How a Microsoft Update Broke VS Code Editor on Ubuntu (omgubuntu.co.uk) 149
Microsoft's Visual Studio Code editor now includes a voice command that launches GitHub Copilot Chat just by saying "Hey Code."
But one Linux blog notes that the editor has suddenly stopped supporting Ubuntu 18.04 LTS — "a move causing issues for scores of developers." VS Code 1.86 (aka the 'January 2024' update) saw Microsoft bump the minimum build requirements for the text editor's popular remote dev tools to â¥glibc 2.28 — but Ubuntu 18.04 LTS uses glibc 2.27, ergo they no longer work.
While Ubuntu 18.04 is supported by Canonical until 2028 (through ESM) a major glibc upgrade is unlikely. Thus, this "breaking change" is truly breaking workflows...
It seems affected developers were caught off-guard as this (rather impactful) change was not signposted before, during, or after the VS Code update (which is installed automatically for most, and the update was pushed out to Ubuntu 18.04 machines). Indeed, most only discovered this issue after update was installed, they tried to connect to a remote server, and discovered it failed. The resulting error message does mention deprecation and links to an FAQ on the VS Code website with workarounds (i.e. downgrade).
But as one developer politely put it.... "It could have checked the libc versions and refused the update. Now, many people are screwed in the middle of their work."
The article points out an upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS will address the problem. On GitHub a Microsoft engineer posted additional options from VS Code's documentation: If you are unable to upgrade your Linux distribution, the recommended alternative is to use our web client. If you would like to use the desktop version, then you can download the VS Code release 1.85. Depending on your platform, make sure to disable updates to stay on that version.
Microsoft then locked the thread on GitHub as "too heated" and limited conversation to just collaborators.
In a related thread someone suggested installing VS Code's Flatpak, which was still on version 1.85 — and then disabling updates. But soon Microsoft had locked that thread as well as "too heated," again limiting conversation to collaborators.
But one Linux blog notes that the editor has suddenly stopped supporting Ubuntu 18.04 LTS — "a move causing issues for scores of developers." VS Code 1.86 (aka the 'January 2024' update) saw Microsoft bump the minimum build requirements for the text editor's popular remote dev tools to â¥glibc 2.28 — but Ubuntu 18.04 LTS uses glibc 2.27, ergo they no longer work.
While Ubuntu 18.04 is supported by Canonical until 2028 (through ESM) a major glibc upgrade is unlikely. Thus, this "breaking change" is truly breaking workflows...
It seems affected developers were caught off-guard as this (rather impactful) change was not signposted before, during, or after the VS Code update (which is installed automatically for most, and the update was pushed out to Ubuntu 18.04 machines). Indeed, most only discovered this issue after update was installed, they tried to connect to a remote server, and discovered it failed. The resulting error message does mention deprecation and links to an FAQ on the VS Code website with workarounds (i.e. downgrade).
But as one developer politely put it.... "It could have checked the libc versions and refused the update. Now, many people are screwed in the middle of their work."
The article points out an upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS will address the problem. On GitHub a Microsoft engineer posted additional options from VS Code's documentation: If you are unable to upgrade your Linux distribution, the recommended alternative is to use our web client. If you would like to use the desktop version, then you can download the VS Code release 1.85. Depending on your platform, make sure to disable updates to stay on that version.
Microsoft then locked the thread on GitHub as "too heated" and limited conversation to just collaborators.
In a related thread someone suggested installing VS Code's Flatpak, which was still on version 1.85 — and then disabling updates. But soon Microsoft had locked that thread as well as "too heated," again limiting conversation to collaborators.
Why I don't use VS code (Score:2, Insightful)
The purpose of VS Code is not to help me do my work or be a useful tool. The purpose of VS code is to make money for Microsoft. Mostly for the executives and major shareholders, not such much the peons.
If it ever is a useful tool, it is only a coincidence that this happens to align for a time with primary purpose of making the super rich richer.
It's only a matter of time before Microsoft decides that dropping Linux support is more likely to get people to switch to Windows than to get them to stop paying f
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Doubt a Linux user is going to switch to the ad generator i.e. Windows just for VSCode. No reason to do so. It's not like VSCode is Linux only so folks would have just used it on Windows, not Linux if they didn't care about using Linux.
