A good effort, if a bit odd: Windows 10 IoT Core on Raspberry Pi 2 Microsoft has released a preview of Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2, the £30 ARMv7 computer board produced by the Cambridge-based Raspberry Pi Foundation. The version of Windows 10 for the Pi (which is also available for the Intel Atom MinnowBoard Max) is called Windows IoT Core, one of three Windows 10 IoT editions. The other …
Now ask the question in the context of you being a parasite specializing on feeding off Education IT (that was the niche Pi was supposed to be addressing as its main goal, right).
Before - you had to deal with Linux (horror), Kids being able to do write software which could have been used inside the school instead of the school paying you (double horror), the perspective of having to write off some of the investment into MS?E of your staff (quadruple horror), decrease in commissions from reselling Microsoft licenses (octuple horror).
AAAAAAAAAggrrhrhrhr... the Horror.
And, now, the cavalry comes led by the knight saviour on the white horse. And it carries the most wonderful news on its banner - it is not just Microsoft, it is stuffing the school with 2 licenses per student.
Sure, the Pi itself doesn't need Windows. But Windows needs to expand and cover such devices. It was the right move from Microsoft to start supporting such devices which despite their original aims, expanded outside the pure didactic environment.
Pi & C. became excellent devices for prototyping and building "cheap" more complex ones using the Pi as the brain and adding other hardware through Arduino and the like.
Keeping Windows outside this range of users would have been a stupid move (to Linux fanboys: from a MS perspective), and a lot of new developers may also start by tinkering with devices like Pi.
With the IoT madness all around us, it's also a good introduction to such kind of devices for old and new developers.
Thereby, it's Microsoft needing the Pi, not vice versa.
The whole purpose of me upgrading to the latest Raspberry Pi was so that I could give Windows 10 a try as a means of developemnet in a Windows enviroment. However, in light of the fact there will be no GUI, I don't know if it's worth the trouble. I guess I wil just have to stick with Linux.
like it needs any OS. Choice is good. Learning that there are different ways to do things is good. If you learn that some ways are better than others then so be it, but having the choice is important.
Besides, if all this proves is that Windows is bobbins what's your problem?
Pi was introduced because school CS classes became "a click on icon in Word" exercise
Microsoft offer a windows environment for Pi, backed by lots of marketing, glossy lesson plans etc.
Teachers who know nothing about computers think "computers = windows = good"
Schools scared of mumsnet stories about terrorist hackers want locked down computers
School CS lessons become a "click on link in web page from embedded IE" exercise
>Pi was introduced because school CS classes became "a click on icon in Word" exercise
Pi was introduced to sell bucketloads of Broadcom SOCs. End of. It's been very good at that.
But once you peer past the hype, it's a terrible computer for schools. Set-up is a nightmare, the Linux desktop is a joke compared to a real computer (browse the web? I'll come back in an hour after that page has loaded) and the fun stuff - like Scratch - runs better online anyway.
It's true some people think Linux is "real computing", but teaching 8 year olds about file permissions and the difference between /bin and /sbin - which they have to know to do anything non-trivial - isn't any sane person's idea of fun.
The Pi could have been so much more. It could have come with a preinstalled web server and database which just worked, so ten year olds didn't have to dick around with apt-get to install Nginx and PHP and MySQL just to put up a web page.
It could have had some kind of useful IDE and dev environment built in (something better than IDLE - which wouldn't be hard).
It could have had some actual thought put into it.
Instead it was pushed out the door on some kind of weird nostalgia nerdgasm wave (see also, TV adaptor) packed full of exactly the wrong kind of Linux shovelware, capturing none of the ease of use and graded learning that made the original 8-bit micros so brilliant.
The Pi needs Windows like a new Porsche needs 500 kg cement in the boot.
So does it need it or not? I once owned a 911, in the air-cooled days when the weight distribution could cause nasty surprises when cornering in the wet. One solution was to add weight in front - Porsche themselves put the battery as far forward as possible and in some cases actually added weights inside the front bumper.
The boot was, of course, in the front. 500 kg seems like it might be a bit much, though.
It's not the device that needs any particular OS. It's the user. As someone else said - choice is good. Now developers from both UNIX and Windows backgrounds can easily develop for the Pi so that helps the Pi become even more useful and successful which is good for all.
But the question I want answered is how much does Windows IoT edition cost? Because I can program on both platforms and whilst C# is nice, so is Python. if I can stick Rasbian on there for free I don't see how Windows IoT will compete with that. At least for non-commercial use which is a major driver of uptake.
Really, I don't think so, Windows CE makes more sense for GPIO pins as it's a RTOS. I doubt you could bit-bang IR remote or RDS or sample receive IR remote handset RDS decoder IC. Good luck getting Win CE on it. But I've had loads of embedded ARM based development systems that came with WinCE and the first task was always using JTAG to change the boot loader to install Linux as often the supplied boot would only allow versions of Win CE.
I can't think of any use for it. If you really needed this mad version of Windows 10, then a PC is better to develop on and test on an ITX x86 that uses the Cash Register version of Win 10.
I'm still using Windows daily (since 1992), but this is pointless for a Raspberry Pi 2.
WinCE an RTOS? Depends on your definition.
Typically WinCE can have interrupt latencies that vary between 50-100 microseconds. If your application requires periodic interrupts in the millisecond range then this can be acceptable. However, for applications that require periodic interrupts in the 1-100 microsecond range, WinCE will fail miserably. The interrupt latency with WinCE is just too large and it will cause interrupts to be missed.
