Raspberry Pi Forums

Imperf3kt wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 2:27 am

Oh, you mean
sudo apt install <program>.

Yes, it allows installing additional packages.


Package cannot be found, do you want to install this similar package instead?

Yes install mystery package I have no idea why I need it.

1. Create desktop file
2. Change permissions
3. Run program
   
   If failed:
4. Program cannot run because dependency is missing
5. Install dependency
6. Run program
   
   If failed:
7. Dependency installed in wrong place
8. Google where it should be installed
9. Install dependency
10. Run Program
    
    If failed:
11. Incorrect package installed (the one it couldn't find earlier)
12. Download package source manually as tar file
13. Build source
14. Install package
15. Run program

I take it most people here have never heard of .msi

Gosh this made me laugh

Also I have heard of .msi, but I don't know it much.

@Imperf3kt,

Oh, you mean
sudo apt install program
...
Run program

Having been using Debian since 1999 and Raspbian since the Pi was available I have to say that experience is not typical. I'm inclined to think you are doing something wrong.

I take it most people here have never heard of .msi

Certainly have. It's a GUI program. Useless on headlesss systems, like most of my Pi or remote servers.

As a counter experience: I recently put a fresh Win 7 installation onto a PC and then upgraded it to Win 10. The whole process took almost 24 hours. Including hunting around on the net for drivers and such so as to get Win 7 into a state that it could connect to the net and upgrade itself.

Contrast to the ease of installing Debian/Rasbian.

One nice benefit of the Pi using ARM is that we don't have Windpws on it

@Nathidraws

ARM is used on pretty much every mobile phone and tablet in the world. ARM is used in billions of embedded devices. It's a natural choice for the Pi.

The low cost is crucial as well of course. The licence to install a Windows that would run all that software you are missing would cost more than the Pi

The variety of software available for the Pi is huge. I can't think of anything from Windows world I might need.

Heater wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 11:01 am

As a counter experience: I recently put a fresh Win 7 installation onto a PC and then upgraded it to Win 10. The whole process took almost 24 hours. Including hunting around on the net for drivers and such so as to get Win 7 into a state that it could connect to the net and upgrade itself.

Contrast to the ease of installing Debian/Rasbian.

Comparing apples to ...
This is like installing Raspbian of several years ago, and then upgrading to current Stretch, good luck with that, it will take lots of time and likely fail miserably!

Buy a new PC with Windows pre installed, turn it on, let it configure and reboot and start working.
Buy a new Pi, burn a current image, turn it on, see how to configure and reboot and start working.

ARM versus Intel X86, Linux versus Windows, just use the tool which serves you best at the right price and leave religious wars to the medieval crusaders

I grew up with computers with papertape as only mass storage and got it to do what I needed it for. And had fun with it.
Now I use Windows and Linux on my PC's, Linux and Ultibo on the small Raspberry Pi and program Arduino's in C. All good fun still, it all has its place in my collection of tools to get things done.

All with annoying problems of course, that is what computers are about, all the time evolving and changing.
Keeps me young following the changes and adapting my toolset accordingly.

Imperf3kt wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 2:27 am

pootle wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 12:36 am

..
I know software isn't just on Windows, but in my opinion, it's just a lot easier to setup on Windows
because most of the time, installing software on Windows just involves:

• Downloading software from internet
• Running installation window
• Double clicking the executable file

Rofl, what a complicated installation process - why isn't it just 1 step like on linux?

Oh, you mean
sudo apt install program
Yes, allow installing additional packages
Package cannot be found, do you want to install this similar package instead?
Yes install mystery package I have no idea why I need it
Create desktop file
Change permissions
Run program
Program cannot run because dependency is missing
Install dependency
Run program
Dependency installed in wrong place, program won't run
Google where it should be instwlled
Install dependency
Incorrect package installed (the one it couldn't find earlier)
Download package source manually as tar file
Build source
Install package
Run program


I take it most people here have never heard of .msi

Not sure how your Pi is set up, but I just have to do the first line...and I'venever seen apt ask if I want to install something else instead. or had tochange permissions.

In fact, there's so much in that list that makes no sense it woudl seen that your Pi apt system is screwed.