The tinfoil hat thing is silly.
It's like comparing PC laptops to Macbooks, folks don't use Macs just for shiny hardware, it's the software and always has been. Same with Linux.
Linux support will go eventually (Score:5, Informative)
Why is Microsoft doing this? Well, unlike Electron, this approach one common runtime shared across all apps, meaning you can write once and app performance will forever improve on its own due to constant runtime improvements. However, you can guarantee Linux support is not coming because if it did, Google could just ship their own runtime and then every new app could simultaneously become a ChromeOS app, taking away any/all point of using Windows for basic business stuff.
Re: (Score:3)
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This. Lucy is always going to pull the football back.
Re:Why I don't use VS code (Score:5, Insightful)
It's only a matter of time before Microsoft decides that dropping Linux support is more likely to get people to switch to Windows
Are you daft? You really think Microsoft is playing some nefarious long game in an effort to capture the sweet fuck all market share that is Linux desktop users? A market share so small that it has turned into a practical joke here on Slashdot?
No one will switch from Linux to Windows because of VS Code. Microsoft knows this as much as anyone else, your conspiracy is just silly.
Incidentally do you know who has dropped support for Ubuntu 18.04? ... Canonical. Why does it surprise you to find someone is no longer supporting an EOL LTS release of anything?
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Holy crap, Batman, did you even read TFS? Ubuntu 18.04 is supported by Canonical until 2028.
No it's not. Ubuntu 18.04 is EOL. It is in extended support for Ubuntu Pro users, getting only the bare minimum security updates. The OS will remind you of that every single time you log in. It should absolutely not be used any more for anything other than a truly rare edge case, and sure as fuck not for a desktop OS on a dev machine.
Re:Why I don't use VS code (Score:5, Informative)
There is https://vscodium.com/ [vscodium.com] that is compiled without the telemetry and non-open source stuff that Microsoft adds to VS Code.
It's unofficially available as a flatpak: flatpak install flathub com.vscodium.codium
There are repo for deb/rpm and others as well
Re: Why I don't use VS code (Score:5, Interesting)
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The purpose of VS Code is not to help me do my work or be a useful tool. The purpose of VS code is to make money for Microsoft. Mostly for the executives and major shareholders, not such much the peons.
If it ever is a useful tool, it is only a coincidence that this happens to align for a time with primary purpose of making the super rich richer.
It's only a matter of time before Microsoft decides that dropping Linux support is more likely to get people to switch to Windows than to get them to stop paying for anything related to VS Code. And that's exactly what they'll do.
Dude, take off the tin foil hat for a while, why dontcha?
Microsoft employs nearly 1/4 of a million people, in over 90 countries around the globe.
It has a multitude of different projects, different teams and I'm very sure, a lot of the time, it doesn't know "it's ass from it's elbow" - or one of it's many asses from it's many elbows.
In other words, it's not like the VSCode team are going to be bothering about any political shit - but rather, "How can we ship a good product?"
Microsoft hire some incredible tal
Re: Why I don't use VS code (Score:2)
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Lol, OK. Don't use all the tinfoil.
Re: Why I don't use VS code (Score:5, Insightful)
Glibc version compatibility has ALWAYS been a pain point on Linux. Period. It's the single biggest reason why it's generally pointless to release Linux binaries and instead just tell people to download the source and compile it themselves.
Re: Why I don't use VS code (Score:3)
Re: Why I don't use VS code (Score:3)
Yup, Microsoft requiring a *newer* version of glibc is totally a problem with glibc's *backward* compatibility
Well... it is, from a Linux ISV dev point of view. You can't easily package up the version of glibc or other libraries your app depends on and ship it, like you can in Windows for example.
This is a bigger problem than most Linux users realize. It's easier to install the latest version of git (or python or ... anything) on Windows than it is on Linux. Distributing 3rd party binaries for Linux is a huge chore, and it's why Go and containers are popular.
I don't know why this is news to anyone here, but the OSS
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What is happening here is that Microsoft willingly and knowingly released an automatic update that changed the system requirements for vscode making it incompatible with some of the systems that until then were supported, leaving "regular users", who depended on said software to work, stranded.
