Switching to Linux instead of upgrading to Catalina

TidBITS Talk
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Minus van Baalen wrote: “If you buy a Raspberry Pi and install Raspbian, you’ll discover you’ve got Mathematica bundled with it.”

This was my primary reason to get a pi, though I still haven’t had much time to play with it.

Note that at least as of a few months ago, it isn’t currently bundled with the latest Raspian, Buster, and won’t run on it due to compatibility issues. Once Wolfram has fixed it, it should be downloadable from Recommended Software. Meanwhile, if you get a board older than the 4 Model B (which requires Buster), you can find and install an older Raspian that still runs it. Unfortunately, I don’t remember which version worked for my 3 Model B+ and it isn’t easily accessible to find out in the near future.

http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian/images/

Once you get the pi you should turn on remote access so you can use VNC from the mac to talk to it.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/remote-access/vnc/

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I do the opposite. Mine is in a headless configuration (disconnected display, keyboard and mouse after initial setup). I configured it to boot to a text-console login, so I’m not wasting RAM and CPU cycles on a GUI I won’t be seeing.

When I want to run a graphical app, I run an X11 server on another computer (XQuartz on my Mac, Cygwin/X on Windows) and use ssh with the -Y option to log in so that all the X11 GUI traffic is sent through the SSH tunnel to my X11 screen.

The only potential issue here is bandwidth and latency. X11 is sensitive to both. There should be no problems on a LAN, but you definitely don’t want to do this over a remote-access link because performance will be terrible.

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Thanks for the suggestion! That is indeed what I did. My experiences are somewhat mixed so far. In terms of what it can do the Raspberry Pi is certainly impressive. I suppose eventually I will get used to hit Control instead of Command when I want to do things… More seriously, I’ve managed to set up or find equivalents for most programs I use in daily life, so that is fine. The most serious problem I have so far is that there doesn’t seem to be a Dropbox version any more for 32-byte Linuxes such as Raspbian. So I find myself in front of sort of the same 32 - 64 byte divide that I was trying to circumvent in the first place…

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Just to be precise, I do indeed use a Raspberry Pi 4. The Raspberry Pi of the first generation I also have I never managed to get working, primarily because I don’t have a TV.

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Glad to hear you’re enjoying working with the Pi.

I think, however, that for your situation (as a desktop replacement), it is best used as a training tool - to learn Linux and try out Linux applications without spending a lot of money.

Once you’ve decided that you would like to migrate your daily desktop/laptop usage to Linux, I would strongly recommend investing in a PC desktop or laptop with a 64-bit x86 processor. Equip it much as you would a Mac - lots of SSD storage, RAM, etc. and install a Linux distribution on it.

If you like Raspbian, then I would suggest looking at either the Debian or Ubuntu distributions, because they offer similar packages and package-management utilities. Other popular distributions (that use different package-management systems) include CentOS (a community-supported version of the commercial Red Hat Enterprise distribution) and Fedora (a bleeding-edge community distribution related to Red Hat).

Regardless of what distribution you choose, you should be able to download installer disk images. You can then burn it to a DVD or write it to a USB thumb drive. Then boot the media to run the installer.

Desktop Linux distributions are frequently available in different “spins” or “flavors”, where different sets of packages are pre-installed (e.g. here are several popular Ubuntu flavors and Fedora spins). Most spins/flavors consist of the base distribution, but with different pre-installed desktop environments. (If you later decide you want to change desktops, you don’t need to reinstall the whole system - you can install the new desktop’s packages and if you like it, uninstall the old one later.) Raspbian’s desktop is based on the “lxde” desktop, so if you want to start out with that experience on your PC, look for a spin that installs lxde (e.g. Lubuntu, which is Ubuntu + lxde).

All this is a long way of saying that you should look for a good quality Linux-compatible PC desktop or laptop and run Linux on that if you have decided to migrate your usage to Linux. It will be far faster and more capable than a Raspberry Pi.

And, of course, you don’t need to get rid of the Pi after you’ve set this up. A Raspberry Pi is a really great platform for lightweight server tasks. On my LAN, it runs my DNS server and will (when I get around to setting it up) run my DHCP server. Other popular uses include an ad-blocking web proxy (Pi-Hole), web server, gaming/emulation (RetroPie) and audio/video media server.

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Anyone looking for alternatives for software no longer supported or equivalents on some other OS may be interested in Altermative Software. They have over 85,000 apps in their listings for Linux, Mac, and Windows. It will at least provide a starting point for your search.

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Thanks for the suggestions! The Raspberry Pi has certainly lightnened my backpack for daily use. Again, the biggest drawback at the moment is I have only very clumsy access to Dropbox. For the rest, my Macbook Air often just stays at home on a shelf nowadays, playing server mainly. I have a whole lot of things and tools that aren’t updated any more and which I will lose once I update to Catalina, so I want to avoid that. The problem is I surely cannot postpone this indefinitely because I expect my mac will lose the capability to backup up-to-date iOS devices eventually. But we aren’t there yet…

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Just a quick follow-up: I formatted another Raspberry Pi system recently, and Mathematica is still bundled with it (OS+Desktop+Recommended Software). You"re also supposed to be able to install it directly from wolfram.com, but I haven’t tried that.

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In general, when using Linux distributions, it is better (and easier) to install packages provided by your Linux distribution.

These packages are not always the latest version (especially for distributions that emphasize stability over features, like Debian or CentOS), but installation is usually quick and easy.

Installing a package (whether distributed as binary or source code) from another source (e.g. getting Mathematica directly from Wolfram) will give you the latest version, but installation may be difficult. Especially if you’re new to Unix/Linux systems.

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I’m not sure one can install Mathematica (for free) on any linux version, the website states explicitly that it comes with a Raspberry Pi. I just got it from the Raspberry Pi website, I didn’t try a manual install.

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My point wasn’t specifically about Mathematica, but about Linux software installation in general.

That having been said, the free Mathematica installation is a special thing for Raspberry Pi users. It’s available via the package manager, or you can download an installation script from Wolfram. I haven’t tried it because I don’t have a need for Mathematica.

As you wrote, Mathematica is not free (and not particularly cheap, either) for other platforms.

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I am interested in RaspberryPis – what do you use your RaspberryPis for if you don’t mind my asking?

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I find that I hardly ever use my laptops any more, my iPad does most things I need on a daily basis. But there are things an iPad cannot do, mostly to do with programming. My Raspberry Pi is headless but runs VNC, so I can use it to complement my iPad as long as I have internet. I use Mathematica for my work, and since what I do is mostly not very CPU intensive that works fine. At home the Pi also functions as a music server and a burglar camera, among other things.

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As mentioned by another earlier this year, site blocking using Pi-hole DNS.

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For anyone interested in Linux, you might want to check out Elementary OS, which aims to be as Mac-like as possible. Of course, it might be just different enough to be frustrating. They just rolled up the 6.0 Odin update. They encourage you to pay for it, but if you just want to check it out, you can click Custom and enter 0.

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