Or are you talking about installing from source? Which is an entirely different thing.

hansotten,

Comparing apples to ...
This is like installing Raspbian of several years ago, and then upgrading to current Stretch, good luck with that, it will take lots of time and likely fail miserably!

Not quite. One can install the latest Raspbian directly and easily from a fresh download. There is no need to install an old release first and upgrade it. Conversely, when one has a paid up Win 7 license key one cannot install Win 10 on a clean PC without installing Win 7 first and upgrading it. Jumping through all the hoops that entails.

Besides, I have upgraded Debian/Raspian to new releases when they come out with little drama.

Buy a new PC with Windows pre installed, turn it on, let it configure and reboot and start working.

Perhaps I'm weird but I have never done that. Ever since the PC came to be I have not been tempted to buy one, I get more than enough PC's as cast off's from wherever I'm working at the time. Perhaps that is why the ease of OS installation is a significant point for me.

ARM versus Intel X86, Linux versus Windows, just use the tool which serves you best at the right price and leave religious wars to the medieval crusaders...

Us medieval crusaders still have a cause. Repel the foreign invaders!

All with annoying problems of course...

I'm totally with you there. After all these decades of computer and OS development the situation shows little sign of improvement in the annoyance department.

Heater wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 11:01 am

I recently put a fresh Win 7 installation onto a PC and then upgraded it to Win 10. The whole process took almost 24 hours. Including hunting around on the net for drivers and such so as to get Win 7 into a state that it could connect to the net and upgrade itself.

Contrast to the ease of installing Debian/Rasbian.

The correct comparison would be installing Debian/Raspbian Jessie or Wheezy then upgrading to Stretch.

I'm not sure what drivers you had to hunt around for just to get Windows 7 to connect to the net or upgrade itself but that's not the experience for most people. And would your experience really have been any easier if installing Linux ?

In general, when it comes to software updates and installing new software, there is no actual better or worse when it comes to Linux or Windows. Both can be plain sailing and both can be a nightmare at times for some.

Imperf3kt wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 2:27 am

Oh, you mean
sudo apt install program ...

I can't say I have had those problems you mention but I have been caught out with simple 'apt-get upgrade' when some configuration file changes and it asks me what I want to do; accept the new default configuration, keep my current configuration.

I often don't know what the consequences of doing either will be, which would be best or worst, and it is not always immediately obvious how to best resolve the issue, what a working hybrid solution would or should be.

Installation grinds to a halt while I have to figure that out. Thankfully it doesn't happen that often.

Heater wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 1:21 pm

Us medieval crusaders still have a cause. Repel the foreign invaders!

<offtopic>
Ah, crusaders were not repelling foreign invaders, they were more like invading barbarian armies, conquering and looting and murdering and destroying even other christian nations (like the Eastern Roman empire/Byzantium), all in theory in the name of religion. Not a part of our western history to be proud off.
</offtopic>

hippy,

The correct comparison would be installing Debian/Raspbian Jessie or Wheezy then upgrading to Stretch

You missed the point I was making above. One does not need to install Jessie or Wheezy and then upgrade to Stretch. That would be silly when you can simply install Stretch directly. This is not the case when reviving a Win 7 machine and bringing it up to the latest standard.

I'm not sure what drivers you had to hunt around for just to get Windows 7 to connect to the net or upgrade itself...

It's a long story but as you asked, the short of it was:

When you create a Win 7 installation DVD from the download available from MS it comes with little in the way of drivers. The result being that ethernet was not working and no WIFI dongle I had worked. Eventually I found a download for a WIFI dongle, put it on a USB stick and installed it from there.

With networking available I could then create a Win 10 installation DVD from MS using their media creation tool. Then let Win 7 upgrade itself to Win 10 from the installation DVD.

With Win 10 up and running the networking was not functioning again. After some time I discovered that if I removed that WIFI driver I had installed previously then Win 10 would use it's own driver and everything worked again.

If you know of a quicker, simpler way to do this do let me know. Perhaps I missed an important point along the line.

...but that's not the experience for most people.

True. Most people get their Windows pre-installed on whatever machine they buy. Well fair enough, not many people want to geek out on this stuff. When they have problems with it, need a reinstall after a disk failure or whatever, they pay someone to fix it or rely on whatever nerd they have in their circle of family and friends.

