Windows on ARM lives on, even as it dies

[silicon_toad2000]

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/02/windows-on-arm-lives-on-even-as-it-dies/

The Raspberry Pi 2, announced yesterday, is a second generation of ultra-cheap ARM computers packed full of ports and connectivity. The first generation Raspberry Pi was for the most part a Linux machine, with the recommended operating system being a specially modified version of Debian. The Pi 2's upgraded processor opens up more operating system possibilities. One of these is Ubuntu for ARM.

Another is Windows 10. The $35 machine will run Windows 10, and Microsoft has confirmed that the operating system will be free. The "free" part isn't actually a surprise; the company said that Windows would be free on Internet of Things devices at BUILD last year. Microsoft has been making efforts to engage with the maker community, supporting Windows on Intel's Galileo boards. Adding the Raspberry Pi 2 is a logical extension of this, with the cheap ARM boards more popular than Intel's offerings.

Supporting the Pi 2 means, of course, that Microsoft is continuing to support Windows on ARM. But it's probably not the same kind of Windows that Windows RT was. At TechEd Europe last year Microsoft described its Windows 10 IoT offerings, and Mary Jo Foley has a picture of a slide describing three different Windows 10 releases: "Industry", "Mobile", and "Athens".

[White Stripes]

didnt windows run on DEC Alpha cpus at one point? i dont remember it being particularly useful....

[Pri]

This Windows 10 they are going to offer for the Raspberry Pi 2 will be an embedded sku. Their intention is to get developers using Windows in low power scenarios.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see Windows 10 running on Smart Watches before long. It seems to be their game plan now to get it on everything, last month they announced Windows 10 will run on the XBOX ONE, Tablets, Phones, Laptops, Desktops and Servers with full app compatibility so if you purchase a Windows application from the Windows Store you can launch it on any of those other devices.

It's an interesting play as obviously right now Rasperry Pi's are dominated by Linux and BSD based distributions. See if it pays off.

[White Stripes]

id rather have an open source os for low power...... 'windows' may have come a long way but the intel architecture is its 'home' .. ....didnt windows CE fail as well? ... closed source and 'apps' does not a particularly interesting os make for the raspberry pi ... considering when you can just recompile and run the -exact- same linux or bsd software as its other platforms.... windows isnt windows without its backlog of software written for, and only for, x86 or x64 cpus...

[Pri]

They're trying to change that. Win32 is not Windows future. WinRT is, and it's architecture agnostic like software written for Java. For example .net software just works on Windows ARM as it does on Windows x86_64.

[White Stripes]

.NET and java arent as efficient as native code... so .. to me... it seems useless for low power applications...

[Pri]

We deal with abstraction layers on the OS all the time. If all that mattered was efficiency everything would be written in assembly. Software development is all about trade offs.

WinRT runs great, you can write WinRT software using C++ and it will execute on both x86 and ARM architectures. Runs great, built in to Windows 8, 8.1 and 10.

[White Stripes]

if it runs great why did ms discontinue the surface tablet?

[White Stripes]

....before you reply to that... the surface pro which isnt being discontinued uses an intel cpu... not arm... ...a much more useful device... the price tag tho... damn... could get a sweet desktop for what they want for those things...

[Pri]

Microsoft discontinued the Windows RT tablets because they didn't sell. The Pro tablet worked much better, it had the pen input, it ran all existing software and games and it allowed unsigned code to run.

Remember when the RT tablet released it coincided with Windows 8, the windows store had hardly any apps and you weren't allowed to run desktop software on it apart from Microsoft Office. So even WinRT software written for that device did not run unless it was from the Windows store.

Microsoft made a lot of mistakes with that product but it wasn't because WinRT as a runtime is poor. WinRT is the future of the windows platform it is replacing Win32 as we speak. What Microsoft is doing now is building the software library for the devices of the future where the CPU isn't an important factor anymore.

Their strategy right now is for you to have one software license that applies to all your devices. Be that your x86 laptop/desktop/tablet or your ARM powered Phone/Tablet/Laptop. But it also means any apps written for the phones also run natively on x86 based Smart phones which is an area Intel are entering as well.

These processor agnostic approaches are best in my opinion. It works great for Android you can buy an ARM or X86 powered phone and run the same software due to the virtual machine on the phone. Microsoft wants the same thing for their platforms.

[White Stripes]

Microsoft discontinued the Windows RT tablets because they didn't sell. The Pro tablet worked much better, it had the pen input, it ran all existing software and games and it allowed unsigned code to run.

emphasis mine... but it speaks for itself...

its funny that even Apple... the iDevice creator... is smart enough to keep their OSX and iOS platforms seperate...

curious... being the bleeding edge early adopter you usually are.... have you worked on a WindowsRT version of RCS, RoboMX and Metis yet?