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Conspiracy. I got it.
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Conspiracy how?
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Glibc version compatibility has ALWAYS been a pain point on Linux. Period. It's the single biggest reason why it's generally pointless to release Linux binaries and instead just tell people to download the source and compile it themselves.
Glibc version compatibility has ALWAYS been a pain point on Linux. Period. It's the single biggest reason why it's generally pointless to release Linux binaries and instead just tell people to download the source and compile it themselves.
You could compile static and have no library version problems at all.
Re: Why I don't use VS code (Score:2)
If only it were that simple.
https://stackoverflow.com/ques... [stackoverflow.com]
Actually this is the whole reason that shit like flatpak was made. Linus Torvalds famously ranted against exactly this:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Pz... [youtube.com]
For his own applications, he releases Windows and Mac binaries, but not Linux binaries, even though he wants to.
Re: Why I don't use VS code (Score:2)
Re: Why I don't use VS code (Score:2)
This seems like a reason to not use Linux on the desktop. Perhaps a product manger will take notice.
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It's not pointless. Generally speaking flatpak or SNAPs are great for applications; especially those that update frequently.
I don't know why any vendor would release a binary outside of these formats or doing it straight into the distro. Yes, things that might be more system level could have issues, but for applcations, I don't know why Microsoft wouldn't just pick flatpak or SNAP and release it like that.
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I don't know why any vendor would release a binary outside of these formats or doing it straight into the distro.
Because it's really an ugly, bloated but sadly necessary solution in some cases. I personally really don't like it, I like to be able to just compile a binary that isn't very opinionated about the operating system and say "here, just run this". One way I've accomplished this is by building in a docker container with a really old version of glibc. That's pretty much the best way to do this. Nevertheless, even that isn't enough for every distro out there because some use their own libc or hacked glibc variant
The thread locking was stupid (Score:2)
Why are developers still using 18.04 LTS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why are developers still using 18.04 LTS? (Score:4, Informative)
I run a customized 18.04 LTS installation that does complex simulations on a large and fairly expensive supercomputer. The OS is supported until 2028 or thereabouts.
Development is done on a workstation with the same setup. Why should I upgrade?
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Strange, why is this modded as troll?
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Maybe posted as AC and someone was in a rush with mod points to burn.
The post aligns with my immediate thoughts, developers needing something close to the target environment.
Thank $deity that both vim and VMs exist.
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Yeah, I was going to say something similar. I see the mod was cancelled, though, so it was probably a mistake.
Re: Why are developers still using 18.04 LTS? (Score:2)
The post aligns with my immediate thoughts, developers needing something close to the target environment.
But not a workstation, that's ridiculous. AC is fucking with you or it's some hobby project in a university lab.
We build untold numbers of dev systems, for testing, builds, staging etc that match the production servers OS/environment. Not a single developer among hundreds has that OS directly on their workstation.
These are server OS, you do not need to sit in front of it to use it. I don't care if the build environment needs special hardware, you have a bank of build servers with special hardware then, like
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It isn't always like that. Sometimes project funding dries up and there's no funding for new versions, just life support, so the team are told they must remain on the latest supported version.
I left one organisation that was in that situation, shame, it was one of the most fun places to work, but sadly the writing was on the wall.
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Strange, why is this modded as troll?
Because it was posted AC and because it was wrong. April 2023 was EOL for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Paying customers get the bare minimum of security updates at this point. It is not "supported" something that it will remind you of every single time you log in.
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Paying customers get the bare minimum of security updates at this point.
What more do you need?
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I come here for the headlines.
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Well, apparently if you want to run VS Code on a 6-year-old OS version that the publisher doesn't even support any more unless you pay them, you also need a newer version of glibc that you won't get through `sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y`.
Here's an idea: develop on supported software, and use Ubuntu 18 in a VM to test it if you must support Ubuntu 18.
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We needed to run older build environments (unless you're building the latest version of Android, it typically requires older versions of Ubuntu). What we did was run the main OS as 20.04LTS, then had Docker environments that provided 16.04 and 18.04 as needed. So if you needed to build an older version of Android (as we did because of various chip support packages), you could start up the Docker
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Well, I hope you never connect it to any peripheral or the internet. Cuz security is the main reason. Stagnated IoT devices are the main source of DDoS attacks.