And would your experience really have been any easier if installing Linux ?

Categorically yes. Having installed Linux on a lot of machines since 1998 or so and a few MS operating systems from time to time I can confirm that bringing up a Linux distro is far quicker and easier.

Nathidraws wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 05, 2018 7:56 pm

Could they have originally made Raspberry Pi using x86?

All I know about ARM is that Raspberry Pi uses it,
and because of that, it doesn't have as much of a variety of software as Windows,
because most of them were made to support x86, and not ARM.

(If what I said was incorrect, please correct me)


Anyways, I hope someone can answer those two questions.

Thanks,
Nathan

There are a huge number of advantages, short list follows:

1. ARM is RISC, so no microcode layer, making it possible to keep the design simpler for the same performance.
2. Many of the people involved with the creation of the RPi were also involved with the ARM based Archimedes and successors.
3. RISC OS is ARM only, and the first OS for the ARM (still around), RISC OS runs on the RPi, and has been a true 32-bit OS since it came out (under the name Author).
4. ARM assembly language is simple to learn and a joy to program in (unlike x86 assembly).
5. ARM has been a 32-Bit CPU since its introduction in 1985, so does not have the shohorned stuff that makes it so difficult to do things on the x86 (no GDT/LDT/TSS on ARM).
6. ARM is low power, and one of the best desktop computer CPU archetectures around.
7. ARM is now everywhere, even in small devices (almost all cell phones, portable game consols, automibile computers, thermastats, washing machines, fridgerators, sollar MPPT charge controllers, etc, etc), and still a very good option for desktop, workstation, and server systems.
8. x86 would have increased the price of the RPi, because it is needlessly complex it costs more.
9. ARM will not run x86 Windows OS's (likely the biggest positive of them all). Though there is now an ARM port of ReactOS.

and there are many many other things that make the ARM preferable.

@DavidS

Thanks

I think it is safe to say the ARM port of ReactOS does not exist. All be it that there seem to be some brave souls working on it:
https://reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17977

Heater wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 2:30 pm

I think it is safe to say the ARM port of ReactOS does not exist. All be it that there seem to be some brave souls working on it:
https://reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17977

That would be like saying that the x86 port of ReactOS did not exist in 2002 (when I first used ReactOS). Yes it has a long ways to go before it becomes usable for most things on the ARM, though there have been successful boots, so it exists (just not really of any use yet).

Though in fairness I will say instead that there is an ARM Port of ReactOS in progress.

And I was talking about the 32-bit ARM port, not the AARCH64 port.

Heater wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 1:21 pm

Not quite. One can install the latest Raspbian directly and easily from a fresh download. There is no need to install an old release first and upgrade it. Conversely, when one has a paid up Win 7 license key one cannot install Win 10 on a clean PC without installing Win 7 first and upgrading it. Jumping through all the hoops that entails.

If you have previously done the Windows 10 Upgrade then you can install direct to Windows 10 (no need to start with Win7 and upgrade). Obviously if you've yet to do the upgrade then you'll need to do the upgrade process once (but only once).

Heater wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 11:01 am

I take it most people here have never heard of .msi

Certainly have. It's a GUI program. Useless on headlesss systems, like most of my Pi or remote servers.

MSI's can often be installed silently with no user interaction - in fact that's one of the ways large enterprises can push out software and software updates to fleets of windows desktops.

DavidS wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 2:21 pm

[*]RISC OS is ARM only, and the first OS for the ARM (still around), RISC OS runs on the RPi, and has been a true 32-bit OS since it came out (under the name Author).
[*]ARM has been a 32-Bit CPU since its introduction in 1985, so does not have the shohorned stuff that makes it so difficult to do things on the x86 (no GDT/LDT/TSS on ARM).
[/list]

In the interest of accuracy, a couple of corrections:

• It was "Arthur" not "Author"
• The first ARM CPUs and consequently RISC OS/Arthur weren't fully 32bit. They only supported a 26 bit address bus.

Given that ARM development started in 1983, it find it unlikely that anyone in the RPF was invloved with that.

