fun with Linux

[Mark Tarver]

The title is ironic.  I'm looking at Linux distros and I've downloaded an iso file for Linux Mint Cinnamon.  I've got a 16Gb USB stick and when I click on the iso file it asks me for a DVD disk to burn to.  No other drives are recognised.  If I insert a working DVD, it tells me that there is no recordable disk in the drive.  If I copy a small file to the DVD it is fine.

Mark

[Mark Tarver]

I'll try Lubuntu - the Universal USB Installer seems to have a lot of dead links.

Mark

[Mark Tarver]

Exactly the same behaviour with Lubuntu.

Mark

[Mark Tarver]

Ah OK.  We have to go through the USB Installer; not the iso file.

Mark

[Bruno Deferrari]

Last time I installed Linux on a desktop computer, it was https://elementary.io/

That was years ago, and it was their first version I think, but the
install was pretty straightforward and it worked pretty well. I would
guess that the current version is even better.

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Shen" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to qilang+un...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to qil...@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/qilang.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.



--
BD

[Mark Tarver]

OK;  installed and after a fight trying to get access to the boot menu (F11 key) we have LUbuntu.   Next to connect to the web.

And it works.   Certainly nicer than the old Linux Lite which didn't seem to recognise the wireless connection.

SBCL downloaded.   Switching to GNOME display.

Annoying the screen edge is being lost but the display settings don't seem to allow me to fix this.

I have to check that SBCL has been saved on the USB.

Mark

[Mark Tarver]

Right TCL/tk installed; SBCL working.  Linux Lubuntu  all works from the USB with 9Gb spare of the 16GB.  Display settings require lower resolution under Linux than Windows. The font is not as good and icons are much larger.  But overall good.  I'll call this a success and not press my luck further today.

Mark

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Shen" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to qilang+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

[Raoul Duke]

Linux should do the Apple thing and start selling 'closed source' hardware it runs on, and doesn't run on anything else :-)

[Mark Tarver]

Heresy Raoul!!! 

Msrk

On Mon, Dec 5, 2016 at 3:12 PM, Raoul Duke <rao...@gmail.com> wrote:

Linux should do the Apple thing and start selling 'closed source' hardware it runs on, and doesn't run on anything else :-)

--

[Mark Tarver]

Actually seriously people should read this:

https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/13/please-dont-tell-me-you-want-to-be-the-next-red-hat/

Now scroll down to see Red Hat compared with MS.

RedHat, the Linux leader, doesn't have the capital to fabricate, manufacture and market its own design like Apple.  Android is the closest thing to what you describe.  Google makes off the hardware and services.

BTW a very good quote from the above.

There are many reasons why the Red Hat model doesn’t work, but its key point of failure is that the business model simply does not enable adequate funding of ongoing investments. The consequence of the model is minimal product differentiation resulting in limited pricing power and corresponding lack of revenue. As shown below, the open source support model generates a fraction of the revenue of other licensing models. For that reason it’s nearly impossible to properly invest in product development, support, or sales the way that companies like Microsoft or Oracle or Amazon can.

Mark

[Antti Ylikoski]

Now that Mark has somehow got some kind of a Linux into some machine

[being sardonic towards Linux]

then, the following can be done.

In a PC with one hard disc, the raw binary disc usually is the block

device file /dev/sda.  The files /dev/sda1, /dev/sda5, etc are the

file systems on the said hard disc.

If one will plug one USB memory into that machine, then that USB

memory usually will be the raw binary device file /dev/usb.  The file

systems on that USB memory are /dev/sdb1, /dev/sdb5, etc.

(Illogical?  Hackery?  Yes, it indeed is illogical bit hackery.)

Now, if one has acquired an ISO disc image file

ubuntu-14.04.amd64.iso, or such, that file should be "burnt" on the

raw USB memory file /dev/sdb, to make a bootable USB stick, for almost

any Linux distribution.  This is done with the following commands:

% su

Password: foobarbaz

# cp ubuntu-14.04.amd64.iso /dev/sdb

# sync

or, with the commands:

% su

Password: KGB007

# dd if=ubuntu-14.04.amd64.iso of=/dev/sdb

# sync

and after the operation, the said USB disc can be booted for a novel

Linux installation into the desired machine.

yours, A. J. Y.

Helsinki, Finland, the E.U.

[Raoul Duke]

fpgas baby

[Antti Ylikoski]

FPGAs -- Field Programmable Gate Arrays?

Such as, in http://store.elsevier.com/FPGAs-101/Gina-Smith/isbn-9781856177061/

Tell us more!

yours, A. J. Y.

