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  • Author Author: bluescreen
  • Date Created: 20 Mar 2015 11:32 PM Date Created
  • Last Updated Last Updated: 10 May 2021 7:09 PM
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Will Windows 10 on the Raspberry Pi have a Desktop?

This post was written by element14's cstanton.

 

Update: Windows 10 IoT Core on the Raspberry Pi 2

Open a Window

 

When Eben Upton announced the Raspberry Pi 2 he also announced it would support Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system. No one knew what the operating system would look like running on the Raspberry Pi and interest and speculation have run high about this topic. Here's what we know so far.

 

What are People Hoping for?

 

When someone says 'Windows' then what you are probably thinking about looks like this:

 

image

 

In the screenshot, the default Windows 10 desktop, something which many people by now are (or will be) familiar to see, and much to the chagrin of open source aficionado's this is not what a collection of people want. Whenever Microsoft is mentioned, it is often seen in the same vain as 'proprietary' and 'locked down' with an operating system that is riddled with bugs, viruses and a confusing user experience. I have also read that there are groups of people that fear this is Microsoft's way of muscling into the education market and pushing out Linux in favor of something which is more familiar and learned than a Linux operating system. Often seen as harsh with its package management, text interface and X environment.

 

So what will Microsoft Windows on the Raspberry Pi actually look like?

image

 

If you are not already familiar with it, there is a website dedicated to Microsoft's Windows Developer Program for the Internet of Things. Originally this developer program requested people to fill out a survey. It would ask what software integrated development environments people were familiar with and what projects they were working on. It also asked what hardware people had or intended on working with.

 

Proposed from this survey was to be sent a 'development kit' that would consist of an Intel Galileo board along with relevant softwares/parts and it not much else was said about it. The web page presented information of working with Arduino, sketches and its respective IDE.

 

It was not until the announcement of the Raspberry Pi 2 that Microsoft included the Foundation's board on this same page and equally suggested that the Pi was to be supported by Windows 10. In fact, you can still sign up to become an "early adopter" for what is referred to as 'Windows on Devices'. It is worth noting at present that this developer program is aimed at the consumer at present, the home user, or specifically for 'noncommercial development' - an update on this is Microsoft have since been quoted as saying commercial licenses will be detailed in summer 2015. Which probably means that the free Windows 10 build will have a very particular user license agreement to specify so.

 

Now what comes from this is the observation that the build of Windows for IoT development is not a GUI, desktop based system which the typical user is familiar with. It is a headless board which, my understanding is, that you compile code for from a desktop system running the relevant IDE (probably Visual Studio) and upload to the board to then run autonomously and it can be managed with command line access.

 

There are builds of "Windows for IoT" available for the Intel Galileo board via Microsoft Connect, which lists further insights including the name that this is also referred to as "Windows Embedded". So that's three names, now: "Windows Embedded", "Windows for IoT" and "Windows 10". Which all appear to refer to the same build, or iterations of:

 

image

 

Where is it and which is it, then?

 

Still very much in development, the first place it would probably turn up is the Windows IoT early adopter program or on Microsoft Connect. Microsoft recently did a blog which covered more information which provided a general view of what would run on the hardware:

 

image

Although the profile of the Raspberry Pi more closely fits 'IoT for industry devices' it is not an x86 based board. Which means it either falls under 'mobile devices' or 'small devices' and I suspect this is where the grey area lies, but in Microsoft's definition a mobile device is purely a phone or a tablet.

 

This means that the Raspberry Pi will likely be considered a 'small device' and will run Windows 10 without a shell, but will support Universal Apps, etc. as listed in one of Microsoft's latest blogs. There are, understandably, people asking for clarification, but it should be noted that in other blogs, Microsoft are specific about Intel's offerings and what they will run, but not necessarily the Raspberry Pi.

 

Which direction will it go? We still have to wait and see for assertive confirmation.

