Xubuntu installation notes for .NET Core development

Preparation

Why Xubuntu?

Because Manjaro is based on Arch which doesn’t have an official .NET Core distribution, and it seems that there are too many hoops to jump to make it work: https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/cx64r5/the_state_of_net_core_on_arch/
Xubuntu contains Xfce user interface which is faster than GNOME used in the default Ubuntu.

Preparing the PC

Turn off Fast Boot in Windows. Go to Power Options / Change what buttons do. Click the link above to enable all options and untick fast boot in the bottom.
Reboot and get into computer’s boot menu. Find an option to disable UEFI secure boot.

This will make the hard drive accessible in Linux.

Installation

Proceed as usual.

General post-install

Update apt and install, if needed, some generic programs.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install curl

On Snap

There is now a higher-level app distribution system called snap. It is universal for all Linuxes, and apps it installs are self-contained (i.e. they don’t have dependencies on anything else). Plus, they are automatically updated in the background. The main issue with this approach is that the containers are compressed and applications are decompressed on-the-fly which may cause slowness.

So, if the application is big, needs to be auto-updated and doesn’t exist in apt, use snap.

If the application requires critical start-up time, and is not updated regularly, use apt.

For example:

sudo snap install telegram-desktop

The Start-like menu available in the top-left corner is not openable by the Start button on the keyboard by default. To make it work:

Open the Whisker menu using mouse.
Search for “Keyboard”. Go to the shortcuts tab.
Add a new entry for xfce4-popup-whiskermenu and press the Start button when required.

Tearing (v-sync)

There is a visible tearing when scrolling in Firefox. One may reference the issues as v-sync being off. To fix it:

Disable XFCE’s built-in compositor. Open the Whiskers menu, search for “Window Manager Tweaks”. Switch to “Compositor” tab and uncheck the topmost “Enable display compositing” checkbox.
Install compton:
```
sudo apt install compton
```
Open its config file:
```
nano ~/.config/compton.conf
```
Copy the config file contents from this link: (https://paste.ubuntu.com/24154385/). Paste it to the file (with Shift+Ins) and save it (Ctrl+O, Ctrl+X).
Run compton:
```
compton &
```
Make compton autostart. Search for “Session and Startup” in the Whisker menu, go to “Application Autostart” and add a new entry. Use “Compton” for name and compton for command.

(Based on this link).

Redshift

This application makes screen warmer at night, just like f.lux or NightShift on other platforms.

Install:
```
sudo apt install redshift redshift-gtk
```

Create its configuration file:

mkdir ~/.config/redshift
nano ~/.config/redshift/redshift.conf

Store the following there:

[redshift]
temp-day=5700
temp-night=2700
fade=1
location-provider=geoclue2

Configure geoclue2 so that redshift would be able to use it:
```
nano /etc/geoclue/geoclue.conf
```
And add the following in the bottom:
```
[redshift]
allowed=true
system=false
users=
```
Run it:
```
redshift-gtk &
```
Add it to autostart. Open the Whisker menu and search for “Session and Startup”. Switch to “Application Autostart” tab. You’ll see Redshift there unchecked. Check it so that it starts on next logging in.

(If this doesn’t work, there is also an option to use cron scheduler. See this link for details.)

File watchers limit

By default it is 8192, and npm run start won’t work in create-react-app-based projects.

Run the following:

echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=524288 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf && sudo sysctl -p

Non-development

Brave Browser

It has a page on installing on Ubuntu. They also have a Snap package, but it’s not as stable.

sudo apt install apt-transport-https curl

sudo curl -fsSLo /usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg

echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg arch=amd64] https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/ stable main"|sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list

sudo apt update

sudo apt install brave-browser

Dropbox

curl -o ~/Downloads/dropbox.deb -L https://www.dropbox.com/download?dl=packages/ubuntu/dropbox_2020.03.04_amd64.deb
sudo apt --fix-broken install
sudo dpkg -i ~/Downloads/dropbox.deb

Development

.NET Core SDK

Follow the instructions from (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/install/linux-ubuntu#2104-).