2016-12-05 21:55 GMT+02:00 Raoul Duke <rao...@gmail.com>:

fpgas baby

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Shen" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/qilang/YoR41fg7LVE/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to qilang+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

[Raoul Duke]

i unrealistically day dream of a day when everything is open sourced encodings running on mass produced fpga type stuff so theres not as much vendor lock in above the silicon level.

won't be for cutting edge apps but could be enough for basic eg web lifestyle.

of course could also be security epic fail hell.

[Samuel Falvo II]

On Monday, December 5, 2016 at 8:25:04 AM UTC-8, raould wrote:

Linux should do the Apple thing and start selling 'closed source' hardware it runs on, and doesn't run on anything else :-)

I invite you to look at the few Linux-specific systems vendors, my favorite being System76.  When my desktop PC equipped with UEFI decided to outright *REFUSE* to let me boot into the Linux partition of my choice after exactly 10 times, the motherboard decided to brick itself hard.  That was the last time I *ever* trusted closed source anything: $1500 for the system already spent, but the mobo vendor's manual recommended shipping it back to them and spending an additional $350 for a "processing fee" to determine cause of failure.  Uhh, no.

Meanwhile, System76 ships its products preconfigured and pretested, so all the benefits of having a Mac-like "it just works" experience (insofar as device drivers are available) while still retaining the benefits of having an open source environment.  The computers themselves, of course, are not open source.  And they are a bit more expensive.  But well worth it, in my experience.

[Samuel Falvo II]

I'm working on it!  http://kestrelcomputer.github.io/kestrel

I'm taking a multi-step, multi-year development approach:

1) Get *something* working now.  Anything.  6 MIPS and 256 colors mainly because of RAM interface limitations.  You can get FPGA boards with 32-bit or wider paths to memory, but such boards are disproportionately expensive for some reason.  Expected performance should compare with, say, a Mac Classic, Amiga 1000, or Atari ST.

2) Improve RAM performance.  On existing FPGA boards, this can let me drive the processor much faster (10x improvement in performance).  Expected performance should fall somewhere between Atari Falcon030 performance and early-model SGI workstation.  ALSO: Get Linux and/or Plan 9 running, so we can enjoy memory protection in a "real" operating system environment.  At these speeds, a "real" OS becomes feasible/usable.

3) At about this point, the rest of the cores on the FPGA are about as good as I'll get them.  Look into off-loading processing work to actual silicon RISC-V processors (e.g., SiFive's Unleashed cores, lowRISC cores, etc. whichever comes out first).  This will require yet another RAM subsystem redesign, but it'll let me sport 600MHz to 1.x GHz performance levels.  Custom-made motherboards are required.  At this point, we're competitive with low- to mid-grade mini-ITX motherboards.

FUN FACT: The instruction decoder and execution engine for my current CPU design is written using Shen OS.  Here's the instruction decode logic, which gets compiled to Verilog prior to being checked into Github: https://github.com/KestrelComputer/polaris/blob/master/rtl/SMG/seq.smg

Here's the compiler for it: https://github.com/sam-falvo/SMG

[Raoul Duke]

all i can say is, woah. awesome.

[Mark Tarver]

The Universal USB Installer actually takes that sort of command line headache out of the process.    

Mark

[Mark Tarver]

Very impressive.  What part (if any) does Shen play in this work.

Keep going BTW!

Mark

[Samuel Falvo II]

On Wednesday, December 7, 2016 at 3:41:16 AM UTC-8, Mark Tarver wrote:

Very impressive.  What part (if any) does Shen play in this work.

Right now, Shen runs the SMG compiler, which translates from SMG (which is really just a precisely crafted Shen source file that the compiler loads; much too lazy to derive my own syntax and use the parser) into Verilog implementing the state machine decoder.  It does not (yet) render the full state machine implementation, mainly because CPUs are more complicated than a simple state machine.  But the decode logic is hard enough, so I just focused on that.  After testing to make sure the thing boots, I commit the Verilog output along with the SMG source it was generated from.

The SMG compiler needs a lot of TLC though; while it indeed works nicely, it needs error-checking to be added.  Even basic error detection, such as listing an output to fire that is not also listed in the list of outputs, would be a huge help.  But, for now, it works well enough for my needs.  I have a working CPU design.  :)

Software wise, I would like to eventually implement a KLambda environment to the Kestrel some day.  Right now, it boots into eForth; but, I figure if I can get a KLambda environment working natively somehow (probably as a binary blob loaded from disk via eForth), then I should also be able to run Shen on top.  I'll probably have to write it in assembly language, as eForth will be too sluggish to be satisfactory.  This will involve some effort though, since I'll also need to add software emulation support for floating point instructions.  Plus, I have zero experience porting Shen to anything else at all, so this will be something of a steep learning curve for me.

