Tag: ff0000

report #1 on using ubuntu 23.10 with a raspberry pi 5

whbeebe

It has been a while since I posted anything on the blog, and a great while when it was something technically meaty. This is a report on one aspect of using Ubuntu 23.10 on a Raspberry Pi 5/8GB SBC. I will be writing about developing with Microsoft’s C# using Microsoft released tooling within Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code and plugins. I want to acknowledge right up front how we’ve come a tremendous distance with regards to using the Raspberry Pi. Using Visual Studio Code as but one example, I’ve gone from struggling to build VSC on a Raspberry Pi under Raspbian to simply installing VSC from a Microsoft maintained (yes, Microsoft) repo. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.

Visual Studio Code debugging a simple C# program using .net 8 tooling

Let me note up front that I have my Raspberry Pi 5 plugged into an LG 27GL850-B monitor with a native resolution of 2560×1440 (purchased last Christmas during an incredible sale from Amazon), no overscan or special screen manipulation needed. That gives me a rather wide screen, which in turn allows me to open up an editor such as VSC that allows me to set up a vertical three-panel layout (see above) with plenty of space in all three panels.

After following Microsoft’s directions for installing .NET 8 on Ubuntu I was able to follow their basic tutorials on how to compile and debug C# on Linux. Let me again emphasize that this is Linux on a Raspberry Pi 5, which is AArch64/ARM, not x86-64. And it works. I find all of this amazing considering how I started with the original Raspberry Pi 2 ten years ago and struggled to get Python running.

In my not-so-humble opinion the best distribution to run on the Raspberry Pi 5, bar none, is Ubuntu 23.10 for the Raspberry Pi. Everything works with one notable exception: manipulating the GPIO and through that, physical computing. But I have found an easy solution for that (which I will document later), and it all seems to work without a hitch as well as it would under Raspberry Pi OS for the Raspberry Pi.

As they say, more to come.

Links

making the hack terminal font work properly on fedora 39

whbeebe

A followup to the last article, this time for Fedora 39 with the Cinnamon desktop running in a QEMU/KVM virtual machine.

The directions for setting up Powerline for Fedora are here: https://fedoramagazine.org/add-power-terminal-powerline/ . Once set up, then go back to the Powerline Fonts GitHub repo and clone, then execute the installation script as documented here: https://github.com/powerline/fonts . Because the complete directions are for Debian-based distributions, you don’t have to execute the instructions before the clone. The Fedora Magazine article will help you set up Powerline.

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to get a screenshot of the terminal like there was in Ubuntu, but at least with the Cinnamon desktop there is a screen shot utility bundled in that is easy to find and use.