Are we all doomed?

This highlights the problem – for perfectly valid reasons it requires a coder who is fluent in both RISC OS and some sort of Linux and has both systems running.
I think it is important to keep NetSurf active on RISC OS as it is, well, our only browser these days. Sadly I can’t volunteer as I have practically no experience with Linux and my playing with a Ubuntu LiveCD last night was a generally unpleasant affair (it made some blog fodder though…); if it is not possible to load Firefox from the LiveCD then maybe they shouldn’t include it? Sending my DVD writer into convolutions for five minutes was bad enough but it was worse when the system utterly died with a kernel panic. I haven’t had Windows fail that hard since when I used to use Windows 95!

I shall make an effort to write an article on NetSurf’s wiki about how to set up a cross-building environment on Debian for building RISC OS NetSurf, if people think that’ll be helpful.

That would be very useful, thanks, Rob.

I know nothing about VMs, but from the little I’ve just read, it sounds like I could have Linux running on a VM inside a window on my Windows desktop – is that right? Do you need a reasonably powerful Windows machine to make it workable? Mine is very humble, unfortunately!

I know nothing about VMs, but from the little I’ve just read, it sounds like I could have Linux running on a VM inside a window on my Windows desktop – is that right?

Yes. VirtualBox is probably the standard way of doing this.

Do you need a reasonably powerful Windows machine to make it workable? Mine is very humble, unfortunately!

Because VirtualBox uses virtualisation it should give you performance that’s just about on par with running Linux (or whatever other OS) natively. Of course you’ll still be limited by the host’s CPU & memory (especially memory since you’ll be sharing it between the host & guest), so that might not help much in your case :-)

Thanks, Jeffrey, that’s interesting. It sounds like it’s worth trying. One more question – can the VM see the host systems hardware? By which I really want to ask, will I be able to, say, open a PuTTY session connected to the VM from within RISC OS?

Rick Murray: That sounds very much like “I did something silly that I don’t understand, so this Linux thing is rubbish.”

One more question – can the VM see the host systems hardware? By which I really want to ask, will I be able to, say, open a PuTTY session connected to the VM from within RISC OS?

Yes and yes. No doubt Rob’s guide will cover how to set everything up ;-) (my memory is a little rusty)

@Rob: not sure I agree Ubuntu is “linux for idiots”, i.e. people who have no knowledge (Yes that’s a deliberate attempt at poking someone). It should pretty much work out of the box

if it is not possible to load Firefox from the LiveCD then maybe they shouldn’t include it?

Ubuntu to care of things that does not work? Ha ha :)
OpenOffice.org and Wine were broken for years. I hope it’s better now.
It boots, so it’s considered to be OK.

Not a joke: OpenOffice.org, with two consecutive versions of Ubuntu, did have a theme problem that caused crashes every time you tried to make a F2 [edit] on a spreadsheet cell. Official answer: use the vanilla OpenOffice.org build / Wine was simply not working. Official answer 1: who needs Wine [me: I’m french, sic.]? Official answer 2: we now, just recompile your own version, everybody does this.

So we switch to Fedora for our dev and Debian for our servers.

Good choice, you need a mouse for ubuntu ;-)
(to make this clearer, I was poking fun at Ubuntu server. It’s horrible.)

http://wiki.netsurf-browser.org/Documentation/BuildingForRISCOSQuickStart – this does not cover the creation of a VM or the installation of Linux; there are too many combinations of products for that to be sane. But it does tell you how to get the source and build it so you end up with netsurf.zip with a RISC OS build in.

(Build times in a VM on my laptop: ns-pull-install step [building the support libraries]: 22 seconds. Make NetSurf itself: 20 seconds. Build a release zip file: 2.6 seconds.)

Thanks Rob – great to see some decent documentation put up so quickly!

I’ve got Mint on my home computer so will hopefully give it a go on there when I get a moment and report back!

So we switch to Fedora for our dev and Debian for our servers.

I have completely abandoned Ubuntu; I use Debian at work and for any servers I build (also used to run our HTPC on it) and Mint for my home desktop (mainly because I was playing with Xen and also wanted to do some gaming on it…although I have never had the time to do that!)

