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Microsoft Hardware Hacking Build Technology

Ditch Linux For Windows 10 On Your Raspberry Pi With Microsoft's IoT Kit 308

An anonymous reader writes: Partnering with Adafruit, Microsoft has announced the Windows IoT Core Starter Kit. The $75 kit comes comes with an SD card preloaded with Windows 10 IoT. According to the Raspberry Pi blog: "The pack is available with a Pi 2 for people who are are new to Raspberry Pi or who'd like a dedicated device for their projects, or without one for those who'll be using a Pi they already own. The box contains an SD card with Windows 10 Core and a case, power supply, wifi module and Ethernet cable for your Pi; a breadboard, jumper wires and components including LEDs, potentiometers and switches; and sensors for light, colour, temperature and pressure. There's everything you need to start building."
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Ditch Linux For Windows 10 On Your Raspberry Pi With Microsoft's IoT Kit

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  • pft... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 28, 2015 @03:38PM (#50615535)

    why the hell would I want to do that?

  • by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Monday September 28, 2015 @03:38PM (#50615541)
    Build your own Raspberry Pi kit. It will be cheaper.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 28, 2015 @03:58PM (#50615721)

      I did a while ago. But you still need win 10 as a development station for Windows 10 IoT Core. kinda lame.

      http://ms-iot.github.io/content/en-US/win10/SetupPCRPI.htm
      "
      To setup your Windows 10 IoT Core development PC, you first need to install the following:

      Make sure you are running the public release of Windows 10 (version 10240) or better. You can upgrade from here. If you are already running Windows 10, you can find your current build number by clicking the start button and typing “winver” and hitting enter.

      Install Visual Studio 2015
      We recommend Community Edition.
      If you already have or choose to install Visual Studio Professional 2015 or Visual Studio Enterprise 2015 (available here), make sure to do a Custom install and select the checkbox Universal Windows App Development Tools -> Tools and Windows SDK.
      Install Windows IoT Core Project Templates from here. Alternatively, the templates can be found by searching for Windows IoT Core Project Templates in the Visual Studio Gallery or directly from Visual Studio in the Extension and Updates dialog (Tools > Extensions and Updates > Online).

      Make sure you’ve enabled developer mode by following these instructions."

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        So this is really just about forcing more people to move to Win10. Figures.

      • by tibit ( 1762298 )

        I think that this is bullshit. VS 2015 works fine on Windows 7, and I don't see what's so special about building for the arm targets that would require Windows 10. I build for ARM using VS 2105 on Win 7 already, I just haven't deployed the stuff on RPi yet... shouldn't be hard, but I really don't see what's the outrage here. People, let's try it before you spew nonsense, mmkay?

      • by Ulric ( 531205 )
        Yep, I did the same. When I realized that after jumping through this nasty bunch of hoops, I still did not have anything remotely as competent as Linux on the Pi, I put Raspbian back on the SD card.
  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Monday September 28, 2015 @03:41PM (#50615555)

    Dumping a system that works and does what I want for a system that spies on me and will change at the whim of its maker with but a "swallow bitch" if I complain.

    Decisions, decisions...

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      Dumping a system that works and does what I want for a system that spies on me and will change at the whim of its maker with but a "swallow bitch" if I complain.

      You jest, but Windows is far and above king of backward compatibility as far as APIs are concerned.

      One does wonder how efficient it is compared to Linux, though.

      • by nyet ( 19118 ) on Monday September 28, 2015 @04:07PM (#50615801) Homepage

        You jest, but Windows is far and above king of backward compatibility as far as APIs are concerned.

        Right. Like the amazing job they did with winsock?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Gr8Apes ( 679165 )

        You jest, but Windows is far and above king of backward compatibility as far as APIs are concerned.

