repository Armbian loves Microsoft

[Igor]

 

 

If you are running Armbian desktop and you like to use Visual Studio Code,  open a terminal and run:
 

sudo apt update
sudo apt install code

 

[NicoD]

I don't know if I need to be happy or need to cry.
It's like if my girlfriend and ex-girfriend became good friends.

I'll try it out. Been a while since I wrote in C#.

[Igor]

1 hour ago, NicoD said:

I don't know if I need to be happy or need to cry.

Yeah, it tried to add some sarcasms. Not sure if it worked 

[TRS-80]

absolutely_disgusting.jpg

 

 

[lomady]

After all the harm that corporation has done to open standards and free software? Not funny.

[TRS-80]

You know @lomady, you are right.  All jokes aside, something had been bothering me a lot about MS purchase of GitHub and seeming to "get religion" all of a sudden with regards to "open source."  I wasn't buying it of course.  I (and I am sure many of you guys around here, too) am old enough to remember Embrace, extend, and extinguish, the Halloween documents, Microsoft's funding of the SCO lawsuit, as just a small sample of the sort of hostility towards F/LOSS that you alluded to.

 

Although extremely suspicious, I still could not put my finger on exactly what their end game was (particularly with regards to the purchase of GitHub).  Until I read an (IMO) excellent article recently by Drew DeVault called Embrace, extend, and finally extinguish - Microsoft plays their hand wherein he lays it all out.  I have to say I agree with him.

 

This resonated quite a bit with me, as I have finally gotten decent enough in writing Emacs Lisp to be close to publishing some of my functions into a package that others might find useful.  And so I have been looking for / thinking about a place to share my code.  But I did not want to so much as lift a finger to improve Microsoft's platform (GitHub).  Though my contributions may be small, they are mine.

 

I realize the Armbian project has a different set of concerns (likely around making contributions as easy as possible) than I do personally, and so the calculation will be different.  I know a lot of projects are on (or moving to) GitHub nowadays because "everyone is there."  But this sort of platform centralization is the beginning of bad things happening (IMO).

 

However at the end of the day I do not think that those of us who are involved in F/LOSS should be giving any morale or mindshare to the Microsoft juggernaut.  I agree with Stallman that even non-coders can help out a lot simply by deliberately using the term Free (or Libre) Software, by talking about freedom (instead of "open source") and why that's important, and instead discussing F/LOSS alternatives to proprietary software (or in case of VSC, why you shouldn't trust Microsoft).*  Because marketing and mindshare are important.  Microsoft has vast resources at their disposal, and they are going to do what they are going to do.  But we don't have to help them.  Remember, they tried to kill us.

 

* Yes I realize VSC is nominally "open source."  However it still contains tracking garbage.  But my main objection is that it takes a lot of investment of time and energy to learn any piece of complicated software, and an IDE / editor is no exception.  So, do you want to invest all your valuable time into a piece of software / platform that can be changed or yanked out from under you at any time (or perhaps more likely, subtly steer you into usage patterns that benefit some corporation, usually at the expense of free and open alternatives)?  Because I sure don't.  I haven't got time to re-learn another complicated platform.  Which is why I decided some years ago now not only to steer clear of such software, but to actively contribute to making the (F/LOSS) alternatives better.  This is a general standpoint, applicable to many types of software, not just editors of course.  And one I urge you to consider.

Edited November 12, 2020 by TRS-80
adjust wording

[sfx2000]

On 10/17/2020 at 1:03 AM, Igor said:

If you are running Armbian desktop and you like to use Visual Studio Code,

 

Nice to see VS Code in the repo's - it's my goto editor these days on Mac/Win/Linux..

 

On lower end ARM's - it's a bit slow and memory intense, but it does run...

 

The RPI folks recently added it to their debian based distro in the last couple of weeks...

 

 

 

[sfx2000]

On 10/17/2020 at 11:03 AM, NicoD said:

It's like if my girlfriend and ex-girfriend became good friends.

 

Indeed - and they both get along, and want to do a threesome.... It's so very wrong and right on many levels, LOL, and rarely ends well

 

That being said - Microsoft is a very different company that it was under Gates/Ballmer with Windows/Office at all costs...

 

WSL on Win10 for example, as well at the beast that is Azure...

 

Embrace/Extend/Overcome?

 

Who knows...

 

sfx

[Igor]

Probably we should switch rather to https://vscodium.com/#install ?

[Technicavolous]

an option in armbian-config?

[Igor]

1 hour ago, Technicavolous said:

an option in armbian-config?

Yes. It can be added as is ... but more important is to get some movement here

How we will rework this so adding such features will be straightforward, tested for install automatically, ... assign who will help reworking. And ... I need some break in between

[TRS-80]

On 2/5/2021 at 3:03 AM, sfx2000 said:

Microsoft is a very different company that it was under Gates/Ballmer with Windows/Office at all costs...

 

WSL on Win10 for example, as well at the beast that is Azure...