Heater wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 2:16 pm

hippy,

The correct comparison would be installing Debian/Raspbian Jessie or Wheezy then upgrading to Stretch

You missed the point I was making above. One does not need to install Jessie or Wheezy and then upgrade to Stretch. That would be silly when you can simply install Stretch directly. This is not the case when reviving a Win 7 machine and bringing it up to the latest standard.

If Raspbian required a licence key to upgrade you would have had to install the earlier version first to install the later. Your are conflating licensing issues with ease of installation.

There are plenty of ways to install and activate Windows 10 without having to install an earlier version first.

Maybe you have some particular reasons for doing it the way you did, couldn't do it how others would, couldn't just plug an RJ45 in and get a network connection that way and avoid having to find drivers, but most people don't encounter the difficulties you faced.

Similarly if you had wanted to keep what you had under Jessie of Wheezy without copying stuff off and back later, you would have had to upgrade to Stretch rather than making a fresh install of Stretch.

You are not comparing like to like.

DavidS wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 2:21 pm

• ARM will not run x86 Windows OS's (likely the biggest positive of them all).

That remains to be seen; Windows 10 Full Desktop on the Pi is coming along nicely but there's still some way to go.

As for not being able to run X86 Windows OS's being the biggest positive for ARM; I would disagree with that. Some would even go as far as saying that would be ARM's biggest negative.

thagrol wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 3:17 pm

DavidS wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 2:21 pm

[*]RISC OS is ARM only, and the first OS for the ARM (still around), RISC OS runs on the RPi, and has been a true 32-bit OS since it came out (under the name Author).
[*]ARM has been a 32-Bit CPU since its introduction in 1985, so does not have the shohorned stuff that makes it so difficult to do things on the x86 (no GDT/LDT/TSS on ARM).
[/list]

In the interest of accuracy, a couple of corrections:

• It was "Arthur" not "Author"
• The first ARM CPUs and consequently RISC OS/Arthur weren't fully 32bit. They only supported a 26 bit address bus.

Given that ARM development started in 1983, it find it unlikely that anyone in the RPF was invloved with that.

Thank you.

Though the limit of the 26 bit addressing did not change the fact that the CPU was 32-bit, and still is. Also starting with the ARMv3 we had full 32-bit addressing (even in '26-bit mode') just have to have the executing code within the 26-bit window when executing in 26-bit mode, using other registers can access the entire 32-bit address space.

So you doubt that Sophie Wilson (I hope I spelled her name correctly) was involved in the original? The person that wrote BBC BASIC V, the person that simulated the ISA in BBC BASIC? How do you doubt that she was involved in the original?

thagrol wrote: Given that ARM development started in 1983, it find it unlikely that anyone in the RPF was invloved with that.

Sophie Wilson for one, and others.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson

DavidS wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 3:50 pm

thagrol wrote: Given that ARM development started in 1983, it find it unlikely that anyone in the RPF was invloved with that.

Sophie Wilson for one, and others.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson

I see no metion of RPF/RPT on that page.

However, not having gone through the employee list of either I'm willing to be corrected. I was simply basing my speculation on the apparent age of the public faces of RPF/RPT. None of them stuck me as old enough to have been apropriately qualified at that time.

Enough. We're getting off topic.

thagrol wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 3:58 pm

DavidS wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 3:50 pm

thagrol wrote: Given that ARM development started in 1983, it find it unlikely that anyone in the RPF was invloved with that.

Sophie Wilson for one, and others.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson

I see no metion of RPF/RPT on that page.

However, not having gone through the employee list of either I'm willing to be corrected. I was simply basing my speculation on the apparent age of the public faces of RPF/RPT. None of them stuck me as old enough to have been apropriately qualified at that time.

Enough. We're getting off topic.

You do not need to see mention of RPi on that page.

We all know that she is involved with RPi from at least 2011, as we have spoke with her many times on this forum, she has made many blog posts on the RPi page, and she was explicitly mentioned in almost all of the pre-anouncements back in 2011 and early 2012.

So the needed information is common knowledge to all who are interested in the RPi for any reason.

it is quite on topic, we are talking about one of the people involved in the design of the ARM CPU, as well as one of the people deeply involved with RPi. How much more on topic do you want to be.

