Running Ubuntu Linux on Virtualbox

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bogs
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Re: Running Ubuntu Linux on Virtualbox

Post by bogs » Sat Apr 20, 2019 2:00 pm

FourthWorld wrote:
Fri Apr 19, 2019 9:28 pm
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.
Ok. IF this were a brand new product that hadn't already been chugging away merrily on every distro on the planet, i *might* agree that we *could* be talking about an ROI issue.

Linux (as a kernel, which is really what it is) is not all that mysterious. Linux (in the broader term commonly used as an OS) is not all that mysterious. In either case, all the distributions run a kernel, an xserver, and a window manager (Yes, I am WAY oversimplifying this). The choice of desktop shouldn't even enter the picture, as all desktops have fallback to a common set of interface rules.

I understand that the engine went through a very large overhaul, but if your trying to maximize ROI I would think you would not throw out the baby in the bath water as it were. You keep what works (more or less, and it was a *heck* of a lot in the more direction previously), and you design to fail graciously in the bits you want to specialize if it has to fail at all. I'm not convinced it does.

Having said that, I'm also not looking to cause hurt feelings here. I understand that, from the company's POV, things may be (and probably are) very different looking from my POV. The decisions the company would make are certainly not likely to jive with mine, and almost certainly should not as we have two different end goals.

Lastly, some of your statements seemed a bit non-sequitur. For instance -
FourthWorld wrote:
Fri Apr 19, 2019 6:09 pm
But for consumers, probably better to stick with the leading desktop unless you're looking to acquire Linux admin skills.
My mother, who was into her 70s when she started using 'nix, had no issues switching from Windows. Neither did my father. And before you think it, no, I did not stand over their shoulders every minute to make sure they were using it correctly :P

I did install it (and showed them how to re-install if necessary), and I showed them how to update the software, then I went home and waited for questions. I got 6 total, 2 about passwords. My mother, after using it a few years, thanked me for installing it.

Using a linux desktop is very little different from using any other desktop, and I am pretty well sure you know that the days of having to configure a distro manually and/or build it from source are long LONG gone, just as the days of having to configure your sound card manually in dos is long long gone. In many ways, I think setting up a linux desktop computer is far easier than either of the two predominant systems. I certainly find it faster.
FourthWorld wrote:
Fri Apr 19, 2019 6:09 pm
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.
This statement struck me as true and false. As I mentioned above, the 'OS' part of 'nix is comprised of 3 things generically, + software (which is the category Lc falls into). Your statement seems to be equating distros with completely different OSes, when in fact all of the distros have the same basic foundation, and only the software part is different.

It would be the equivalent of saying you can't possibly support windows, because someone may have installed notepad++ and removed soitaire! why it is completely different now!
FourthWorld wrote:
Fri Apr 19, 2019 6:09 pm
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.
While humorous (I chuckled) I don't find this surprising, companies invested in one or another platform would rarely venture outside that arena to begin with, even internally, unless they are doing development in-house.

In the context of this discussion, though, it has a lot less relevance. Lc runs on linux, it is one of the environments they support, heck, it is even where the previous incarnation started, and again as pointed out way up there, it had been merrily running away on it since.....um.....what, 1992? Had to be earlier, but lets run with that. 2019 - 1992 = 27 years, almost 3 full decades.

You apparently would have me believe that all of a sudden, getting it to run in multiple linux configurations is too hard?

Like I said, our thoughts part ways here. Doesn't mean your wrong, and I am sure you are not, just as I am sure the company is doing what is in it's own best interest, which is as it should be.
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Re: Running Ubuntu Linux on Virtualbox

Post by FourthWorld » Sat Apr 20, 2019 6:52 pm

bogs wrote:
Sat Apr 20, 2019 2:00 pm
FourthWorld wrote:
Fri Apr 19, 2019 9:28 pm
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.
Ok. IF this were a brand new product that hadn't already been chugging away merrily on every distro on the planet, i *might* agree that we *could* be talking about an ROI issue.

Linux (as a kernel, which is really what it is) is not all that mysterious.
I have insufficient information to determine whether the source of the crashes are specific to the Linux kernel. No bug report numbers have been cited, no recipes given. I could speculate, but I'd rather be informed.

In addition to the kernel, there are hundreds of additional packages needed to comprise a fully functional OS. It may be that LC's issue on unsupported distros relates to one of those, or the absence of one or more of those, or versioning among those. I have no information to determine the cause.