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I missed the fact that (I presume) large parts of Mac OS are written in C so Apple has to maintain that great C/C++ support as well as Swift
Re:Why are developers still using 18.04 LTS? (Score:5, Insightful)
The OS is supported until 2028 or thereabouts.
No it's not. 18.04 went EOL last year. Canonical provides bare minimum security updates for specialised paying customers only, that does not mean you are "supported", it means you are paying money for your own inability to manage a trivial upgrade or you're paying for a very VERY hyper specific edge case. And if your hyper specific edge case depends on your ability to run VS Code on a desktop, ... please change careers so you stop being a burden on those around you.
Re:Why are developers still using 18.04 LTS? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because Ubuntu 18 is not "supported until 2028 or thereabouts" unless you pay for Ubuntu Pro, in which case you get access to extended support, per as their support page for Ubuntu 18 says. [ubuntu.com]
So if you want to continue running old shit that isn't getting updates, that's your decision. And if you want to pay to get "extended" updates (meaning security and not version bumps of libraries) then have a good time. But don't expect software vendors to support your OS if the OS publisher doesn't, and clearly has announced it's end-of-life date years ago.
You and your organization that do "fairly complex simulations on a large and fairly expensive supercomputer" should consider studying incredibly simple support lifecycles, because they are a thing and whoever maintains that "large and fairly expensive supercomputer" isn't doing their job if your critical systems are running on unsupported software.
Re: Why are developers still using 18.04 LTS? (Score:2)
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Then why would you upgrade your version of vscode either?
Re: Why are developers still using 18.04 LTS? (Score:3)
I did for a while, because I didn't want to upgrade to the next lts and its snap infection. Sure, I should have upgraded to debian or another distro, but it worked and I'm lazy.
I suspect many devs are in that case too.
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Linux Mint is stable and closest to Ubuntu with no snap
Perhaps because It Just Works (Score:2)
Some people have better things to do than upgrade a distro that does everything they need and works nicely.
Re:Why are developers still using 18.04 LTS? (Score:5, Insightful)
I noticed the same thing. As an IT architect, I frequently have to remind our business and others, that we NEED to keep things updated to a reasonable level, in order to ensure future compatibility, support newer security measures, and generally keep in line with the vendors recommendations regarding releases.
Now I totally get that people don't WANT changes, because changes cause a disruption of the status quo (which they are used to having working or them). But to EXPECT to never need to change, seems... Illogical, especially for developers, who really should be the ones pushing for updates and changes... So why is it a chock for people to find our that their dirt old OS is no longer fully supported ?
I totally agree with the devs that the way it is being handled could be done smarter/smoother. But who in their right minds sets up an automatic update, and expect to not have problems requiring any intervention ? Surely it's not the first time someone has been surprised by the contents of an automatic update ? Isn't this why we TEST before moving things into production ?
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Isn't this why we TEST before moving things into production ?
We do?
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But who in their right minds sets up an automatic update, and expect to not have problems requiring any intervention ?
This isn't even the right question.
The right question in this context is: "why would you expect Microsoft to support a 6-year-old OS with a 5-year end-of-life that the publisher doesn't even support without paying them?
Upgrade your fucking shit, and if you need to deploy to Ubuntu 18 for some reason, test it in a VM, which you should have been doing years ago anyway.
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Well, people who are used to RPM-based Linux distros would not expect to see issues like this. The RPM build tools perform automatic shared library dependency analysis, and would refuse to install a package if it requires symbols that aren't exposed by the shared libraries you have installed. Wha
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but it seems odd to me that lots of developers are using 18.04 LTS on a desktop
Docker obviates the need keep up with glibc et al. You can use the latest c/c++/python/ruby/java/rust/postgresql/php/whatever in containers on 18.04 LTS and forgo major distro upgrade for years. Which is nice, because it takes days to get all your display/input device/network/configuration/backups/etc. worked out every time you upgrade.