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Top Comments

  • Former Member
    Former Member over 10 years ago +2
    I expect it to be without a ui too. But what then is the benefit of running "Windows" compared to Linux? If you want to, you can develop .net application using Visual Studio on a Windows desktop and run…
  • murraymr
    murraymr over 10 years ago in reply to Former Member +2
    Agree. Linux seems to be much more versatile and user friendly in this area. I think Microsoft is behind the curve on this.
  • Former Member
    Former Member over 10 years ago +2
    I think microsoft is not suitable for open source at all
  • Former Member
    Former Member over 10 years ago in reply to cstanton

    Very nice answer, thank you. image

     

    The product life cycles of RedHat, Suse, Ubuntu and Oracle GNU/Linux distributions have been clear for years. Regarding Joe Public, anyone fearing that "the guy" would vanish off the face of the Earth and leave some piece of software unmaintained has little to no idea how open-source works and in this case they should just stick with what they're comfortable with. I can't remember a piece of critical open-source software that went off the grid because of Joe Public and Microsoft also doesn't offer guaranties and that's in every EULA, but this is typical for software in general.

     

    I mentioned Snappy Ubuntu Core because the Windows 10 edition for RaspberryPi is also not aimed for desktop use but rather as a platform for various appliances. And with Ubuntu Landscape one can easily manage any Ubuntu instance, including a Snappy one. So there goes a valid option for enterprise use.

     

    Extensive debugging and dissecting dump files is rarely needed both in Windows and Linux, and yes, Windows has some tools to do that but on the other hand there are bugs and annoyances that are introduced by Windows itself, like the Windows Update bugs I found in both Windows 7 and 8 last year (Windows 7 kept freezing while performing the updates after restart, and the Windows 8 Explorer stopped working after installing the 8.1 upgrade so I had no shell). Also, in numerous occasions Windows updates could not be applied, and I got an error code that was missing any information in the online knowledge base. So every once in a while, as a support guy (I've done that for about 20 years) you're in that situation when you don't have a solution on the spot and the best you can do in the absence of enterprise support is to wait for someone to go through the issue with you, which could take days/weeks, without any guarantees that you'll find a fix.


    That's not to say Linux is out of trouble but the smaller number of debugging tools are self-explainable when you can see the logs in clear text and most of the time that allows you to quickly identify the issue then the culprit. Or you can use strace to get a live view of what's going on inside a process.


    The management typically doesn't know enough about the technologies and rather act on their gut feeling when choosing between different solutions. Although there are plenty of times when some solution is technically and financially better (which doesn't always mean Linux), they prefer going with the solution that's closest to what they know. Now as technical/rational people we know that's OK only for their peace of mind and that is not a measure of a solution's quality for a specific use.

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  • cstanton
    cstanton over 10 years ago in reply to Former Member

    Nicolae Crefelean wrote:

     

    Do you mean that enterprise tech support is free from Microsoft?

     

    No, I do not. However, there is an element of reliability with the standard software supplied by Microsoft that is quantified and that reassures people. Their operating systems have a defined life cycle of support (which some distributions of Linux are starting to have, or now have had for a few years) and I would suggest from my experience working in at least Universities that managers are more comfortable with what Microsoft offers than Linux where by the support isn't as uncertain to point the finger of liability when say, the software you're using is packaged together or compiled by potentially a Joe Public that can vanish off the face of the earth with no guarantees.The support chain for such a scenario is potentially greater in comparison for Linux (requiring persons that understand the culture of Linux and the support chain(s)) where as with Windows, particularly where it is already established, it is harder for larger enterprises to transition from.

     

    Anyway, for the RaspberryPi, Canonical offers technical support for Snappy Ubuntu Core. So the RaspberryPi and Linux (RedHat, Suse, Ubuntu, Oracle) is not a dead-end for commercial customers.

    That's an interesting option, though Snappy Ubuntu is not intended as the same type of distribution as say, Debian, Fedora or CentOS, is it?

    Now regarding regular tech support, the one you don't pay, it's a matter of luck to find a fix for your Windows issues. It wasn't once that I ran into serious troubles with Windows (especially Windows Update) and Microsoft couldn't help.

