
I suspect the engine isn't the problem most people would have with the current distro :)
I see poor visual consistency with Gnome Shell, but aside from known engine issues like no video playback support LC seems to run okay on current distros. And I wrote a script to update the UI to better match Gnome's theming, so for me LC now looks pretty good, almost per spec and better than most Linux UIs.

Aside from cosmetics, what issues have you encountered that are not engine-specific?
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Re: Running Ubuntu Linux on Virtualbox

Post by bogs » Fri Apr 19, 2019 4:37 pm

I think the main problem I have using the current distro is the fact that I do not use <desktop here> 'buntu anything. Since I am not using a supported distro, I don't expect my issues to matter in the current releases, which I am ok with :D

As far as issues on non supported distros go, though, they run the gamut from frequent crashing, to objects/widgets not showing up, to huge lags, to the different IDE palettes misbehaving, really the list goes on a long long while. I don't suspect any of the things I've seen or reported to be due to engine issues, though it certainly could be a possibility.

If they *are* due to engine issues, that would certainly be a larger problem for people dev'ing for 'nix though, I would think.
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Re: Running Ubuntu Linux on Virtualbox

Post by FourthWorld » Fri Apr 19, 2019 6:09 pm

All crashes in a scripting language are ultimately engine issues. By its nature, a scripting language is a protected sandbox; error handing for crashes should happen in the engine, as they are beyond what a script can address.

The question with Linux distros the company does not finance support for is the generic challenge of Linux as a consumer OS: who pays for all the work needed for all the many different package combinations that give us the breadth of the Linux ecosystem?

This flexibility is wonderful for developers, who have the skills to select a distro and adjust installed packages with a flexibility no other OS architecture can dream of.

But for consumers, probably better to stick with the leading desktop unless you're looking to acquire Linux admin skills.

This is at once the strength and the weakness of Linux as a platform: it's not an OS, but a vast and ever-growing category of OSes, each purpose-built for specific needs. The very flexibility that has made it the de facto standard for infrastructure complicates the consumer experience.

So if building out infrastructure, choose the best mix for the project at hand.

But if building consumer software, every distro beyond the leader raises costs for ever smaller returns.

And even the leading desktop Linux isn't exactly famous for directly supporting paid consumer software, so even supporting any distro will almost always yield a lower return than the same app deployed for Windows or even macOS.

I love Linux because I'm a developer and an increasing amount of my work is client-server. Having one OS architecture working the same on both sides has been a tremendous boon for my productivity. Extra bonus points that I happen to enjoy it, and have met a lot of the people who make it so it's as rewarding as home baked bread.

And I love LiveCode because sharing my work with my Linux friends is just a checkbox away.

But I have no illusions about positive ROI for consumer software made for Linux using any more expensive process.

I have a long standing offer for my clients: when I'm hired to write an app for Mac and Windows, I'll throw in a Linux build for free. To date no one has taken me up on that, because even just the marketing and support cost make it a challenging ROI proposition.

All that said. I've used Linux enough to believe there's no practical reason it couldn't be a bigger player on the desktop. Given market needs, it's not difficult to imagine that it could have a market share at least slightly larger than Mac's 11%.

But that takes more than a good OS. It takes a whole product solution, hardware and software.

And that's the chickens-and-eggs of Linux: no one will underwrite the expense of such a startup until there is a vast ecosystem of consumer apps in place, and consumer apps will remain less available for Linux until there is a well established whole product solution.

So in the meantime we use it, we love it, and when we need bugs fixed to address any but the leading distros we have to roll up our sleeves and handle them ourselves. The economics simply don't provide for anything else.
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Re: Running Ubuntu Linux on Virtualbox

Post by bogs » Fri Apr 19, 2019 7:10 pm

I think I'll stop derailing the main topic here, I can see from your post we're at one of those places that you and I part ways in our thinking. I absolutely believe you if you say it is definitely the engine, then I am now sure that it is.

It doesn't seem much of an improvement though, if every other one of the engines older than 8.x can run on every distro I ever tried them on, but post 8.x is a crap shoot.
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Re: Running Ubuntu Linux on Virtualbox

Post by FourthWorld » Fri Apr 19, 2019 9:28 pm

bogs wrote:
Fri Apr 19, 2019 7:10 pm
I think I'll stop derailing the main topic here, I can see from your post we're at one of those places that you and I part ways in our thinking. I absolutely believe you if you say it is definitely the engine, then I am now sure that it is.
I'm not following. Regardless if a problem is in the engine or the IDE, if it only affects an unsupported distro we're faced with the question of who pays for the work.

On that I've only reported the economics as I've come to see them over the last decade in the Linux community. If there's an opportunity here that I'm missing I'd be more than happy to hear it.
It doesn't seem much of an improvement though, if every other one of the engines older than 8.x can run on every distro I ever tried them on, but post 8.x is a crap shoot.
Investigating the library dependencies at the root of that might make a good project for those using affected distros.
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