Check the FAQ: "True “console” apps aren’t really going to be supported for the IoT core OS, headless or not. You can still deploy and run a standard win32 console app here, it just won’t be connected to any on-device console. When running headless you should just get that black screen. When running headed the only supported UI is via the UWP UI stacks (XAML, HTML, DirectX)."
http://ms-iot.github.io/content/Faqs.htm
Tim
Compare this to the original, lower powered Raspberry PI, where even there you had a full command line and GUI without the limitations.
Suppose on the positive side, it will make people realise how bad Windoze is if they can compare like for like without all the glitter and lipstick.
...to run software that only runs on Windows. That's a helluva lot of software to be sure, and it includes some of the best software in the world, but it won't run on the Pi either.
Windows is going to be around for a long time but outside of the classic wintel environment it'll only ever be a curiosity
Windows is going to be around for a long time but outside of the classic wintel environment it'll only ever be a curiosity
It'll be PIning for the fjords :)
The whole point perhaps?
That'll be where they inform you that you didn't want that nasty cheap defective Pi crap at all. What you want is a lovely shiny compatible warm Wintel Atom.
I believe they call it "bait and switch." "Windows"10 IoT core being the "bait."
"as soon as you need to interact with the Pi’s GPIO (general purpose input/output pins) or other Pi-specific hardware, this will not work."
"A built-in web application on the Pi lets you monitor and manage the device."
So if i want to monitor the Pi's GPIO it does not work, but if I want to monitor the Pi device, it does? Err ...
Box1 has been a major contributor to a number of successful technologies, such as SOAP. I can see why some people might hold that against him (I'm no fan of SOAP myself), but it's hardly surprising that Microsoft keep him around.
I saw him give a couple talks at Microsoft conferences back in the day, such as the Indigo (WCF) technical preview at PDC '05, and my impression is that he's quite a smart guy. And while, again, I can't say that WCF is exactly my vision of SOA2, there's some thoughtfulness in the design. Good separation among transports, protocols, and encodings. Good flexibility in configuration mechanisms.
I've been working on commercial distributed-computing subsystems since the mid-1980s, and WCF is not the worst technology I've seen in the area. Neither is SOAP, for that matter.
1"Fish and sea greens, plankton and protein from the sea!"
2Y'know, that thing we used to call "distributed computing". Or "remote procedure calls". Or "client/server architecture". Or "middleware". Or...
"The documentation says you need a physical Windows 10 machine in order to get access to a card reader"
Seriously? I suppose they have entirely missed the Win32DiskImager in their halfassed attempt to push Win10.
I'll stick with RISC OS, thanks...
"The documentation says you need a physical Windows 10 machine in order to get access to a card reader"
Seriously? I suppose they have entirely missed the Win32DiskImager in their halfassed attempt to push Win10.
Or this [drum roll]:
http://www.computerconservationsociety.org/images/ict1301-1.jpg
(My first job as a computer operator - correcting the mis-feeds)
Do you remember that WfWG 3.11 was a single threaded (preemptive "multitasking"... GUI atop DOS, with no security at all, no concept of services/daemons, barely supporting simple networks, etc etc.? Software changed and improved a lot form those days, otherwise, think about what DOS was capable of doing in 640K RAM and 360K disks...
Moreover, an ad hoc OS may probably stripped down even more, but if Windows 10 kernel still needs to be shared across different version it may still carry some inevitable "bloat" - it's the price you have to pay to avoid to maintain n completely different versions of an OS.
Even the Raspbian image is a 990MB download (zipped).
> Do you remember that WfWG 3.11 was a single threaded (preemptive "multitasking"...
Certainly _not_ preemptive. It was co-operative, and often non-cooperative.
> GUI atop DOS, with no security at all, no concept of services/daemons, barely supporting simple networks, etc etc.? Software changed and improved a lot form those days, otherwise, think about what DOS was capable of doing in 640K RAM and 360K disks...
[MS-]DOS wasn't capable of very much at all. It needed applications to get anything useful done.
> Even the Raspbian image is a 990MB download (zipped).
Raspian is a full Linux distro and comes complete with a desktop GUI, servers, browser, applications and software development tools and everything else needed to work as a 'PC'.
> it's the price you have to pay to avoid to maintain n completely different versions of an OS.
As a comparison I can get a Linux distro that will boot off a 1.44 diskette and run as a firewall, SQL server, web server and other stuff.
> Certainly _not_ preemptive. It was co-operative, and often non-cooperative.
You're right, there's a missing "no".
> Raspian is a full Linux distro
Even a minimal Raspian is about 500MB. Anyway a Raspian doesn't come with many servers and applications pre-installed. Nor Windows 10 is just a kernel only, and moreover is a preview release which probably is still compiled with a lot of debug settings.
> As a comparison I can get a Linux distro
Sure, as I said you can make a custom OS stripped down as mush as you like - Linux, after all, is just the kernel, and if you remove lots of modules (and thereby flexibility). you can reduce its footprint a lot, especially if you use an older, smaller kernel. How much is really usable such "distro" but to show off among penguins, is debatable.. and it's something you need to support separately, especially if using a different kernel.
Just with the actual prices of SD cards and USB drives, why should someone try to run something from old, unreliable, unsupported floppies??
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