    It depends. From personal experience the majority of Windows problems experienced have been due to hardware error, or incompatible DLL files. Having worked as IT Support in a Windows environment, with a team that also had members working with Linux and we had to interchange often. A lot of the support tools and diagnostic tools (say to dissect dump files or to aid software to be compatible) are not typically advertised or available to consumers (I'm looking at APP-V here in part) and so a lot of people do not have a full understanding of Windows and how it works. Though Linux mostly has its bare bones on show from the offset.

     

     

    Normally, to get a job done you don't only need the right tools but also the right people. The tech support should only be a last resort, because we should be on top of technology, not the other way around. So measuring the quality of some operating system or tools solely based on the tech support is not enough, regardless the technologies involved.

     

    In an ideal world, sure, we would. Though the scope of my comparison was in the compared uptake of what I have experienced in an enterprise environment when comparing solutions. For example, if the environment is solely Microsoft Windows then a Raspberry Pi running Windows that can be interrogated using Windows tools and/or possibly on the domain and controlled by a group policy is going to be seen as a far more quantifiable and interesting device to incorporate on a network (done the 'Microsoft' way) than having a 'rogue' Raspberry Pi running Linux that perhaps only one or two members of the internal support team understand.

     

    When I say tech' support I don't always entirely mean the companies themselves I also mean the ability of the company/institute's own technical support's ability to understand the equipment as well. It varies, however it can sometime boil down to the higher management understanding where the money's going and if they can see it being supported under licensing than it does for the front line support knowing that all they need to do is plug in a piece of kit and it'll work.

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  • Former Member
    Former Member over 10 years ago in reply to cstanton

    Do you mean that enterprise tech support is free from Microsoft? Anyway, for the RaspberryPi, Canonical offers technical support for Snappy Ubuntu Core. So the RaspberryPi and Linux (RedHat, Suse, Ubuntu, Oracle) is not a dead-end for commercial customers.

     

    Now regarding regular tech support, the one you don't pay, it's a matter of luck to find a fix for your Windows issues. It wasn't once that I ran into serious troubles with Windows (especially Windows Update) and Microsoft couldn't help.

     

    Normally, to get a job done you don't only need the right tools but also the right people. The tech support should only be a last resort, because we should be on top of technology, not the other way around. So measuring the quality of some operating system or tools solely based on the tech support is not enough, regardless the technologies involved.

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  • cstanton
    cstanton over 10 years ago in reply to Former Member

    The entire Windows IoT preview program is for the consumer/home user at present. Microsoft are quoted as saying that the commercial licensing is available and laid out coming this summer.

     

    Comparing Windows to Linux generally and outside of this program, you don't have the same level of enterprise technical support unless you pay for it from say, RedHat.

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  • Former Member
    Former Member over 10 years ago in reply to cstanton

    Christopher StantonMar 24, 2015 8:22 PM (in response to Pål Andreassen)

    Also, if you have a problem with Raspbian on the Raspberry Pi and you want technical support for it, who do you go to if I'm an enterprise commercial company?

    Will Windows 10 on the Raspberry Pi have a Desktop?

    created by Sagar Jethani on Mar 21, 2015 12:32 AM, last modified by Sagar Jethani on Apr 30, 2015 5:01 PM

    It is worth noting that this entire program is aimed at the consumer, the home user, or specifically for 'noncommercial development'.

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  • xever
    xever over 10 years ago in reply to cstanton

    Cool! Looking forward to your initial experiences.  Too bad I have to setup a new Win10 environment just to get this running... another late night for me perhaps... image

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  • cstanton
    cstanton over 10 years ago in reply to xever

    Yeah, I'm writing up a blog about it.

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  • xever
    xever over 10 years ago

    Windows 10 for IoT Preview is now available.  See https://dev.windows.com/en-US/iot currently doing the setup now.  Code development is in C# and the experience is like writing apps for .NET Micro Framework.

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  • Former Member
    Former Member over 10 years ago in reply to cstanton

    Yes, I agree... DOS is late 1970 to early 1980 Technology

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  • clem57
    clem57 over 10 years ago in reply to cstanton

    To the OS it looks like a DISK.image

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