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JB

Joined: 08 Jun 2005
Posts: 7757
Location: 91° N

Posted: Wed Feb 04, 15 9:39 am Post subject:

vegplot wrote:

Treacodactyl wrote:

Raspberry Pi 2 looks interesting, it can even run Windows 10.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31088908

https://www.raspberrypi.org/raspberry-pi-2-on-sale/

That will make it much more attractive to a larger community. Never a bad thing.

That's a very bad idea. As soon as you put windows on to a machine there is so much overhead and abstraction between the interface and the hardware that it makes the machine inefficient and an appalling tool for accessing that hardware. That's great if all you want to do is run a wordprocessor and play a couple of games. It's appalling if you want to actually understand what's going on and make it do what you want.

Raspberry pi is a torque wrench, windows is an motorised torque wrench with digital readout and inbuilt help file. Very clever but completely useless if you want to know what a wrench does and pretty damned close to useless if all you want to do is tighten a wheel nut.

vegplot

Joined: 19 Apr 2007
Posts: 21298
Location: Ynys Môn

Posted: Wed Feb 04, 15 11:05 am Post subject:

JB wrote:

vegplot wrote:

Treacodactyl wrote:

Raspberry Pi 2 looks interesting, it can even run Windows 10.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31088908

https://www.raspberrypi.org/raspberry-pi-2-on-sale/

That will make it much more attractive to a larger community. Never a bad thing.

Bad? I suggest before you look at https://dev.windows.com/en-us/featured/Windows-Developer-Program-for-IoT and see what putting Windows 10 on small devices really means.

JB

Joined: 08 Jun 2005
Posts: 7757
Location: 91° N

Posted: Wed Feb 04, 15 12:22 pm Post subject:

Unless I've missed something there none of their examples actually use any windows functionality. There's a lot of basic microcontroller code all of which seems to be in simple C / C++ code but apart from the banner "windows 10 now on raspberry pi" there doesn't seem to be any mention of windows actually being used. On following that top link all it says is "we are delivering windows 10 support for raspberry pi" but no details

vegplot

Joined: 19 Apr 2007
Posts: 21298
Location: Ynys Môn

Posted: Wed Feb 04, 15 2:15 pm Post subject:

JB wrote:

For a start it means you can develop in Windows 10 directly on the device you want to control rather than on a separate device. How this pans out remains to be seen.

Sure if people just want to use Facebook on it then that's fine as well, why stop them?

But I think you miss the point in having a high level system on a small cheap device. It opens another world of possibilities. I have trouble seeing your objection as the Pi is already capable of running a Linux GUI OS, albeit slowly, which has the same level of abstraction as Windows does. Or this is just anti-Microsoft rhetoric?

JB

Joined: 08 Jun 2005
Posts: 7757
Location: 91° N

Posted: Wed Feb 04, 15 3:32 pm Post subject:

Raspberry pi runs a linux gui in most out of the box implementations so you can develop on the device you want to control rather than on a separate device, and has done from day one. Windows does not contribute anything to solving that problem mainly because the problem doesn't exist. Having developed that solution, as raspberry pi is aimed at being a low level platform you can then turn off everything and be left with a stripped down guiless OS running just your code, that's possible under windows but a lot harder because it's not the way windows is designed to work. So is there any advantage to running windows?, well as none of the examples that microsoft have on their site use any windows functionality it would seem that microsoft's opinion on the matter is that it doesn't. Windows is a perfectly adequate environment for running user applications but a raspberry pi is the wrong tool for user apps and windows is the wrong tool for what raspberry pi does and does well.

vegplot

Joined: 19 Apr 2007
Posts: 21298
Location: Ynys Môn

Posted: Wed Feb 04, 15 4:19 pm Post subject:
You've not said anything that demonstrates it's a bad thing. You can't find any good in it, which I disagree with, but where's the bad?

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 44752
Location: Essex

Posted: Wed Feb 04, 15 4:25 pm Post subject:

vegplot wrote:

where's the bad?

Yup. As far as I know this is part of MS's attempt at being a major player in the "Internet of Things", it could be as succesful as NT embedded in which case we'll never hear of it again, BUT if they manage to get a lot of users developing in the product then it could well be the best thing they ever did.

It looks like they want Win10 to be taken up by everybody, everywhere, across multiple architectures. Could well happen

JB

Joined: 08 Jun 2005
Posts: 7757
Location: 91° N

Posted: Wed Feb 04, 15 4:32 pm Post subject:
Raspberry pi is a cheap low level platform providing easy access to IO, networking, usb etc. Windows is a high level platform which restricts access to IO, networking, usb etc by putting it behind an abstracted layer which hides those details. Windows is not a bad thing, linux is not a bad thing. Windows is the wrong tool to use for most purposes on raspberry.

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 44752
Location: Essex

Posted: Wed Feb 04, 15 5:19 pm Post subject:
Here's an article about it: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/02/windows_10_raspberry_pi_2_eben_upton_interview/

oldish chris

Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 4148
Location: Comfortably Wet Southport

Posted: Wed Feb 04, 15 6:21 pm Post subject:

vegplot wrote:

But I think you miss the point in having a high level system on a small cheap device. It opens another world of possibilities. I have trouble seeing your objection as the Pi is already capable of running a Linux GUI OS, albeit slowly, which has the same level of abstraction as Windows does. Or this is just anti-Microsoft rhetoric?

Be interesting to see what comes in the Windows 10 software package and how it actually performs, and after you've gone for the loss-leader, then what? I just don't trust marketing departments, especially of a company that is bigger than Tesco.

As for the anti-Microsoft rhetoric, you'd be surprised how different some things look on a Linux screen, if you catch my drift.

vegplot

Joined: 19 Apr 2007
Posts: 21298
Location: Ynys Môn

Posted: Wed Feb 04, 15 7:32 pm Post subject:

oldish chris wrote:

Microsoft want to leverage the investment they've made in cloud services (Azure) and to do that effectively they need to develop a large developer and user community. They're no longer as precious about platform domination (their support for Linux on Azure is excellent) as they once were but naturally want Windows or .NET to run as a far as possible.

You might find it hard to believe but they're not money grubbers looking to unethically find ways of making dollars. They want to make money like we all do but their ethos and ethics are very different to the 1990 and 2000's. I think they'll do it as they have the right attitude but will struggle to shake off their poor reputation from the last couple of decades.

oldish chris

Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 4148
Location: Comfortably Wet Southport

Posted: Wed Feb 04, 15 8:07 pm Post subject:

vegplot wrote:

They want to make money like we all do but their ethos and ethics are very different to the 1990 and 2000's. I think they'll do it as they have the right attitude but will struggle to shake off their poor reputation from the last couple of decades.

and some have ethics thrust upon them: https://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/01/us-usa-budget-tax-idUSKBN0L51IX20150201

I shall wait and see. I've been wrong before.

Nick

Joined: 02 Nov 2004
Posts: 34434
Location: Hereford

Posted: Wed Feb 04, 15 8:52 pm Post subject:
Someone write that down. He'll deny saying it later.

oldish chris

Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 4148
Location: Comfortably Wet Southport

Posted: Wed Feb 04, 15 9:00 pm Post subject:

Nick wrote:

Someone write that down. He'll deny saying it later.

leave off Nick, I then admit to being wrong twice - when I said I was wrong, I'd made a mistake!

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 27095
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Thu Feb 05, 15 12:43 am Post subject:
I wouldn't make bets against Microsoft reinventing itself.

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