        We can start with Office95 breaking backwards compatibility with all previous versions of Office, and the attempt to do the same with Office 2010. Then you can go look up how .NET's incompatibilities between versions cause havoc. Don't forget to look up Win32 System API calls, especially in the security area. Finally, finish off with retraining everyone on every release of a MS product because the GUI has randomly been redesigned, and I use "designed" as a concept loosely here, other than maybe to cause ma

        • by PhrostyMcByte ( 589271 ) <phrosty@gmail.com> on Monday September 28, 2015 @04:56PM (#50616119) Homepage

          I just had to post something against the classic /. hivemind. What do I do to myself. You see, I mentioned APIs specifically, because I was talking about their APIs. Not Office. Not their latest shiny UI throw up. Their APIs. I'm a dev, I've been using their APIs extensively for close to two decades, and that's the perspective I wanted to give. I wasn't commenting on the quality of Linux vs Windows IOT, or the benefits (or lack thereof) of backward compatibility.

          you can go look up how .NET's incompatibilities between versions cause havoc. Don't forget to look up Win32 System API calls, especially in the security area.

          Yes, you can.

          Newer .NET versions tend to, in the vast majority of cases, be backwards compatible with apps compiled for older versions. They have broken this in some very niche cases, but only where strongly justified. Their wont for backward compatibility is so great, they will leave in bugs and even keep the internal structure of objects the same to ensure any apps relying on that continue to work. I've submitted my share of bugs that ended up in the "won't fix" pile due to this.

          Their Win32 API is probably the single largest working example of "backward compatible" you'll find in an API. The thing is for better or worse riddled with deprecated functionality, "Ex" functions to replace it, and structs which need to know their own size. Run an old Win32 app from the Windows 95 days and there's a really good chance it'll still work today. There are very few cases where they've made something specifically not work, and that has sometimes been because people have been using it wrong to the detriment of the user (i.e. retrieving the Windows version).

          Their driver side tends to fluctuate a bit more as they make performance or safety enhancements by replacing the various APIs, but there's really no way around that.

      • The king of breaking hardware compatibility, instability, and malware affliction you mean. Also the king of bitrot prone design and reboot requirements. None of this is good for an embedded OS.
      • by msobkow ( 48369 )

        I suggest you look into the history of POSIX before making this claim. POSIX goes back way before Linux was even a gleam in Linus' eye, and Linux is still compatible with it.

      • by tibit ( 1762298 )

        Frankly said, I'd use Windows on RPi simply to have access to decent documentation. Linux is a very loosely tied bunch of stuff, there's no overarching design and no single source of documentation - heck there is really no documentation for a lot of things, apart from the code itself. As much as I enjoy reading code, sometimes I'd rather read English and be sure that the API won't magically change overnight...

  • Security (Score:5, Informative)

    by mhkohne ( 3854 ) on Monday September 28, 2015 @03:41PM (#50615557) Homepage

    As if IoT wasn't insecure enough already - let's put the BIGGEST consumer malware target into everything!

    Anyone else think this is bad idea?

    • As if IoT wasn't insecure enough already - let's put the BIGGEST consumer malware target into everything!

      You could make a damn good case that malware is a far bigger problem for Android than Win 10 in any of its many incarnations.

    • by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

      yes security is at the core of thinking when 12 year old "hackdaddy88" rolls his own distro, which happens constantly on PI, look at the game centric distros already there, dump you to root with the press of a single button, its like fort knox

  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 28, 2015 @03:42PM (#50615561)

    is the year that Windows will replace Linux on the IoT.

    • Why don't they at least focus on Windows 10 Mobile - the successor to Windows Phone 8.1? At least there they'll have a surer chance of success
  • by Junta ( 36770 ) on Monday September 28, 2015 @03:44PM (#50615575)

    'why' for developers and 'why' for microsoft as well.

    For developers, MS is so mismatched to the sensibilities of the embedded space, business and technology wise. Picking up the ball and going home from one linux to another or even to something like a BSD is easy enough if you have to. If you commit to MS ecosystem, there's no where to go if things pan out poorly (e.g, Windows mobile, windows ce, windows phone (at least 7 was a dead end), Windows RT). MS has a terrible track record in this space, even when their wheelhouse of desktop application ecosystem has some relevance, where the Pi has pretty much no relevance (it may have video out, but there are better choices for even ARM based graphical systems than Pi). MS ecosystem is in general so *alien* compared to the rest of the industry, you *really* have to believe in it to commit. It's silly to bet your project on MS's technology and ongoing commitment to the platform in this market.