I understand that the engine went through a very large overhaul, but if your trying to maximize ROI I would think you would not throw out the baby in the bath water as it were. You keep what works (more or less, and it was a *heck* of a lot in the more direction previously), and you design to fail graciously in the bits you want to specialize if it has to fail at all. I'm not convinced it does.
This assumes that neither OS packages nor LiveCode change. But of course we know they both do.

And to be fair, long before LC Ltd was explicit about what's "supported", issues with less common distros were also widely known. Even back in the Raney days, if he found an issue on an OS too fringe to be worth his time he'd just say so and get back to work on compatibility with more popular distros.

The only change with LC Ltd is that they now provide explicit useful guidance on the scope of their own internal testing.

And unlike the old MC days, LC is open source. Given sufficient interest anyone can resolve any issue with any distro.

If interest is not sufficient, what does that tell us?

FourthWorld wrote:
Fri Apr 19, 2019 6:09 pm
But for consumers, probably better to stick with the leading desktop unless you're looking to acquire Linux admin skills.
My mother, who was into her 70s when she started using 'nix, had no issues switching from Windows. Neither did my father. And before you think it, no, I did not stand over their shoulders every minute to make sure they were using it correctly :P
I didn't write that no consumers use Linux. Indeed, Ubuntu alone has some estimated 40 million desktop users, and we can assume a good portion of that are not developers.

I was simply noting what we see with our own eyes whenever we look at the consumer computing landscape:

Walk into any American computer store and report back how many laptops are offered there with Linux preinstalled.

If the "preinstalled" part seems an unnecessary qualifier, you could talk with major software publishers about why they don't bother porting to Linux. I've had such conversations with small and large companies, including Adobe. What I wrote here is what's reflected by every industry analyst, VC, and software publisher I've ever spoken to, heard, or read.

But maybe they're all wrong. Show us, where is the market share as expressed in Internet usage? After more than 20 years I see roughly 1.5-3% across the stats aggregators I monitor.

If there's some vast latent consumer market for Linux that we've all missed, here's the best way to prove the case: go make money selling consumer software on Linux. Show us how it's done. Or even see if you can find just three examples of Linux consumer software publishers with ROI anywhere close to their counterparts on other platforms.

It should be clear after all these years that I'm a Linux fan boy. Love it. Can't see myself using anything else as long as I have a say in the matter.

But I'm also a business owner, and consult with business owners, and get consultation from business owners. And the sum of that experience simply doesn't yield a compelling picture for broad-scale investment in Linux consumer software. If it did we might be able to find any evidence of it.

The moment you ask someone to replace the OS that came with their computer with something they can download from the Internet, most will ask why. And if the answer is that they can have an experience every bit as good as the one they have, most will ask why again, since they already have an OS.

This is the distinction I referred to earlier, using Geoff Moore's phrase "whole product solution" from his book Crossing the Chasm. The market evolution dynamics he describes there are very relevant here, and help explain why Linux is indeed so freaking awesome yet still has less than a third as many desktop users as the other niche OS, Mac.

I would have nothing to gain by attempting to portray Linux as less popular than it is, and everything to gain from encouraging as much growth as possible.

But I see what I see, and my personal preferences do not drive the economics of ecosystems.

FourthWorld wrote:
Fri Apr 19, 2019 6:09 pm
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.
This statement struck me as true and false. As I mentioned above, the 'OS' part of 'nix is comprised of 3 things generically, + software (which is the category Lc falls into). Your statement seems to be equating distros with completely different OSes, when in fact all of the distros have the same basic foundation, and only the software part is different.

It would be the equivalent of saying you can't possibly support windows, because someone may have installed notepad++ and removed soitaire! why it is completely different now!
::sigh:: I don't know what to suggest, expect maybe spending more time at the pub with distro package managers. Hanging out with the Ubuntu packaging team has opened by eyes to the challenges of maintaining compatibility with a vast array of packaging needed for modern distros. Same with pub crawls with Gentoo maintainers, and lunch with OpenSUSE contributors. The more time I spend at Linux conferences, the more I appreciate the hard work people do to deliver a great experience.
FourthWorld wrote:
Fri Apr 19, 2019 6:09 pm
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.
While humorous (I chuckled) I don't find this surprising, companies invested in one or another platform would rarely venture outside that arena to begin with, even internally, unless they are doing development in-house.
True enough, intertia is a common human weakness.