Detailed:

wget https://packages.microsoft.com/config/ubuntu/21.04/packages-microsoft-prod.deb -O packages-microsoft-prod.deb
sudo dpkg -i packages-microsoft-prod.deb
sudo apt-get update; \
  sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https && \
  sudo apt-get update && \
  sudo apt-get install -y dotnet-sdk-5.0

Check that it got installed:

dotnet --version

Install Entity Framework Core tools

dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef

Disable telemetry

Open the profile file

nano ~/.profile

and add the following line to it:

export DOTNET_CLI_TELEMETRY_OPTOUT=1

Git

As usual,

sudo apt install git

Remember to add your name:

git config --global user.email "you@example.com"
git config --global user.name "Your Name"

GitHub SSH configuration

Follow their guide (https://help.github.com/en/articles/generating-a-new-ssh-key-and-adding-it-to-the-ssh-agent).

But in general:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "your_email@example.com"
more .ssh/id_ed25519.pub

And then add the key in GitHub settings.

Remember to clone using git protocol, not https.

Branch name in command prompt

Open .bashrc:
```
nano ~/.bashrc
```

Find this section:

if [ "$color_prompt" = yes ]; then
PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ '
else
PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h:\w\$ '
fi
unset color_prompt force_color_prompt

Comment it out by prepending # to each line.

Paste the following instead

parse_git_branch() {
git symbolic-ref HEAD --short 2> /dev/null | sed -e 's/.\*/(\0)/'
}
if [ "$color_prompt" = yes ]; then
PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w \[\033[01;31m\]$(parse_git_branch)\[\033[00m\]\$ '
else
 PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h:\w $(parse_git_branch)\$ '
fi

The branch will be visible in new terminal windows.

Visual Studio Code

sudo snap install code --classic

(--classic means manual approval of the fact that the snap package will operate outside of sandbox.)

Notes

There is an alternative FOSS build Codium (https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/), but the Microsoft C# debugger works only in Code, so it’s not an option for us.

Node.js

Run the predefined script that would install the repository:

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_12.x | sudo -E bash -

Install:
```
sudo apt install -y nodejs
```

Via Snap

As an alternative, one may install it from Snap. This version has 300ms slower start-up time. This command below installs Node version 12 which is becoming the current LTS version in October 2019.

sudo snap install node --classic --channel=12

PostgreSQL

Add their repository to apt. Create the file:
```
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pgdg.list
```

Add the following line to it:

deb http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt/ bionic-pgdg main

Import the repository signing key, and update the package lists.

wget --quiet -O - https://www.postgresql.org/media/keys/ACCC4CF8.asc | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt update

Install the server, the client and the management tool.

sudo apt install postgresql-11 postgresql-client-11 pgadmin4

The default set up user is called postgres. This is an example of how to create a custom user local and set its password to localpass.

sudo -i -u postgres
createuser --interactive
Enter name of role to add: local
Shall the new role be a superuser? (y/n) y
psql
ALTER USER local WITH PASSWORD 'localpass';
exit
exit

Powershell

# Install PowerShell
sudo snap install powershell --classic

# Start PowerShell
pwsh

JetBrains Rider

sudo snap install rider --classic

Docker

Follow guide from https://docs.docker.com/install/linux/docker-ce/ubuntu/. The brief version is:

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh
sudo sh get-docker.sh

Then, to make docker runnable by a local user your-user:

sudo usermod -aG docker ${USER}

This will take effect after restart.

Azure CLI azure-cli

sudo apt --fix-broken install
curl -sL https://aka.ms/InstallAzureCLIDeb | sudo bash

Azure Data Studio

Cross-platform SSMS alternative. Is provided as a .deb package. First install the prerequisites:

sudo apt install libxss1 libgconf-2-4 libunwind8

Then go to the installation page and click the .deb file. Instead of saving, choose to open it with the package manager.

Alternatively:

curl -o ~/Downloads/azuredatastudio.deb -L https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2165738
sudo dpkg -i ~/Downloads/azuredatastudio.deb

Run:

azuredatastudio

Azure Storage Explorer

sudo snap install storage-explorer
sudo snap connect storage-explorer:password-manager-service :password-manager-service

SQL Server Developer Edition

Requires Docker. Pull the package:

docker pull mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/server:latest