    For MS, what do they hope to get out of this? They are coming into this from behind, against a competitor that gives away for free and where the entire ecosystem is tilted against them. They are going in to explore with no royalties, and no path to profit, or even revenue. Incidentally this has some resemblance to when they tried to break into 'supercomputing' nearly a decade ago, only to give up and let the resources mostly scatter to the winds when they figured out that there was no money to be made in the market, despite the prestige.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Monday September 28, 2015 @04:44PM (#50616043) Homepage Journal

      Windows as an embedded platform is really attractive to companies. They can reuse a lot of their existing software with minimal changes, and reuse their existing developers. Real embedded and Linux experts are much less common and much more expensive than .NET monkeys. If you do have problems, MS has support (even if it sucks).

      It's the same reason that, despite being absolutely awful, WinCE is widely used. The same reason that ATMs run Windows XP.

      • by kirkb ( 158552 ) on Monday September 28, 2015 @05:21PM (#50616251) Homepage

        As a developer with >20 years of embedded experience, nothing makes me sadder than seeing desktop developers (like your .Net monkeys) programming in an embedded environment. They don't understand multi-threading. They don't understand being efficient with CPU cycles and with memory. They struggle if luxuriously rich API's and libraries are not available.

        Whenever I see a kiosk or a bank ATM with a BSOD or windows error dialog on the screen, I know that the wrong kinds of developers worked on that project.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          .NET guys understand threading well. They love threads, everything happens in threads. All the popular UI models are thread based, e.g. WPF.

          What they don't understand is being efficient, as you say. The default solution in .NET is to allocate more memory. If you want to manipulate a string you create a new copy of it at every stage, rather than operating on a single copy.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          WinCE is very popular in the embedded space, especially with people who made test equipment and industrial equipment. You probably don't see most of it because it is specialist - oscilloscopes, digital multimeters, data loggers for industry, industrial tablets etc. I make that stuff for a living, WinCE is used by almost everyone and Linux has almost no penetration.

          Linux is king for networking devices, media players and the like. But for a large amount of industrial and scientific equipment it's almost 100%

      • by PPH ( 736903 )

        .NET monkeys

        I think companies have caught on to the true cost of this approach. NET monkeys are cheap for a reason. And we can't wait for that one in an infinite crowd to luck out and crank out a Shakespeare.

      • "They can reuse a lot of their existing software with minimal changes, and reuse their existing developers. Real embedded and Linux experts are much less common and much more expensive than .NET monkeys."

        WinPi comes with a stripped down version of Windows that doesn't even run a desktop. Most of the software written for desktop Windows is gui-fied by default.

        Any software that runs without the need for a GUI tends to be common development languages and environments that also runs on Linux as well, so any adv

    • by Dracos ( 107777 )

      There is no "why" other than padding sales numbers and not losing ground to Linux in embedded deployments.

      Win10 IoT is aimed at embedded systems vendors, not hobbyists or makers. It is specifically intended to replace all the old XP/CE deployments that still exist. They're tossing it out to end users (people who might buy a kit like this if it didn't involve Windows) as a bone. The OS itself is just a glorified bootloader for a Universal App: no shell (unless PowerShell counts), no desktop, and even some

      • by Junta ( 36770 )

        Yeah, I think that goal may be misguided. For the same reason they probably live in terror of the reality that tons of XP/CE based platforms are alive in the world, they should be very afraid that Windows 10 IoT 'success' would look the same way: long defunct software responsible for critically important things that could give them a black eye at any moment. The upside? A relative pittance in licensing compared to their standard business model.

        The things that are still XP/CE will forever be XP/CE. Windo

    • 'why' for developers and 'why' for microsoft as well.