But very few business owners turn down free money. If the ROI could be demonstrated, they'd jump in.

If you're able to demonstrate the ROI, go make a pile of money and show us how you did it.

Every VC I've talked to on this has failed.

While exploring the economics of why the LC team isn't taking on the expense of committing to supporting all possible distros is interesting, I wonder if i may be more interesting to solve the issues you're experiencing with the distro you're using.

What is the distro and version, what is the recipe, what is the erroneous result?

The code is all available. And if it turns out to be a question of simply swapping out a package dependency, the fix may be affordable for those of us using Linux to take on.
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bogs
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Re: Running Ubuntu Linux on Virtualbox

Post by bogs » Sat Apr 20, 2019 9:15 pm

FourthWorld wrote:
Sat Apr 20, 2019 6:52 pm
I have insufficient information to determine whether the source of the crashes are specific to the Linux kernel. No bug report numbers have been cited, no recipes given. I could speculate, but I'd rather be informed.
If you are uninformed after our last few discussions in this area, where I not only posted bug reports but also links to video of some of the issues, then I do not know what to tell you.
FourthWorld wrote:
Sat Apr 20, 2019 6:52 pm
This assumes that neither OS packages nor LiveCode change. But of course we know they both do.
... and yet, oddly enough, I can still run RunRev 2.2.x on any distro I've tested. Hm. Fascinating. Mc Starter Kit? Yah, that works too. Lc through to 7.1.4? Uh huh. Leaves us with exactly one thing that may have changed, not to put too fine a point on it.
FourthWorld wrote:
Sat Apr 20, 2019 6:52 pm
And to be fair, long before LC Ltd was explicit about what's "supported", issues with less common distros were also widely known.
If I were talking about "Jock-o-mo's hack'nix', I could see that. The systems I run are either Debian itself, or based on such. In fact, as we speak anything later than 7.1.4 does not run correctly on pure Debian. Which leads me to mention something else I've pointed out previously, Ubuntu is based on ... wait for it... oh yah, Debian.

And here is one of another of the ways your thinking and mine tend to part ways. I prefer to target bases, in this case if Debian was what Lc was targeted against, the likelyhood is it would run fine on every distro that bases off of Debian, which is far and away greater than the number based off Ubuntu, which again, is itself based on Debian.
FourthWorld wrote:
Sat Apr 20, 2019 6:52 pm
But maybe they're all wrong. Show us, where is the market share as expressed in Internet usage? After more than 20 years I see roughly 1.5-3% across the stats aggregators I monitor.
Oh, I agree, it is roughly the equivalent of the Mac share of the network <gasp>.
FourthWorld wrote:
Sat Apr 20, 2019 6:52 pm
I would have nothing to gain by attempting to portray Linux as less popular than it is, and everything to gain from encouraging as much growth as possible.
I'm not sure where the 'asking someone to replace' thing came from. As for this statement, what you wrote sure looks like your saying linux is just too hard for the common person to understand. There was a time where it was true. My reply was to that statement, nothing more, that time is long in the past.
FourthWorld wrote:
Sat Apr 20, 2019 6:52 pm
If there's some vast latent consumer market for Linux that we've all missed, here's the best way to prove the case: go make money selling consumer software on Linux. Show us how it's done.
Well that was good! I'm still laughing.

You might know, since I've said it a few times, I used to use Windows. I also used to program on Windows. I think you *might* agree Windows is the #1 Desktop platform out there. I couldn't show you how to do what your talking about on that platform, since my development at the time was gratis. My support was also gratis. Funny, but after all these years, I still do both gratis. Shocking, I know.

What any of that has to do with this discussion is beyond my ability to ken. I didn't make the decision for Lc to support any version of 'nix, but I still think that if you are going to say your supporting development on 'nix, maybe you might want to you know, support development on 'nix? I dunno, maybe my glasses are off kilter.

I also think that if you develop for 'nix (not Lc, you personally), and your package can't run on better than 3 distros, you might get laughed out of any serious 'nix group. If the dev engine doesn't run on anything but Ubuntu, whats the likely hood anything you write is going to?

I can honestly say I don't know the answer to that last question, because I haven't tested it out in real life.

I think I should have just followed my advice earlier, and stopped the derailment of this topic, since nothing that has been said in the last score of posts has anything to do with running Ubuntu on virtualbox, and even less to do with assembly.

