Category: Linux

why apple makes me mad

whbeebe

There is a video of Ken Thompson on YouTube (yes, I know about NoTube November and what I said; I haven’t back slid) where he announces he’s walking away from Apple and going to Linux, specifically Raspbian on the Raspberry Pi. The video is below at the proper location in his talk, so you can listen to it now if you want.

I bring up Ken Thompson’s talk because today I was reminded of why he said he was leaving Apple in that talk. After starting Visual Studio Code on my brand new M1 Max MacBook Pro I attempted to check for VS Code updates and was gobsmacked with the following error dialog:

Visual Studio Code Quarantine Message

Look in the lower right corner at the dialog with the red circled ‘X’ about running on a read-only volume. There’s a link to mitigate the issue, but the the statement that “This might mean the application was put on quarantine by macOS” just royally pisses me off. This is the very first time I’ve been hit with the “quarantine application” issue on macOS, but not the first time I’ve run into a show-stopping problem on macOS that shouldn’t have happened.

I followed the link in the message, and based on the post I performed the following to get things straightened out.

sudo chown $USER Library/Caches/com.microsoft.VSCode.ShipItxattr -dr com.apple.quarantine ~/Applications/Visual\ Studio\ Code.app

My VSCode is located locally in my account folder, not under global /Applications. I’m sure that chown isn’t needed, but still it’s good to have around. Once those changes were made, I quite VSCode and restarted it via Launchpad as always, then checked again for updates, and it worked just fine (VSCode was already up to date anyway).

It’s obstacles thrown up like that that make developers like me who actually know how to get work done want to just walk away from Apple. I’m sure Apple will point to XCode, but I don’t want to develop with XCode because I do a lot of wide-ranging work well beyond Apple and macOS. It’s not as bad as Microsoft, who have basically driven me away from Windows permanently with their shenanigans with regards to Windows 11. But it’s getting close. If it gets bad enough I may indeed contemplate migrating to Asahi Linux; that’s another reason why I chose this M1 Max over a later version of Apple Silicon; Asahi Linux was originally developed on, and for, the M1.

Links

Code won’t update on macOS #7426 — https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/7426

advancing linux mint’s kernel from version 5.15 to version 6.5

whbeebe

Linux Mint (Version 21.2 “Victoria”) has an interesting feature. The Update Manager has the ability to install a new kernel (View | Linux Kernels). Mint 21.2 ships with kernel 5.15, the same version as Ubuntu 22.04, upon which Linux Mint is based. For the vast majority of users (myself included) I’m satisfied with the base 5.15 kernel and have no burning desire to move up. But for those that do have a use case for a newer kernel, then this might be a good resource for them. So I installed a new kernel (6.5) on my Linux Mint 21.2 VM test system just to see what would happen.

Linus Mint Update Manager Linux Kernels selection

Open the Update Manager, and then open the View dropdown menu and select Linux Kernels.

Linux Mint Kernels change warning

Once selected you’re presented with The Dire Warning. Click Continue.

Update Manager Kernels selection 6.5

I’ve selected the most recent kernel version allowed for installation. Note that the 6.5 kernel is only supported until August 2024, or a little more than nine months from now. Or about how long a given Fedora release is supported. The stock 5.15 kernel is supported until April 2027, so keep that in mind when mulling what to do.

Update Manager Kernels selection 6.5

Clicking the kernel entry opens up the installation buttons. Click Install.

Update Manager Kernels selection 6.5 confirmation

Yes, I’m absolutely sure I want to do this. Please install.

Update Manager Kernels selection 6.5 downloading packages

Now we watch the kernel packages download.

Update Manager Kernels selection 6.5 applying changes

And then we watch everything get installed.

Update Manager Kernels selection 6.5 applying changes

After a quick reboot, neofetch reports that we’re now running with the Linux 6.5 kernel. According to what little I’ve read, this kernel should be more performant/less energy demanding as a VM under QEMU. I can’t really test that claim if it is a claim. But I do want try out a few things running on the new kernel in that test system before I make any major change on my regular rig.

I felt no qualms about trying this out on my test system virtual machine because that’s what it’s for. I can trash a VM and then spin one back up. I don’t want to try something risky on my main Linux system because I do not want to have to rebuild/reinstall even with backups. It needs to be repeated; be careful what you ask for when making major system changes to your computer. Like Uncle Ben said, “With great power comes great responsibility.”