Keep going BTW!

Thank you!

[Mark Tarver]

I've pretty much got SP going under Linux (touch wood).  I'm pleased that LUbuntu Linux seems reliable and it is small.  But the finish on the OS feels as if I've gone back to the era of Windows '95.  But kudos to actually creating an alternative to Windows 10!!  Are there any prettier looking distros out there? 

One oddity - I'm invoking Firefox from Shen but the Firefox file doesn't want to cooperate.  A quick preview shows that the file is set up to be executed by nobody.  Weird since I'm using Firefox.  I try to change permissions.  I'm locked out.  I go to command level and try chmod - I'm locked out.  I figure that this is some weird superuser thing left over from the Unix past.

Mark

[Antti Ylikoski]

Nice that you have got the Lubuntu, the Light Ubuntu, going.

The full scale Ubuntu will run in your machine, it requires more than
512MB of RAM, which requirement is satisfied by all modern machines.
See http://www.ubuntu.com.

The full Ubuntu is the most reliable one of the distros that I have
used, and with it I have had no device driver problems, unlike most
other distros.  And it has the Synaptic software package system, with
plenty of free programs: use eg "apt install netbeans" to install the
Java Netbeans.  And "apt install default-jdk" to get the Java itself.

This machine with which I type this, runs the Linux Mint: see
https://www.linuxmint.com/start/sarah/.

The Mint is useful, but with some device driver and other problems.

I also have used the Debian: see https://www.debian.org/.  It is
useful, with a large number of system software loadable with it.

The Arch Linux is the sophisticated hacker's Linux.  It will run in as
little as 256MB of RAM, which only will occur in the oldest machines
seen today.  See https://www.archlinux.org/.

Those are the most important freeware distros around.  Then there are
there the commercial distros such as the Red Hat etc, I have not used
them.

There are in toto more than 100 different Linux distros, most of them
are not very interesting.

yours, A. J. Y.
Helsinki, Finland, the E.U.

--

[Mark Tarver]

For Ubuntu I need another and larger stick.  AFAIK this needs 25Gb.  So I'd have to get a 32Gb stick.

Mark

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Shen" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to qilang+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

[Antti Ylikoski]

To my knowledge the Ubuntu disc image ISO file ubuntu-16.04.01-amd64.iso only is some 1.4GB.

Try downloading it from the www.ubuntu.com web site.

Andy

To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to qilang+un...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to qil...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/qilang.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Shen" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to qilang+un...@googlegroups.com.

[Mark Tarver]

Sure; that's the iso file.  The iso file will be a lot smaller than the installed OS - LUbuntu iso is 1.4 Gb too but when you install LUbuntu on your USB it takes more space than that - 5.2Gb.  Ubuntu comes with a recommended 10Gb or 25Gb depending where you read.  I guess it depends on what else you consider loading on top of Ubuntu.  10Gb is a working minimum.  25Gb for comfort.  Ergo I need a 32Gb stick for this job.

Mark

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to qilang+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

[Thomas Bartscher]

Are you just typing
> chmod u+x,g+x,o+x /usr/bin/firefox
(or whatever that may be)?
If yes: You normally operate without root privileges on modern Linux distributions, even with an administrator account. You need to use
> sudo chmod u+x,g+x,o+x /usr/bin/firefox

[Mark Tarver]

Ah OK.  I figured that was the problem.  Thx for the solution.

Mark

[Willi Riha]

On Monday, December 5, 2016 at 1:21:08 PM UTC, Mark Tarver wrote:

The title is ironic.  I'm looking at Linux distros and I've downloaded an iso file for Linux Mint Cinnamon.  I've got a 16Gb USB stick and when I click on the iso file it asks me for a DVD disk to burn to.  No other drives are recognised.  If I insert a working DVD, it tells me that there is no recordable disk in the drive.  If I copy a small file to the DVD it is fine.

Mark

Mark wrote on Dec 8:

For Ubuntu I need another and larger stick.  AFAIK this needs 25Gb.  So I'd have to get a 32Gb stick.

Please, don't buy one - I have something better: my X-mas present to you! I am sure you can get more than 15 different Linux versions on it. One favour though - may I be spared having any version on my PC!

Willi