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# The Situation
Although the core software underlying the PiDP-8/I software distribution is broadly portable, the dominance of Raspbian in the Raspberry Pi space means the PiDP-8/I software doesn't get tested and maintained for all operating systems its individual components are known to work on.
Although the core software underlying the PiDP-8/I software distribution is broadly portable, the dominance of Raspbian in the Raspberry Pi space means it gets the most attention when it comes to testing and development. This article documents what it known to work, where, today.
This article documents what it known to work, where, today.
The current stable release of the PiDP-8/I software distribution was tested with the [Raspbian Stretch Lite](https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspbian-stretch/) distribution. Prior releases were built atop the [Raspbian Jessie Lite](https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspbian-jessie-is-here/) distribution.
The current stable release of the PiDP-8/I software distribution was built for and tested with the [Raspbian Stretch Lite](https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspbian-stretch/) distribution. Prior releases were built atop the [Raspbian Jessie Lite](https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspbian-jessie-is-here/) distribution; current software should still work on Jessie, though we no longer test that, having upgraded all of our development systems to Stretch.
Raspbian-based OSes like [pipaOS](http://pipaos.mitako.eu/) should also work, but this is not tested by the project's current developers.
The project's primary maintainer occasionally builds the software on a Debian laptop or in a Debian VM as well. It works fine, excepting of course that you lose the features that require the PiDP-8/I front panel hardware. It's also been tested on an Ubuntu 18.04 LTS VM.
The project's primary maintainer occasionally builds the software on Debian and Ubuntu systems as well, which works fine, since Raspbian and Ubuntu are both derivatives of Debian. On such systems, the software is designed to detect the absence of the PiDP-8/I front panel hardware and work without it.
Because of that success, we expect it will run on any other Debian derivative, too.
The configuration script and documentation advice on installing third-party dependencies is given in terms of Debian type OSes. That makes using the PiDP-8/I software distribution on this class of OSes the most straightforward.
# Non-Debian Linuxes
Non-Debian type Linux based OSes like [openSuSE for the Pi 3](https://en.opensuse.org/HCL:Raspberry_Pi3) or [CentOS for the Pi 3](https://wiki.centos.org/SpecialInterestGroup/AltArch/Arm32/RaspberryPi3) are likely to require local workarounds to get the software to run. The mechanism for driving the front panel hardware is also likely to require changes on these OSes.
If you manage it, we would be happy to examine your [patches](/doc/trunk/HACKERS.md) for possible inclusion in the next version of the software.
If you try it and fail, we would still welcome your [bug reports](/bugs). You can discuss your ideas in [our forum](/forum) or on the users' [mailing list](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pidp-8).
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You will have to install the `libncurses-devel` and `python2-pip` packages as well as standard Unix build tools: GCC, GNU Make, etc. Having done all that, the software will build and run.
I most recently tested this on 64-bit Windows 10 running Cygwin 2.9.0.
## Windows Subsystem for Linux
You'd think this would work because the default Linux implementation for Windows 10's WSL feature is Ubuntu, and this software is known to build and run under Ubuntu easily, since it's closely related to Raspbian. Alas, it does not.
You'd think this would work because the default Linux implementation for Windows 10's WSL feature is Ubuntu, and this software is known to build and run under Ubuntu easily, since it's closely related to Raspbian. Alas, it utterly failed the last time we tried it.
The primary problem is that WSL's terminal handling is [extremely weak](https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/1001), and has been so since the start. This breaks a broad swath of software and is thus well known as a major weakness of WSL. It breaks at least three different things in the PiDP-8/I software distribution:
The primary problem is that WSL's terminal handling was [extremely weak](https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/1001) at the time, and has been so since the start. This breaks a broad swath of software and is thus well known as a major weakness of WSL. Microsoft is aware of this and is slowly improving it, so it's possible that they've fixed all of the problems since our tests were done.
1. `os8-run` depends on one process being able to take control of another's terminal I/O. Currently — November 2017 — `os8-run` gets stuck early on waiting for a reply to the OS/8 `BUILD` command and eventually times out and dies. Copying over pre-built OS/8 media doesn't help because of the other problems below.
2. `pidp8i-sim` does slightly fancy things with its terminal interface between the emulated CPU and the host OS, which is enough to run into this WSL weakness. The underlying host will send something out to its terminal and you won't see it in the WSL terminal until you hit Enter a few times; that kind of thing.
3. The PiDP-8/I simulator normally runs under GNU `screen`, which is one of the [known-broken programs under WSL](https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/1001).
Because Microsoft has not fixed this class of bug despite the many things that fail as a result, it calls into question how much longer Microsoft will let the problems remain unfixed.
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