      For developers, MS is so mismatched to the sensibilities of the embedded space, business and technology wise. Picking up the ball and going home from one linux to another or even to something like a BSD is easy enough if you have to. If you commit to MS ecosystem, there's no where to go if things pan out poorly (e.g, Windows mobile, windows ce, windows phone (at least 7 was a dead end), Windows RT). MS has a terrible track record in this space, even when their wheelhouse of desktop application ecosystem has some relevance, where the Pi has pretty much no relevance (it may have video out, but there are better choices for even ARM based graphical systems than Pi). MS ecosystem is in general so *alien* compared to the rest of the industry, you *really* have to believe in it to commit. It's silly to bet your project on MS's technology and ongoing commitment to the platform in this market.

      For MS, what do they hope to get out of this? They are coming into this from behind, against a competitor that gives away for free and where the entire ecosystem is tilted against them. They are going in to explore with no royalties, and no path to profit, or even revenue. Incidentally this has some resemblance to when they tried to break into 'supercomputing' nearly a decade ago, only to give up and let the resources mostly scatter to the winds when they figured out that there was no money to be made in the market, despite the prestige.

      Perfect question!!! Forget developers - just look at it from Microsoft's POV. The last time Microsoft tried something cross platform was Windows NT and Windows CE. Windows NT on every RISC platform that it lived on was aborted, b'cos Microsoft never bothered trying to make those platforms successful. It could have had a start had they put most major Microsoft applications on those platforms, and then other major ISVs would have followed suit. And on those platforms, the competition was really weak -

  • by burni2 ( 1643061 ) on Monday September 28, 2015 @03:44PM (#50615585)

    And you will get a free update offer for Windows11!
    And once it's not free anymore we will force it onto you!

    Sensorinformation Privacy "Sharing" E.U.L.A.
    You hereby transfering all your sensory data from the PI to the microsoft cloud.

  • by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Monday September 28, 2015 @03:45PM (#50615587) Journal

    Why would I run windows on it? One of the main advantages of Windows is all the programs compiled for it, but those are all compiled for x86 windows, not Windows 10 on Arm. Apparently it won't even run office.

    • by Keruo ( 771880 )
      The point is pushing .Net universal application [microsoft.com] concept to wider range of developers.
      It's kinda like Java was supposed to be, write once, run anywhere.
    • by Dracos ( 107777 )

      It only runs Universal Apps. Win10 IoT is a glorified bootloader.

    • Why would I run windows on it? One of the main advantages of Windows is all the programs compiled for it, but those are all compiled for x86 windows, not Windows 10 on Arm. Apparently it won't even run office.

      Note: I'm not trying to side with Microsoft here, as the name hints I'm an Apple guy, but I can see what direction Microsoft is trying to go in...

      Microsoft is betting the future on the new "Universal" APIs that have .Net byte code, and run on Windows, Windows Phone, Windows Core, and Xbox. The course Microsoft is charting for themselves is architecture independent. As you've pointed out, they aren't there yet, but that's where they hope to go. Will they make it there? Will everyone transition to the new Uni

    • Why would I run windows on it? One of the main advantages of Windows is all the programs compiled for it, but those are all compiled for x86 windows, not Windows 10 on Arm. Apparently it won't even run office.

      It'll be the part 2 sequel of Windows RT

  • A major goal in life is to REMOVE windows from my life, not to put it in more places. If it weren't for games, I could eliminate the contagion completely.

    Ain't no chance in hell I'm putting windows on Things(tm) in my house that might do something important, like climate control. Every russian and chinese hacker in the world will be having thermostat wars in my house, and I've already got a Wife(1.0) for that particular feature.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Hi, thank you so much for the offer but I'm afraid I'll have to decline. It was really nice of you to offer, and believe me I feel terrible about this, but I'm not going to be able switch from Linux to Windows 10 on my rasbpi. Hope this doesn't hurt your feelings in any way and I apologize profusely for not being able to use your fine product.

    As an aside, I also hope this won't affect your intentions with the data you've been collecting from my Windows 10 desktop machine. I still think your company is aw

  • by TheRealMindChild ( 743925 ) on Monday September 28, 2015 @03:55PM (#50615687) Homepage Journal
    Will it be able to playback netflix?
  • FUCK No (Score:5, Funny)

    by zlives ( 2009072 ) on Monday September 28, 2015 @03:55PM (#50615693)

    just trying to make sure all iterations of "no" are covered.

