Official Linux distribution for PureBasic

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Fred
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Official Linux distribution for PureBasic

Post by Fred »

Hello,

There was some requests to have some official Linux distribution supported by PureBasic, so I want to have your opinion before changing anything.

Current status:

- We build PureBasic for Linux on Unbuntu 17.10, which is the last one supporting 32-bit. So if you use this one, it will work perfectly (hopefully). Problem: it's not an LTS version so it's outdated now.

Future plan (suggestion):

-Use only LTS version of Ubuntu, and build PureBasic on the 2 last LTS. It would be 18.04 LTS and 20.04 LTS. As there is no 32-bit version, we will drop it (seems lilke a global move in linux distro). If we want to have a 32-bit version, we will need to choose another distribution (debian ?). I would avoid to build for 16.04 LTS as it's too old, and doesn't have required package for QT 5.

What do you think ?
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NicTheQuick
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Re: Official Linux distribution for PureBasic

Post by NicTheQuick »

Nobody needs a 32 Bit version today. The trend is not moving to 64 Bit, 64 Bit is the default nowadays. Also on Windows btw. :wink:

Compiling using the latest two LTS versions sounds like a good idea to me.
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Re: Official Linux distribution for PureBasic

Post by Shardik »

Fred wrote:- We build PureBasic for Linux on Unbuntu 17.10, which is the last one supporting 32-bit.
That's not true! You are still able to install 32-bit versions of Ubuntu via NetBoot! You may take a look into this HowTo. Two years ago I used NetBoot to install Ubuntu 18.04 LTS with 32-bits. Here you find the 32-bit files for the NetBoot installation of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS x86.

For Ubuntu 20.04 LTS there doesn't seem to exist a 32-bit installer anymore.
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Re: Official Linux distribution for PureBasic

Post by Fred »

Is your 32-bit 18.04 install complete (all package available) ? Anyway, does it makes sens to build one version for it if noone can install it easily?
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Re: Official Linux distribution for PureBasic

Post by NicTheQuick »

Fred wrote:Is your 32-bit 18.04 install complete (all package available) ? Anyway, does it makes sens to build one version for it if noone can install it easily?
I don't think so. Even if you got a 32 Bit version of Linux installed, you will have a hard time to get precompiled 32 Bit applications for your system. Except your main goal is to solely run Purebasic applications on it.
On the other hand it gets more and more uncommon that your processor only supports 32 bit. All modern processors do 64 Bit. So why do you wanna ignore these extra instructions you could use? :wink:
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Re: Official Linux distribution for PureBasic

Post by useful »

On the example of linux mint
18 (32 & 64)
19 (32 & 64)
20 (only 64)
xubuntu, lubuntu similar for 16 18 20

Ideally, several versions should be released for Linux
If you choose one official base, today it is 18.04 (32&64) as the LTS and 20 as the unofficial issue to prepare for the next LTS.

p.s. For me personally, 32-bit Purebasic is only interested in mint 18.3 (xfce), xubuntu 16.04 and debian 9 (xfce).
But because of zlib I stay at 5.71.
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Re: Official Linux distribution for PureBasic

Post by Shardik »

Fred wrote:Is your 32-bit 18.04 install complete (all package available) ?
Yes, it's complete and works like a charm!

I have a single PC at work with 22 different 32-bit Linux distributions for testing purposes. On this system disk space matters, so I decided more than 10 years ago to use 32-bit distributions. Of course I have to migrate them now to 64-bits because in most current distributions the support for 32-bits has ceased.

Of course privately I am a running 64-bit distributions since many years.
NicTheQuick wrote:Nobody needs a 32 Bit version today.
I have still some old hardware (and I know others with old hardware too who don't throw away working old PCs) which doesn't support 64-bits, so your statement in its absoluteness is definitely incorrect.
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Re: Official Linux distribution for PureBasic

Post by useful »

Shardik wrote: .......
so your statement in its absoluteness is definitely incorrect.
my opinion is exactly the same.
For me, the most important argument in favor of using PB is a combination of convenience, efficiency and low hardware requirements.
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Re: Official Linux distribution for PureBasic

Post by deeproot »

My personal opinions only - others may disagree and that is perfectly fine.