[Pri]

Apple already did their own transition from PowerPC to x86 in 2005. Back then they handled the transition differently to Microsoft they included a piece of technology called Rosetta that acted as a binary translator so that PowerPC software could run on x86 processors. Even games ran (and at near full FPS in some cases).

The rumours are now that Apple is intending to move their computers to ARM from x86 starting with the laptops. It won't happen this year but possibly in 2016.

The reason Windows RT wasn't successful is because they executed on it wrong. It should have had a binary translator, it should have allowed unsigned code to run, it should've allowed desktop apps to be used. WinRT as a runtime is fine.

As for RCS, Anyango, RoboMX and Metis. I've not ported those to WindowsRT. To be honest with you 99% of what I code now is for Minecraft that has a user base in the millions. I stopped writing stuff for WinMX years ago and I've only been making minor changes/bugfixes in that time. Even for Anyango its seen around 20 code changes in the past two years. As for my API's (Proxy Blocker, Link Saver etc) they are written in PHP and will run anywhere PHP does.

[White Stripes]

apple had an emulator for m68k (that ran part of the OS as well) when they moved from m68k to power pc.... a macbook air with arm sounds fitting but i hope arm gets some more ooomph behind it since even the intel atom has surpassed armV7... 

according to the wikipedia windowsRT has been completely cancelled in favor of win10 mobile (device with 8inch or smaller screen with arm cpu) ... page for win10 mobile says that win10 desktop will share most but not all of codebase of applications with mobile.... ....so the two are not going to be able to run all the same apps...

win10 desktop still does win32/64 so... win32/64 isnt going anywhere.... ...and i honestly hope that cortana on desktop can be removed or disabled..... for as neat as it is i dont really want to have a conversation with my desktop pc...

as for 'renegades' (and all that it encompasses) how long to you plan to continue its support and general existence?  ...yes i know this question should be a separate thread... just give me the jist of it...

[Pri]

Windows RT and the WinRT runtime are separate things. The Windows RT platform died with their tablet. WinRT will live on, almost all new software from Microsoft for Windows will be written in it with few exceptions. For example the new Mail client included in Windows 10 is the same exact executable that will be included on the Windows 10 phones. It detects the screen size and touch screen and scales accordingly.

As for Renegades, right now the channel still sees 125-140 users inside at any one time. So I plan to continue it until the channel is empty. For the software I release I'll keep maintaining them until it becomes too difficult to maintain them. Ya know we don't actually use anything I've released on my forums in Renegades. All those bots, scripts and things they were made specifically for wide release. We have tools that do similar or the same things in Ren (like the IMDB feature) but they were written under Anyangos plugin platform sometimes a few months to a few years before the scripts were made for Metis.

I chose to write them in Metis because its barrier to entry is very low so I knew that room owners would have no trouble modifying the scripts to suit their rooms, they could also translate them or add little things they needed. I'm sure you're aware that I released a File Finder plugin which added a requested feature, the ability to set the amount of results shown in the room. I had many people ask me how they could modify that plugin (the original written by KM) to add that feature but because they needed to know higher level programming and have a compiler it meant no one did it. When I released that updated plugin I realised how important it is to keep things simple for room owners to customise functionality themselves. Infact now I think about it some of my scripts like Room Finder actually have a file which can customise the entire scripts UI in your room without even modifying the script file itself. Really deep customisation actually.

I'll likely keep my API's updated and running for a very long time as I still find uses for those in other things I write. The Proxy Blocker for example has its own web control panel and tons of features in the API and I use that to protect my webservers, forums, websites, game servers etc - That'll live on long past WinMX is my thinking.

[White Stripes]

wow... ren has grown in user amount... i remember it being around 80-90 any given time....

as far as the winRT core or whatever microsoft wants to eventually rename it i cant help but be haunted by the incredible sluggishness that is (was?) the .NET runtime... its good for little toys but for a big app its just terrible... and for a battery powered app its worse... ...i hope RT fixed .NET ....

overall... i dont plan to actually buy into any windows 10 devices... if i get a smartphone its going to be android and for the desktop modern linux distros have won me over.. so its win7 till it dies in 2019... which i have a funny feeling will end up as another XP problem for microsoft since many businesses went with 7 rather than 8....

btw, i havent used microsofts own email client since outlook in ie4 ticked me off one too many times...