  • by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Monday September 28, 2015 @03:58PM (#50615729) Homepage Journal

    How much would you pay to have a software development platform that is more difficult to use? $25? $50? no, for only $74.99 you too can run a limited subset of Windows kernel on Raspberry Pi! (plus $0.01 handling)

    This is sort of like the opposite philosophy of Ardunio, instead of a simple IDE where people can get things done you can have a hairy ball of software and expensive tools where few people (if any) get to making their projects go.

    Linux on the target plus eclipse/emacs/vi/whatever on the host is all you really need to make a RPi go. There are cross compile suites for Windows and Mac, and they tend to integrate with most IDEs (maybe not so well with Visual Studio, but if you really want that option I guess Window IoT is made just for you)

    • by G00F ( 241765 )

      Well it depends, I have a Raspberry Pi 2 that I bought for the purpose of replacing the 10 year old computer I had attached. Only thing is, it couldn't replace it.

      No Hulu, No NetFlix, and no Web/HTML/Flash video's. Which is ~2/3's of the media watching now days. Kind of sucks having a bit of "new" hardware that can't do what it was bought for. If this windows 10 can do those things it might have something.

      • The Raspberry Pi was meant to be an affordable, educational computer for children. Not a $35 replacement for a $300 media box. Windows 10 isn't going to change that.
        • The Raspberry Pi was meant to be an affordable, educational computer for children. Not a $35 replacement for a $300 media box.

          Funny, that's exactly what I'm using my pi for. It does a great job running Kodi. The old PC it replaced would sometimes drop frames at 1080p, but not my pi2. (I can't speak to the streaming options like Netflix, as all my media is local.)

      • openelec does everything you mentioned.
  • MS seems to be bending over backwards to has this OS installed everywhere for FREE.

    No Corp does anything for free.

    e.g. Lenovo is probably getting getting paid by the Chinese Gov. for its info.

    Has anyone "Followed the money" ?

  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 28, 2015 @04:01PM (#50615749)

    There were a ton of misconceptions and two tons of lies/crap (can't tell which) going on over at the Ars Technica comments thread about this earlier today.

    1) Windows 10 IoT is free. There is no paid-for version of WinIoT. (And you thought "WinCE" was a bad nickname...)
    2) WinIoT is NOT based on the main WinNT kernel. It's based on good-old Windows Embedded Handheld, not Windows Embedded Compact. WinEC is based on WinXP, and is thus part of mainline NT, but WinEH is based on WinCE.
    3) It uses .Net Micro Framework (NetMF), which is a stripped-down version of the standard .Net Framework (NetFX). It shares virtually nothing in common with the old .Net Compact Framework (NetCF), and is, in fact, less stripped-down than that.
    4) If you like Linux, then use it. The reason to use WinIoT is if you already have a ton of experience working with .Net and the rest of Windows. Nobody (reasonable) gets belligerent and calls you an asshole because you use Linux, so have the same consideration for those that work with, or even *gasp* like, WinIoT.
    5) WinIoT doesn't spy. It's too stripped-down to do most of that telemetry crap, and people (even "true believers") would piss/bitch/moan/threaten-mob-action if they were to waste precious processor cycles on an embedded platform for that crap anyway.
    6) WinIoT doesn't auto-update. Again, people would be pissed off if their "things" suddenly stopped working because an update broke compatibility. Not gonna happen. (Also, it's WinCE, so it never had an update cycle to begin with.)

    Now that that's all out of the way, there can be a civil discussion (read: no discussion, because this is the internet, and everyone hates everyone else).

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by ras ( 84108 )

      WinIoT is ... based on WinCE.

      WinCE?

      *shudder*

      Even Microsoft has dropped that basket case, when they moved WinPhone from CE to NT.

      Why anybody would use it when Microsoft is making Windows 10 available for free [raspberrypi.org] on the Pi 2 is beyond me.