DavidS wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 4:05 pm

thagrol wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 3:58 pm

DavidS wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 3:50 pm

Sophie Wilson for one, and others.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson

I see no metion of RPF/RPT on that page.

However, not having gone through the employee list of either I'm willing to be corrected. I was simply basing my speculation on the apparent age of the public faces of RPF/RPT. None of them stuck me as old enough to have been apropriately qualified at that time.

Enough. We're getting off topic.

You do not need to see mention of RPi on that page.

At risk of going further off the topic of this thread, I'd expectt any reference you cite to have contained something to back up your position. I was merely pointing out that it didn't.

We all know that she is involved with RPi from at least 2011, as we have spoke with her many times on this forum, she has made many blog posts on the RPi page

Nope. Not according to this: https://www.raspberrypi.org/search/Sophie+Wilson or this https://duckduckgo.com/?q=sophie+wilson ... 7_b&ia=web

, and she was explicitly mentioned in almost all of the pre-anouncements back in 2011 and early 2012.

So the needed information is common knowledge to all who are interested in the RPi for any reason.

Ah. "common knowledge". It's amazing how often it isn't. Not everyone has the time to read every post and recall every anouncment and blog entry. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that you're assuming too much.

You may well be correct I've not had to to satisfy myself as to that.

it is quite on topic, we are talking about one of the people involved in the design of the ARM CPU, as well as one of the people deeply involved with RPi. How much more on topic do you want to be.

It's not on topic for the subject of this thread.

Heater wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 2:16 pm

If you know of a quicker, simpler way to do this do let me know. Perhaps I missed an important point along the line.

Where you installing Win7 to get a free Win10 Upgrade ? If not, I recently used linux woeusb utility to create a fresh Win10 usb install media using the Win10 iso download from MS... you have 30 days to buy/enter a product key once installed. had to install NTFS filesystem so that I could format the usb drive with a non 4G limit Fat file system... but either way.... I was able to create a Win10 installer without having windows first.

Heater wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 2:16 pm

Categorically yes. Having installed Linux on a lot of machines since 1998 or so and a few MS operating systems from time to time I can confirm that bringing up a Linux distro is far quicker and easier.

Absolutely True.... I just went thru a recent install of Windows and Linux this past weekend....

My son wanted a dual boot Arch / Win10 setup... so I did a fresh Win10 install (thus my recent woeusb exercise), it took nearly 1 1/2 hours before it was past the initial coping of files and boot, update, reboot and repeat stage and ready to actually use. The Arch install on same computer took roughly 10 minutes, and then a few mintues to complete fist -Syu... unmount reboot to local hdd and then another few minutes to download Deepin package and setup local user and start lightdm service and boom.. pretty humming bird on screen and ready to roll.

DavidS wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 4:05 pm

thagrol wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 3:58 pm

DavidS wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 3:50 pm

Sophie Wilson for one, and others.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson

I see no metion of RPF/RPT on that page.

However, not having gone through the employee list of either I'm willing to be corrected. I was simply basing my speculation on the apparent age of the public faces of RPF/RPT. None of them stuck me as old enough to have been apropriately qualified at that time.

Enough. We're getting off topic.

You do not need to see mention of RPi on that page.

We all know that she is involved with RPi from at least 2011, as we have spoke with her many times on this forum, she has made many blog posts on the RPi page, and she was explicitly mentioned in almost all of the pre-anouncements back in 2011 and early 2012.

So the needed information is common knowledge to all who are interested in the RPi for any reason.

it is quite on topic, we are talking about one of the people involved in the design of the ARM CPU, as well as one of the people deeply involved with RPi. How much more on topic do you want to be.

I don't believe Sophie Wilson has been involved in the RPF since the shutdown of a lot of the Cambridge Broadcom office.

jamesh wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 06, 2018 8:04 pm

I don't believe Sophie Wilson has been involved in the RPF since the shutdown of a lot of the Cambridge Broadcom office.

Last time I spoke to anyone in the Broadcom DSL group (about a month back) she was still there.
I'm not aware of any technical involvement from her with the Pi, but she may have been involved in the general ideas side.