Installing VS Code (& Chromium)

[Prophesi]

INSTALLING VS CODE

You'll need to enable multiarch with armhf support, as you'll be using an armhf build of VS Code since arm64 support is still in the works. (TODO: add github issue link where the VS Code team discusses this)

Code:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture armhf
sudo apt-get update

Now you'll need to head over to code.headmelted.com and get his latest armhf build. (The installer script won't work).

Code:

https://bintray.com/headmelted/deb-code-oss/download_file?file_path=code-oss_1.10.0-201722210_armhf.deb

Next up, you'll want to use gdebi to help guide the installation and install the required dependencies.

Code:

sudo gdebi code*.deb

You should now have code-oss installed! Huzzah! But if you try to run it in its current state, it won't boot up and complain about not being able to open certain shared libraries. There are still two packages left to install. You already have their arm64 version, but VS Code wants armhf.

Code:

sudo apt-get install libxtst6:armhf
sudo apt-get install libasound2:armhf

Huzzah! VS Code should now boot up when you run code-oss in your terminal. The first boot will take a minute or two. Every subsequent boot of VS Code should be much faster. VS Code is probably loading up a thousand npm modules or whatever wizardry is required to get Electron apps to do their magic.

Enjoy! It's actually more performant than I expected an Electron app to be. Not a bad coding experience.

---

INSTALLING PIROLOCITO'S CHROMIUM

NOTICE: These steps are no longer necessary on Ayufan's newer builds, starting with 0.5.2, as chromium-browser comes preinstalled and does not need the --disable-seccomp-filter-sandbox flag.

While I'm at it, here's how you add Pirolocito's awesome Chromium build. It's the most recent chromium, and runs much faster and smoother than the Pinebook's default Firefox. If you're running ayufan's latest Linux build, you're in for a delightful web browsing experience.

Code:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:osomon/chromium-next
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

It requires the --disable-seccomp-filter-sandbox flag, so let's write an alias to save our poor human brain from having to remember and type that every time.

Code:

echo "alias chrome=\"chromium-browser --disable-seccomp-filter-sandbox\"" >> ~/.bash_aliases

All subsequent terminal sessions will now be able to start chromium with its required flag by just running "chrome".

Now add a script/ad blocking extension! For your sanity's sake, and to speed up chromium.

---

SPEEDING UP CHROMIUM

We've got some new flags to set that should speed up Chromium considerably! All thanks go to Lukasz and longsleep for fiddling with this.
If you're running longsleep's build, then it should already be using these following flags by default.

Run the following with root privileges:

cat > "/etc/chromium-browser/default" <<EOF
# Default settings for chromium-browser. This file is sourced by /bin/sh from
# /usr/bin/chromium-browser

# Options to pass to chromium-browser
CHROMIUM_FLAGS="\
--disable-smooth-scrolling \
--disable-low-res-tiling \
--enable-low-end-device-mode \
--num-raster-threads=4 \
--profiler-timing=0 \
--disable-composited-antialiasing \
"
EOF

Here are the flags Lukasz would like for us to test as well. I stripped out the ones already specified in longsleep's code:

These settings considerably improve chromium performance- please test them out and offer feedback.

In chromium searchbar type: Chrome://flags
Set the following:

Experimental canvas features - enable
Memory ablation experiment - enable (or 100mb - try both)

And as longsleep notes, it's also worthwhile to install the "No MouseWheel Zoom" extension to stop accidentally activating the Pinebook's two finger zooming.

[pfeerick]

Thanks for documenting the Chromium install... I'd done it exactly the other day, but hadn't had time to write that up yet. Hadn't gotten as far as an alias... just shoved it in a launcher icon, but the alias helps make sure you can't forget the command line flags

And yes, Chromium is far superior to Firefox on the pine boards... which manages to commit suicide without much encouragement... and very unstable on even relatively light web browsing . Whereas Chromium just flies along, and can even browse media heavy pages on the Pinebook... oh my!

[LordSuricato]

Thank you very much for the contribution. Have you tried Atom on the Pinebook?

[Prophesi]

Thank you very much for the contribution. Have you tried Atom on the Pinebook?

You're welcome! And yeah, I'm still working on that... VS Code uses a more recent version of Electron under the hood, so it has better ARM support compared to Atom. But I think it should theoretically work; people have had success building this fork of Atom on Raspberry Pi 3's, which also uses armv8, even though this repo is for armv7l architecture only: https://github.com/hypersad/atom

[LordSuricato]

Thank you very much for the contribution. Have you tried Atom on the Pinebook?

You're welcome! And yeah, I'm still working on that... VS Code uses a more recent version of Electron under the hood, so it has better ARM support compared to Atom. But I think it should theoretically work; people have had success building this fork of Atom on Raspberry Pi 3's, which also uses armv8, even though this repo is for armv7l architecture only: https://github.com/hypersad/atom

Great, I'm going to try it on my free time, too. I have seen here a person with a Tegra K1 (ARMv8?) Running atom. If I get it, I'll let you know. 

[Luke]

To make --disable-seccomp-filter-sandbox default while launching in GUI: 

Code:

sudo nano etc/chromium-browser/default 

Add: 

Code:

CHROMIUM_FLAGS="--disable-seccomp-filter-sandbox"

Save and exit. Now you can start Chromium from GUI as you usually would and the flag will be enabled.

[ayufan]

The SECCOMP is disabled in latest build.

[pfeerick]

The SECCOMP is disabled in latest build.

Is Chromium actually supposed to be installed in the 0.5.1 build (as the notes suggest)? I just tried it out, and no chromium when running from the microSD... or is it only installed when you load 0.5.1 onto the eMMC?

   

[ayufan]

chromium-browser

[pfeerick]

chromium-browser

Apologies... chromium-browser... but it is still not present on build 0.5.1 / 57 (in contradiction to the release notes)