Dear site owner: your grey-on-grey text is nearly illegible.
Looks like the site does not play well with Dark reader (On firefox). I had to disable it, to read this.
Welcome to the M1 Windows project
61–70 of 276 posts
Re: Welcome to the M1 Windows project
#62Dear site owner: your grey-on-grey text is nearly illegible.
Are you using Dark Reader? It definitely made it gray-on-gray for me and I needed to turn it off to make it look normal.
Re: Welcome to the M1 Windows project
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding is that drivers aren't part of the kernel in Windows like they are in Linux. And I believe an ARM build of some kind or another already exists out there for Windows
Yes, there is a public stable API for Windows drivers. Even the built-in drivers are dynamically loaded. Windows on ARM isn't new. The oldest Windows on ARM was Windows 8 RT (ARM32 only, I believe). Right now it seems Windows 10 and Windows 11 have ARM64 versions, but there was also Windows IoT Core from the Windows IoT OS branch a few years ago.
Windows CE on ARM and Windows PocketPC on ARM is older than that. But all of it has the same issue: you nearly always need a specific rebuild for a different ARM-machine because there isn't a single "ARM PC". Just like x86 pre-ACPI where you need different HALs and bringups for different systems. The problem here is twofold: firstly windows is closed so you can't actually add/modify components and rebuild it, only binary hacks and additive installation (like driver packages). Second issue: licensing. ARM isn't available unless you are an OEM. So there is no legal way to run Windows on M1 unless you are Apple and Microsoft signs you a contract (and that hasn't happened either).
Re: Welcome to the M1 Windows project
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Currently Microsoft only licenses Windows for ARM to device makers Apple is a device maker. I wonder if Apple could buy a license from Microsoft. I'd like to see either Apple or Microsoft officially support Windows on the M-series machines. Not because I give fig one about Windows. But I'd like to see the chaos that follows. The operating systems industry could use a bit of a shake up.
I would guess that this scenario is unlikely at best. Even if Apple expressed interest in purchasing a license, Microsoft would likely not sell one to them because their primary interest in licensing Windows is getting devices to ship with Windows preinstalled, and Apple is most certainly not ever going to do that.
They did, but Microsoft said no.
Re: Welcome to the M1 Windows project
#65Can you dual boot any other OS on ARM Macs yet? Seems like this project might have missed a few steps along the way.
This really should be a Microsoft effort. They just announced that they have Visual Studio compiling in ARM64 finally, so it's only a matter of time before the only thing standing in the way is backroom deals that we don't know about. Qualcomm?
I mean, I do want to see Qualcomm ship their M1 competitor, but given the state of the economy and world recession we're about to enter, I am skeptical it would survive fat trimming cuts that are about to sweep the industry. The money for them is in mobile and automotive projects.
Re: Welcome to the M1 Windows project
#66Can't microsoft work on this instead? I don't get it.
Because this is hackernews and this guy seems to find it interesting to work on.
Surprised I had to scroll this far to see this. It's an objectively cool project, even if it doesn't make the most financial/business sense. Doesn't seem like that's the point.
Re: Welcome to the M1 Windows project
#67Re: Welcome to the M1 Windows project
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple has stated that they won't stand in the way of Microsoft porting Windows to M1 Macs[0], and indeed M-series Macs have the bits needed to boot alternative operating systems that M-series iDevices lack. Currently Microsoft only licenses Windows for ARM to device makers (and potentially has an exclusivity agreement with Qualcomm[1]) and has stated that they don't support Windows on M-series. The ball in is Microso…
Currently Microsoft only licenses Windows for ARM to device makers Apple is a device maker. I wonder if Apple could buy a license from Microsoft. I'd like to see either Apple or Microsoft officially support Windows on the M-series machines. Not because I give fig one about Windows. But I'd like to see the chaos that follows. The operating systems industry could use a bit of a shake up.
> The operating systems industry could use a bit of a shake up.
There is no OS industry anymore. What's left is OS's that ship telemetry and ads to customers (both Apple and MS do this). Linux-based OS's made a lot of progress, but still they're not ready for mass adoption.
Re: Welcome to the M1 Windows project
#69m1n1 in this case is a bit like ESXi, and this overall will be a bit like running Windows under VMware.
I imagine this will be quite achievable. Windows 11 already runs ok in Parallels.
Doing it "properly" native will require Microsoft to make changes to Windows though.
Re: Welcome to the M1 Windows project
#70Is Windows RT usable in any of this? For a while there, RT was the Windows 8 equivalent for their ARM tech.