 

Embrace/Extend/Overcome?

 

Have they released Office/Windows under F/LOSS license?  Tells you everything you need to know.  Leopard don't change their spots, which is why I am not buying that they suddenly "got religion" about open source.

 

Remember, they tried (very hard!) for decades to kill F/LOSS!  Referring to it as "cancer", etc.  Back then, the future was not certain, I can assure you!  By now, things look a lot better, it appears we won and they lost!  We are not only still here, but growing, which is why they had to switch tactic/marketing, or else become irrelevant.  But that is all it is, marketing (i.e., lies, as their actions prove otherwise, see first point).

 

So let them die off already, IMO.  By virtue of their past actions, they no longer deserve to be a part of the collaborative future we are building together.  Make no mistake, they are still the enemy.  And the enemy deserves neither aid nor comfort from us.

 

If you are going to disregard all the above and put it in anyway, then yes, Vscodium would be a more palatable alternative (removing the spyware).  But still misses the (IMO) more important political point.  Not to mention the fact that such a fork is necessary only serves to reinforce my earlier points that M$ still does not really "get it."  Even when trying to do "open source" they still cannot help themselves but put spyware into it, have a EULA, and all the other nonsense we have always expected from them.

Edited February 8, 2021 by TRS-80
add couple sentences to end

[Technicavolous]

I didn't just ditch Windows, but x86 altogether several years ago. That's what originally brought me to armbian - sbc and linux totally replaced intel / amd and ms.

 

The ONLY reason I have a modern x86 box today is to build armbian. And I'm still fairly incompetent at that, although now I can compile an image with a few changes and it actually boots ... (I was for many years a windows x86 tech ... mastered win3.11 and nt server) I'll tech myself armbian-config yet, probably right about when you decide to change how it works lol. But I digress.

 

While I also agree ms is a way different co than decades ago, they're still a profit company and will do what they need at any cost to stay what they consider on top.

 

All that being said, it's still cool to see how much stuff is being ported to arm.

[mobmarcus]

As for why MS bought GitHub. See why they invested $1billion in OpenAI, then soon another $10 billion.

 

CoPilot - was trainined on all the open source and personal free repos of code on GitHub.

 

So MS basically purchased a huge amount of training data for AI. And they then put VS Code into package repos for raspberry pi OS, and other SBCs OS's, so the code written gets monitored, analysed and copied up to them. If MS own the IDE, the repo and the infrastructure, then they own the future of coding and software. Better idea than their strategy of robbing Javas syntax and brining out c# to try to take the programming market.

 

The quicker Linux provides seemless gaming the better. A tipping point will soon be possible once most gamers move from Windows to Linux. As then all windows will have going for it, is office - which is all cloud based now anyway.

[TRS-80]

On 2/27/2021 at 11:00 PM, Technicavolous said:

I didn't just ditch Windows, but x86 altogether several years ago.

 

You and me both.  After Intel with their IME (and AMD equivalent), x86 is dead to me.  Which is why I try and support Armbian as much as I can.  'You're our only hope, Obi Wan!' 

 

On 2/27/2021 at 11:00 PM, Technicavolous said:

I also agree ms is a way different co than decades ago

 

Only in their marketing approach.  Wake me up when they release the 'crown jewels' (Office, Windows, etc.) under a F/LOSS license.  Their model now seems to be 'run Office in the cloud' that way surely they can keep control, and now they can charge you a monthly subscription, as well!  'You will own nothing, and you will be happy!' 

 

On 2/3/2023 at 2:36 AM, mobmarcus said:

CoPilot - was trainined on all the open source and personal free repos of code on GitHub.

 

It gets worse, much worse.  Now they are trying to claim that the output from that AI is no longer subject to the (typically, F/LOSS) licenses that applied to the original software.

 

Does anyone really think a leopard change their spots?!  I don't!

[waba]

sudo apt update sudo apt install code

 

Armbian_23.5.2_Orangepiplus2e_jammy_current_6.1.30_xfce_desktop.img.xz

 

root@orangepiplus2e:~# sudo apt install code
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 code : Depends: libasound2 (>= 1.0.17)
        Depends: libatk-bridge2.0-0 (>= 2.5.3) but it is not installable
        Depends: libatk1.0-0 (>= 2.2.0) but it is not installable
        Depends: libatspi2.0-0 (>= 2.9.90) but it is not installable
        Depends: libcurl3-gnutls but it is not installable or
                 libcurl3-nss but it is not installable or
                 libcurl4 but it is not installable or
                 libcurl3 but it is not installable
        Depends: libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.37.3) but it is not installable
        Depends: libgtk-3-0 (>= 3.9.10) but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

[Igor]

46 minutes ago, waba said:

Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

 

You are using old image on non supported board. Did you made a full system update prior to installing code? This would explain it.

 

 

Our daily automated install on x86 platform shows no problems so it must be limited to 32b armhf system, which is getting less and less love generally. If you have updated everything .... this is beyond Armbian anyway.