    • 6) WinIoT doesn't auto-update. Again, people would be pissed off if their "things" suddenly stopped working because an update broke compatibility. Not gonna happen.

      The exact same consideration applies on desktop windows, and microsoft doesn't give a crap about such complaints in that area. Why would they feel differently for WinIoT?

  • by niks42 ( 768188 ) on Monday September 28, 2015 @04:07PM (#50615797)
    I remember when Microsoft used to try to compete against us with Windows NT replacing OS/2 (OS/2!!!) on ATM machines. It took them a very, very long time.

    I remember when Microsoft used to try to compete against IBM embedded PC/DOS on handhelds. It took them a very, very long time.

    Now I shudder at the thought that they might just impact on IoT. They've started late, and it may take them a very, very long time but they are a relentless, well-funded and Government approved software company. This is a genuine threat, people and you shouldn't just laugh it off.
  • Crock. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sillivalley ( 411349 ) <sillivalley@nospaM.comcast.net> on Monday September 28, 2015 @04:21PM (#50615909)
    To start with, I have to dedicate a PC to Windows 10 in order to do Windows development for my Pi 2?

    Or, I can continue to run Raspbian (Debian) on the Pi and host development on the Pi, or do cross-development on other Linux hosts or my Mac.

    I know the overhead/footprint Raspbian imposes, and I know how to carve out the bits I don't need.

    How do I do that with Windows 10?

    Easy! Stick to Raspbian!

    Oh, I realize I won't have access to the latest development tools like Visual Studio, .NET APIs, viruses, trojans, and whatnot infesting on the Windows 10 ecosystem.
    Thanks, I'll stick with Raspbian on the Pi, and not having to support a separate Windows 10 box as well.
  • REF: What's in the box? [github.io]

    Windows 10 on an 8GB SD card ... will it even have enough space for the first run of Windows Update?

  • Ya (Score:4, Funny)

    by tom229 ( 1640685 ) on Monday September 28, 2015 @04:52PM (#50616087)
    Because Windows on ARM has been nothing but a giant success so far.
  • ... for the extras they include: the pots, proto board, case, etc. (Roughly what I recall paying for something like this from Amazon.)

    One could always buy one of these kits and do the normal thing: "dd" a copy of a RPi-compatiible Linux distribution onto that SD card.

    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      You're kidding, right?

      The Rasperry Pi isn't included in that kit. Pricing that stuff out, Microsoft is getting something like $50 for the Windows 10 image on the SD card.,

  • by iONiUM ( 530420 ) on Monday September 28, 2015 @04:58PM (#50616127) Journal

    From the comments it's clear that people think this is a terrible idea, and on a somewhat pro-Linux site that's to be expected. But it should be noted that this kit was way more popular than Adafruit though and they sold out rather quickly with people still asking for it.

    It may just be that some people like coding against Windows and are more comfortable with it than Linux.

  • would anyone even think of doing that... wait... are you high? can I have some?
  • To be fair, windows seems to have pretty good penetration into the embedded market already. Heck, I see random boxes with screens frozen on the windows desktop all the time.

    My favorite experience is waiting at airport security a couple of years ago - there were screens denoting which lanes were open and which were closed. Apparently each screen was an individual windows box, and every single one would randomly crash and reboot every minute or two. Made for a nice light show while waiting mindlessly in line.

  • Unfortunately Windows 10 will be constrained by the limited memory and speed on the Pi.

    So to quote someone about Developers, Developers, Developers, All the apps are already built for Raspberian that can't currently run on Windows on the Pi.

    I bought a couple of the SBC to run Falcon Pi Player and run a small version of Asterisk for my SIP home office phone system. I don't know how either could possibly run under the overhead of Windows 10.

    This is only two examples of the many wonderful things being done o

  • On a Lenove Z580 Core i7 laptop, Windows 10 was taking over three times as long just to reach the login prompt as it takes me to boot, log in, and have my Ubuntu 15.04 installation ready to use.

    Why in the world would I want to use that crapfest on underpowered hardware?

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