Re: Why are developers still using 18.04 LTS? (Score:2)
It's not even a good option for a server anymore, if it ever was (it's a desktop distro, if you ask me). 18.04 LTS was supported until May 2023 so I'm not sure why anyone is surprised that companie starting dropping support.
Re: Why are developers still using 18.04 LTS? (Score:2)
Using a legacy system for development often makes sense, for many of the same reasons for using legacy systems for servers. Some of the Windows development in our company is still done on Windows XP machines, as we speak. And why not? We don't really have Windows XP customers anymore, but at least we're immune against many kinds of nasty surprises, regressions, etc. And backwards compatibility plays in our favor too.
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The only other machine I have is a Windows laptop. You know, Microsoft tools.
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Does code stop working when it reaches a certain age?
Automatic updates should not be on by default (Score:3, Insightful)
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I agree with tools used by admins and developers, but I strongly disagree when it comes to tools and programs used by people who wouldn't even know how to turn it on and instead run with systems that received the last patch back when Covid didn't hit yet.
Re: Automatic updates should not be on by default (Score:2)
Stupid wake phrase. (Score:2)
Everyone tell the Copilot that "Hay Code" refers to farm software ... and ask for more information.
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Everyone tell the Copilot that "Hay Code" refers to farm software ... and ask for more information.
I thought that referred to profanity or sex in movies?
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You're not far off, in German the word "Kot" pretty much means dung or feces.
So essentially, the average German will say his equivalent of "Hey, piece of shit".
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i mean they're going to be addressing Micros~1, so that's somewhat reasonable
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They're referring to the Hays Code [wikipedia.org], a set of self-censorship guidelines for US-produced films from 1934 to 1968.
Microsoft is NOT your friend (Score:2)
Take a blank sheet of paper and a Sharpie of any color. Or you can used Gedit, Word, Google Docs, emacs, vi, xed, EDT, Notepad, but not Wordpad, or whatever.
At the top write or enter in: "MY 10 BEST FRIENDS". Feel free to use mixed case, underline, squiggly beneath that, etc.
Then list your TOP TEN FRIENDS.
Now look at that list.
Do you see Oracle? No. Oracle is not your friend.
Do you see Apple? No. Apple is not your friend.
Do you see the US Internal Revenue Service? No. The IRS is not your friend.
Do y
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You are not my friend either, though.
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Why does an editor... (Score:2)
... need such a relatively recent version of gcc? It edits code and uses TCP connect to servers. End of. That isnt something that requires any recent functionality and in fact could have been done with glibc from 30 years ago.
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It's built on web technology.
Presumably Google updated Chromium to newer libs.
Re: Why does an editor... (Score:2)
You realise "web technology" just means http and various scripting languages , none of which are supported by glibc which is a low level library.
Re: Why does an editor... (Score:2)
Maybe it was libstdc++ support? Weâ(TM)ve had problems with outdated support on Ubuntu with c++17 features missing from the runtime. Ubuntu donâ(TM)t do this as well as Red Hat, who actively backport modern compilers to their even older RHEL releases, without breaking glibc or libstdc++ compatibility for the binaries theyâ(TM)re used to build. See their dev and gcc toolsets. This really is a weakness for development of prepackaged software on Linux compared with macOS and Windows, whose com
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FFS... it's linux. Just install glibc 2.28 (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Don't upgrade dependencies and half the people will yell at you for not supporting new features, security, etc.
2. Upgrade dependencies and the other half will yell at you for breaking their sh*t.
18.04 LTS expired last year. You're running outdated software that you got for free and can upgrade for free. Stop b*tching at Microsoft. Yes, they have ESM (Extended Security Maintenance) but you have to pay for it and it's just security patches.
Your running on Linux. You have a two options here:
1. Upgrade Ubuntu.
2. Build glibc 2.28... it's not... that... hard.
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Well if you're paying for patches then you're not rubbing either outdated software our something you huh frog free!
Also option 3, bitch at Ubuntu to provide a newer glibc package, which is an option (the bitching) if you're paying them. Then they can do 2 for you! It might even only take 1000 times longer than executing step 2 :)
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Oh fucking hell I got pwn3d by autocorrect.