Al, I am very sorry I went on this long.
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Re: Running Ubuntu Linux on Virtualbox

Post by FourthWorld » Sat Apr 20, 2019 9:47 pm

bogs wrote:
Sat Apr 20, 2019 9:15 pm
FourthWorld wrote:
Sat Apr 20, 2019 6:52 pm
I have insufficient information to determine whether the source of the crashes are specific to the Linux kernel. No bug report numbers have been cited, no recipes given. I could speculate, but I'd rather be informed.
If you are uninformed after our last few discussions in this area, where I not only posted bug reports but also links to video of some of the issues, then I do not know what to tell you.
It turns out I neither memorized those bug report numbers nor bookmarked the URL of the earlier discussion. My bad. If you don't need assistance resolving them that's okay.
FourthWorld wrote:
Sat Apr 20, 2019 6:52 pm
This assumes that neither OS packages nor LiveCode change. But of course we know they both do.
... and yet, oddly enough, I can still run RunRev 2.2.x on any distro I've tested. Hm. Fascinating. Mc Starter Kit? Yah, that works too. Lc through to 7.1.4? Uh huh. Leaves us with exactly one thing that may have changed, not to put too fine a point on it.
Yes, several hundred changes in the engine.

If you're happy with v7 keep on enjoying it.

If you want to investigate ways we might be able to make the changes that have occurred since then compatible with the distro you're running, that's an option too.

And here is one of another of the ways your thinking and mine tend to part ways. I prefer to target bases, in this case if Debian was what Lc was targeted against, the likelyhood is it would run fine on every distro that bases off of Debian, which is far and away greater than the number based off Ubuntu, which again, is itself based on Debian
Debian has no GUI, and LC is mostly used to make GUIs. So which DE? KDE? Gnome? Which variant? Mate? What are the combinations of packages needed for each? How might these interact with newer features in LC?

These are questions I'd be happy to see if we can answer whenever that's of interest.
FourthWorld wrote:
Sat Apr 20, 2019 6:52 pm
I would have nothing to gain by attempting to portray Linux as less popular than it is, and everything to gain from encouraging as much growth as possible.
I'm not sure where the 'asking someone to replace' thing came from.
Your cited success case. It involved a PC, on which you installed Linux.

That's how most PCs ship, with an OS. Except for the excellent machines from System76, ZaReason, and a few from Dell, Asus, and others, most PCs ship with Windows. Where Linux is used, it needs to be installed.

As for this statement, what you wrote sure looks like your saying linux is just too hard for the common person to understand.
Not too hard. Most folks choosing to undertake most reasonable tasks can accomplish them.

The question for mass markets is: why bother? Why would a non-tech-pro be compelled to download an OS from the Internet and install it on their laptop that already has an OS?

For you and me and several million other people, that's easy to answer.

But for the other billions of computer users, it's extra steps to achieve something they perceive as already having.

I'm a Linux advocate and an Ubuntu contributor, so I'm certainly not here to argue against Linux advocacy. I just know a lot of people maintaining distros like Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and OpenSUSE, and app teams like the folks who make InkScape, and I hear the same from all of them: they get trickles of support from end-users, and pay the bills with enterprise support. If they're missing some untapped revenue potential they'd love to know about it, and I'd be happy to pass it along.

In the meantime, if you're interested in seeing if we can address the problems you encountered, I'd be happy to help where I can. Please understand that I read at least 50 bug reports a week and memorize few of their ID numbers, but if you can work with me I can work with you.
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Re: Running Ubuntu Linux on Virtualbox

Post by bogs » Sun Apr 21, 2019 11:23 am

Richard, I thank you for the offer, and I know that it is sincere.

I rarely find myself outside of Mc, for the older IDE, and never past 6.x for anything other than trying to help someone else. Currently I am looking at deficiencies in the message box from those IDEs, although I did fix one bug in 2.x as a result which concerned the File item for making a new stack (typing error).

I am merely thinking of those coming to Lc, not of myself or my usage, which is not going to change.
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Re: Running Ubuntu Linux on Virtualbox

Post by FourthWorld » Sun Apr 21, 2019 9:02 pm

bogs wrote:
Sun Apr 21, 2019 11:23 am
I am merely thinking of those coming to Lc, not of myself or my usage, which is not going to change.
A good goal, and much appreciated.

If they follow the guidance in the Install Guide, they should be fine.

If they're using a distro not listed there, they're probably accustomed to open source process and will hopefully engage with our community for resolution.
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