Rather than waste space in Aldershot, I’ve written up my experiences with Ubuntu here → http://www.heyrick.co.uk/blog/index.php?diary=20150224

If anybody cares, that is. ;-)

Yeah I’d give a thumbs up for mint too.
Use mint to use ssh to admin my server and use chrome and fedora on my laptop.
(I change my laptop OS from time to time, for a laugh)

Yeah I’d give a thumbs up for mint too.

Certainly more usable than any version of Ubuntu since Unity appeared.¹
Speaking of GUI abortions, I had occasion to RDP onto a recent built Windows server and in a rare occurrence agreed with the Win server guy that had done the base build. He too thinks the GUI is a steaming pile.

The retiring² RADIUS server install happily runs an old version of Ubuntu and FreeRADIUS, has a Webmin based remote GUI from a module I wrote³.

¹ Horrible thing, tried on a test server and decided to leave the production setup on an old version without the Unity abortion.

² Someone identified a “single point of failure” – apparently everyone else can’t understand any element of the PERL CGI work I did and therefore me ending under a bus could be catastrophic to the organisation. Plus the fact that they all think the light of the world shines from Cisco and it’s “industry standard”. Actually FreeRADIUS is the standard, Cisco ISE is a proprietary offering with no ability to deal with certain elements of the RFC defined RADIUS standard. Still, shortly the ISE will be fully operational and when it goes tits up it ain’t my problem.
³Seemed like a good idea and good use of my time. At the time.

I can’t say I’ve had any issues with Ubuntu on a variety of different hardware since around 2006. Currently NetSurf (and a lot of other stuff) builds quite happily for me with the GCCSDK on Ubuntu 14.04 Desktop.

Ubuntu Server is fine, too – and doesn’t require a mouse, whatever Malcolm says… :-)

So how do you click, next, next, finish and I agree? ;-)
But that’s one of the great things about Linux, you don’t have to agree to enjoy it, so many flavours and largely everyone is wrong,but it is a fun place learning being so wrong

So how do you click, next, next, finish and I agree?

The install was entirely done at the terminal, IIRC (it was 12.04; perhaps later versions are different). Day-to-day, the only connections to the box are power, network and USB to the UPS.

I was being heavily sarcastic, I’m just heavily a red blooded server guy. Ubuntu is OK. I think I’ve “accidentally” installed quite a few over the years

http://wiki.netsurf-browser.org/Documentation/BuildingForRISCOSQuickStart

I tried following the guide and it resulted in this error:

Also – is there a way to get it to build into a different directory? I don’t use my /home partition for building software and instead prefer to use a separate partition (separate disk actually…)

I think we really would need a guide to set up a cross compilation system from 0. For example under a Pi with Raspbian. It could be very useful for software development, from RISC OS (with Nettle and FTP). A ready to run image would be even more cool. A kind of low cost UNIX compiling system for RISC OS :)

I think we really would need a guide to set up a cross compilation system from 0.

Something like http://www.riscos.info/index.php/GCCSDK and http://www.riscos.info/index.php/Using_GCCSDK perhaps? :-)

They’re the guides that I used to install the system.

I should add that the GCCSDK mailing list is very helpful, too.

For example under a Pi with Raspbian.

I’m not sure that will work – I’ve a memory of someone (Matthew Phillips, IIRC) hitting problems with the GCCSDK on a Beagleboard, because the cross-compiler gets confused if it’s running on an ARM platform and not x86. I don’t know if the developers ever fixed this, or if it was too fundamental a problem.

I have tried a RISC OS build of NetSurf on Mint 17 xfce and make TARGET=riscos failed.

In file included from riscos/buffer.c:35:0:
./riscos/wimp.h:34:18: fatal error: rufl.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
make: *** [build-Linux-riscos-elf/riscos_buffer.o] Error 1

rufl.h really does seem to be missing!

I tested those instructions on somebody else on a fresh Debian install; they really do work. I can’t help much if I can’t see all of what you’ve both done, but it sounds like you’ve missed the sourcing of env.sh or the ns-pull-install steps.

it sounds like you’ve missed the sourcing of env.sh or the ns-pull-install steps

Thanks – will have another go at it tonight or tomorrow.

Any way to install in a different directory? Would it be a case of editing env.sh so it points elsewhere?

rufl.h really does seem to be missing!

Sounds like you didn’t set the TARGET_ABI to arm-unknown-riscos when sourcing env.sh. It won’t fetch/build/install the RISC OS specific libraries unless you set that.