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Heartily agree here. M$ shouldn't get dinged for NOT supporting a 5~6 year old version of Linux. I'm no M$ fan, but you know at least upgrade to Ubuntu 20 ?!?
switch back to emacs? (Score:2)
switch back to emacs
easiest and best solution
Ubuntu 18.04 is EOL (Score:2)
Company doesn't support outdated OS that was never intended for the desktop. News at 11.
If you are affected by this you have only yourself to blame.
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More than that, if you absolutely must run a free IDE on a 6 year old unsupported operating system, Ubuntu still offers extended support with a "Pro" subscription. So, as with many other things, if you need to run some extreme edge case that is outside of what is supported by any software vendor, then you're either going to be doing a bit of work to make it work, or paying money for someone else to.
Or you could just update to Ubuntu 20 / 22 LTS and if whatever it is you're coding with VS code requires test
Why would anyone use VSCode anyway? (Score:2)
Its base version is just a glorified text editor. The number of plugins you've got to install, maintain and keep compatible with each other makes it so prone to daily breakages of your environment that using VSCode should be banned at the top level of any corporation who wants to keep their employees productive. Use a proper language-specific IDE instead people, would you?
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Its base version is just a glorified text editor. The number of plugins you've got to install...
My text editor doesn't support plugins. I use VS Code because of the plugins. It's literally one of the easiest ways to get some embedded programming up and running.
Microsoft breaking stuff in updates? (Score:2)
I've never heard of such a thing...
Seriously, if Microsoft wants to break their own OS every Tuesday, more power to them. I guess it's become a tradition at this point. But if they could keep their traditions to themselves, that would be swell.
Ubuntu 18? (Score:2)
So it's broken on a 6-year old version of "long term support" flavor of an operating system, where that "long term support" is defined as 5 years from release, which the version "18.04" tells us was in April of 2018.
Ubuntu doesn't even support 18.04 any more without a "Pro" subscription and Microsoft is supposed to? If running a free IDE on a 6-year-old unsupported OS is important to you, buy the fucking support to do it.
Actual problem: Bad packaging by Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft makes the .deb.
It should have listed the dependency on libc, The package would not have installed since the dependency could not be satisfied with the 18.04 LTS catalog.
Re:Actual problem: Bad packaging by Microsoft (Score:5, Informative)
Nope. The .deb file correctly lists the dependency. The package is just fine. The issue is the use of an internal auto-updater by vscode which does *not* rely on the .deb package. The issue is a bunch of so called "developers" thinking their all important dev environments should be blindly updated without reading or considering the change log.
Version: 1.86.0-1706698139
Section: devel
Depends: ca-certificates, libasound2 (>= 1.0.17), libatk-bridge2.0-0 (>= 2.5.3), libatk1.0-0 (>= 2.2.0), libatspi2.0-0 (>= 2.9.90), libc6 (>= 2.14), libc6 (>= 2.16), libc6 (>= 2.17), libc6 (>= 2.2.5), libc6 (>= 2.28), libcairo2 (>= 1.6.0), libcurl3-gnutls | libcurl3-nss | libcurl4 | libcurl3, libdbus-1-3 (>= 1.9.14), libdrm2 (>= 2.4.75), libexpat1 (>= 2.1~beta3), libgbm1 (>= 17.1.0~rc2), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.37.3), libgssapi-krb5-2 (>= 1.17), libgtk-3-0 (>= 3.9.10), libgtk-3-0 (>= 3.9.10) | libgtk-4-1, libkrb5-3 (>= 1.6.dfsg.2), libnspr4 (>= 2:4.9-2~), libnss3 (>= 2:3.30), libnss3 (>= 3.26), libpango-1.0-0 (>= 1.14.0), libx11-6, libx11-6 (>= 2:1.4.99.1), libxcb1 (>= 1.9.2), libxcomposite1 (>= 1:0.4.4-1), libxdamage1 (>= 1:1.1), libxext6, libxfixes3, libxkbcommon0 (>= 0.5.0), libxkbfile1 (>= 1:1.1.0), libxrandr2, xdg-utils (>= 1.0.2), zlib1g (>= 1:1.2.3.4)
But hey... (Score:2)
... at least they saved 0.001% of my hard disk space by using shared libraries, amirite?