I do not think that "officially supported" distributions are really necessary, but it would useful to have "recommended" and maybe also "tested" distros that are relevant to specific versions of PureBasic. The "tested" category could be a community derived thing, rather than making extra work for Fred. A possible start point might be to verify the suitability of new PB versions on "base" distributions, Debian, Arch, Slackware, openSUSE and so on. Other major derived distros such as Ubuntu may need to be added, but at least that should give a good probability of working throughout each "family" and would help with install prerequisites.

I actually consider the system with PB installed for building the application executable is perhaps less important that the "target" machines that might run it. It may be that the same recommendations apply to both, but if an end-user has difficulty understanding or installing dependencies than it's more of a problem than getting our own development system running!

Also I think that often the Desktop Environment is equally or more significant than the distro itself. It is not enough to simply say Debian 10 or Ubuntu 19 when they can come in many flavours of desktop.

For me the continued option of 32-bit is very important. I have 2 laptops with PureBasic that are 32-bit processor only - they are quite old but run well with Linux and one of them is my regular 'travelling' laptop. I have an even older 32-bit laptop, circa 2001, for occasional testing, dual booting Win2000 and Antix 19. Not everyone can afford new machines and Linux is a good way to make old kit productive again rather than going to land-fill. The latest version of my main distro is still available as 32-bit and I understand there are no plans to discontinue it in the near future. I offer both 64-bit and 32-bit executables to customers.
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Re: Official Linux distribution for PureBasic

Post by useful »

Just for information.
https://github.com/linuxhw/Trends
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Re: Official Linux distribution for PureBasic

Post by Joubarbe »

Is it not possible to have multiple distro? For instance, Chromebooks use Debian 10 and .deb packages work like a charm (ie. easy install and full compatibility). Maybe it’s something to consider too (yeah, I really love my Chromebook ;) ).
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Re: Official Linux distribution for PureBasic

Post by NicTheQuick »

useful wrote:Just for information.
https://github.com/linuxhw/Trends
Nice!

So, then only 2.85% are using an Intel based 32 Bit version and 95.88% are using an Intel based 64 Bit version.
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Re: Official Linux distribution for PureBasic

Post by Shardik »

NicTheQuick wrote:So, then only 2.85% are using an Intel based 32 Bit version and 95.88% are using an Intel based 64 Bit version.
That's correct. But 32 bit versions are the second largest fraction. Would you propose that Linux should drop ARM support which is only 0.86% for aarch64 and even all ARM architectures combined with 1.28% are well below the 2.85% of Intel 32 bit...

And we shouldn't forget that in the developing world 32 bit Intel systems are still the norm:
Peter Tribble (author of the open source OS Tribblix) wrote:… in the developed world we assume that we can replace things; in some parts of the developing world older IA-32 systems are still the norm, with 64-bit being rare.
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Re: Official Linux distribution for PureBasic

Post by useful »

I asked many times to choose the "official" Linux distribution. My goal was very simple. I just wanted to understand what was meant by [done], I wanted to be sure that the error message and its fixing had the same execution environment. When we get more stable in the same distribution, by testing collectively in the same environment, we can start looking for ways to build an assembly farm for different environments, with payment by those interested in other "non-official" environments.

Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
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Re: Official Linux distribution for PureBasic

Post by Denis »

I only installed Unbuntu 64 bit some time ago.
I think we should think about abandoning the 32 bit versions altogether.
Let it down, that's my opinion.

[j'ai uniquement installé Unbuntu 64 bit il a quelque temps.
Je pense qu'il faudrait penser à abandonner les versions 32 bit tout simplement.
C'est beaucoup de travail pour des machines obsolètes.
Laisses tomber la version 32 bit de linux, c'est mon avis.]
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