Microsoft's typical tactics still at play (Score:2)
Embrace
Extend
Extinguish <=== You are here
Re: (Score:3)
Oh, you mean, by refusing to support a version of Ubuntu that even Ubuntu doesn't support?
The fact that they support Linux at all is pretty amazing, considering MS sells its own competing OS.
See, that's what you get (Score:2)
Re:Onus is on Ubuntu to provide the LTS support (Score:5, Insightful)
What should have happened is that Microsoft's package ought to specify a minimum glibc version.
apt/dpkg will report broken package dependencies. It would then fail to upgrade VS Code.
Ubuntu could add a newer glibc in backports but they'd have to test the rest of the LTS for compatibility.
Re: Onus is on Ubuntu to provide the LTS support (Score:3)
Goes both ways. Or many ways, actually. "Don't break user experience" is a golden rule, and if an editor works on a specific version of an OS, you don't upgrage away that specific editor from under the user's ass.
If anything, you announce a breaking change, give it a new version number. You van even go ahead and declare anything but the new version "out of date", but you never, ever, automatically break a user's setup by automatic upgrades. If you do, it's on you, not on whoever else you believe "should" al
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Goes both ways. Or many ways, actually. "Don't break user experience" is a golden rule, and if an editor works on a specific version of an OS, you don't upgrage away that specific editor from under the user's ass.
If we apply your logic then we wouldn't have any GUI applications at all because we'd still be supporting MS DOS. Ubuntu 18.04 is EOL. It should not be run anymore. There is no onus what so ever on ANY application releasing a current update to not break an EOL OS.
If you want to freeze in time, then freeze in time, applications included. But no one here should be forced to support your strange desire to run the latest and greatest app on the oldest and most out of date system.
Re: Onus is on Ubuntu to provide the LTS support (Score:4, Insightful)
18.04 receives LTS support until 2028, but that's not even important.
This isn't about sticking to the past, it's about sticking to versioning and compatibility as advertised.
As others have pointed out, a simple thing to do is simply explicitly name the appropriate libc version as a dependency (which it.obviously is). No amount of clueless spinning from amateurs is going to change the fact that it would've been the right thing to do, but wasn't done, and if had been done, we wouldn't be having this conversation now. Or anybody else.
Re: (Score:2)
18.04 receives LTS support until 2028, but that's not even important.
No it doesn't. 18.04 LTS went out of support nearly a year ago. You need to subscribe to Ubuntu Pro and pay actual money for extended bare minimum essential security updates. That's not the same as "receives support". The OS is EOL and frankly you'd be quite stupid to use it for dev work at this point.
but wasn't done, and if had been done, we wouldn't be having this conversation now
We wouldn't be having this conversation if people weren't using EOL'd OSes for dev machines, or if people had the common sense not to let their *allegedly* important software auto-update without reading the re
Re: (Score:2)
That's great, but if a user has been ignoring a message displayed every time they log in saying their OS is beyond it's supported lifetime, and that user continues installing the latest versions of things... well exactly what this article is about is going to happen. Because that's exactly what is happening.
Re: Onus is on Ubuntu to provide the LTS support (Score:2)
How did "the user" get past the new-and-updated, with-the-OS-incompatible, glibc 2.28 dependency requirement, on a system that had only glibc 2.27 installed?
Re: (Score:2)
I believe that Code updates itself. But you could turn that off.
Microsoft should have just provide the older version and told people using this version of Ubuntu to turn off its automatic update feature.
Re: (Score:3)
That would kinda defeat the purpose of breaking it on Linux, wouldn't it?
Re: (Score:2)
That would kinda defeat the purpose of breaking it on Linux, wouldn't it?
You mean one old version of Ubuntu. And what was that purpose?
Re: (Score:2)
The upgrade didn't come from Ubuntu - VS Code self-updates, apparently into a state of being hopelessly broken.
But that's still not Microsoft's problem, because the user is running an unsupported OS version, and it's been unsupported for 10 months now and tells them so every single time they log in.
Good news: this fixes the problem: `sudo apt update && sudo do-release-upgrade`
Hey look, you have a working VS Code again, as well as a supported OS!