Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2 • Hacker News Board

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#221

Post by eloisant » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 4:45 PM UTC

nmeofthestate wrote: post #38

microtonal wrote: post #37

I am usually not the one to blow the free software horn (being a staunch believer of non-copyleft licenses such as the Apache License) and the geek in me likes this announcement. I also don't hold a grudge against Windows, I think it is a fine system for most people. However, Windows seems very much contrary to the goal of the Raspberry Pi: providing a device for children to tinker with and educate themselves. Althou…

"Windows seems very much contrary to the goal of the Raspberry Pi: providing a device for children to tinker with and educate themselves" "Windows is closed as ever" Are these kids hacking on the Linux kernel or something? Of course not. They will be using some app/language running on the OS. They don't need access to the OS source to do that. Seems to me Windows is a perfectly open enough OS to act as a platform for…

Linux being open is not just about the kernel source code. It's the fact that it's modular, that you can decide what brick you need, add or remove them, and end up with the perfect right configuration.

It's especially interesting when you're building an embedded system (typically with a RPi). Start with the minimal Arch Linux install, think about what you need and add just that.

There is a lot to learn about how operating system work when you configure Linux without having to recompile your kernel (something that nobody do any longer anyway).

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#222

Post by 72deluxe » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 4:46 PM UTC

Zardoz84 wrote: post #70

nmeofthestate wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Windows seems very much contrary to the goal of the Raspberry Pi: providing a device for children to tinker with and educate themselves" "Windows is closed as ever" Are these kids hacking on the Linux kernel or something? Of course not. They will be using some app/language running on the OS. They don't need access to the OS source to do that. Seems to me Windows is a perfectly open enough OS to act as a platform for…

I would prefer giving to a children an ZX Spectrum and explain how use it to make programs on BASIC, that putting in front of a Windows. At least, they would understand what is doing the computer, instead of seeing the computer doing "magic"

I misread you then and read ZX81 instead of Spectrum and my mind went back to typing in pages of code and being unable to save due to only have the 8k version.

That nearly put me off writing code!

Thanks to the BBC B and floppy disks!

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#223

Post by 72deluxe » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 4:47 PM UTC

zanny wrote: post #194

bryondowd wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going to play devil's advocate here. Teachers will push Windows, because they know about it and they can teach it. If you throw a pile of linux machines at teachers, how many are going to have the time, ability, and will to actually learn it well enough to teach it? It's hard enough to get a school to teach kids anything beyond using Office. I'd be happy to make things as easy as possible on the teacher who are willi…

Except the teacher on Windows by design cannot teach a huge chunk of the stack that makes a computer a computer. They talk about hardware, maybe a bit about the ToS breaking NT source floating around this comment section, skip over everything else and land on this theme park island of C# standard library and Windows forms. It leaves a huge gap in the childs education on computing that is one the major reasons so many…

Excellent points, your "theme park land" C# comment made me laugh

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#224

Post by Niten » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 4:47 PM UTC

nmeofthestate wrote: post #38

microtonal wrote: post #37

I am usually not the one to blow the free software horn (being a staunch believer of non-copyleft licenses such as the Apache License) and the geek in me likes this announcement. I also don't hold a grudge against Windows, I think it is a fine system for most people. However, Windows seems very much contrary to the goal of the Raspberry Pi: providing a device for children to tinker with and educate themselves. Althou…

"Windows seems very much contrary to the goal of the Raspberry Pi: providing a device for children to tinker with and educate themselves" "Windows is closed as ever" Are these kids hacking on the Linux kernel or something? Of course not. They will be using some app/language running on the OS. They don't need access to the OS source to do that. Seems to me Windows is a perfectly open enough OS to act as a platform for…

> Are these kids hacking on the Linux kernel or something? Of course not.

Not most of them and not to begin with, but "educating themselves" means having a platform where their curiosity can run amok, and some kids with RPis absolutely will find the Eudyptula Challenge or some other source of inspiration and make it to tinkering with the kernel.

RPi is absolutely the perfect platform for this. Break your OS? Just throw in another SD card. Somehow damage the hardware? Whatever, it's only $35.

I'm not the only person on here who taught himself Z80 assembly language in school because it let me dig deeper into our TI calculators; if we'd been using RPis for programming assignments I would have been all over that. I think it's a little surprising that it even needs to be said on a site called "Hacker News", but let's not underestimate what curious kids with a bunch of free time will accomplish.

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#225

Post by zxcvcxz » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 4:47 PM UTC

nmeofthestate wrote: post #181

chernevik wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yesterday I was setting up Crouton on my 11 year old daughter's Chromebook. She wants to learn to program, she says, so I said, great, let's get you a real programming environment. She was nervous about her computer and all the stuff flying by on the screen, so we talked about what her computer is -- a CPU, memory, storage -- it's all bits, nothing happening here can hurt it. We then got Python up and drew a turn wit…

To this I would say jeez: worrying about how your eleven year old daughter might be restricting herself to particular technology platforms is really somewhat premature.

He has a really good point though, you can't just dismiss it with no counter argument.

The "windows way" involves a UI specific to one OS, the *nix way can usually be applied to any UNIX like OS, of which there are far more of than Windows.

Not only that but once you learn to program on UNIX all you have to learn is an intuitive GUI to move your skills to windows.

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#226

Post by 72deluxe » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 4:49 PM UTC

UK-AL wrote: post #204

zanny wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the teacher on Windows by design cannot teach a huge chunk of the stack that makes a computer a computer. They talk about hardware, maybe a bit about the ToS breaking NT source floating around this comment section, skip over everything else and land on this theme park island of C# standard library and Windows forms. It leaves a huge gap in the childs education on computing that is one the major reasons so many…

I think modern .net devs chose the platform out of its advantages, not because its what they only know. I know fair few .net developers, and they've all had linux years, and tried various languages.

All the .NET devs and classic ASP (!) devs I know were/are scared stiff of Linux, see it as a hobby environment not used widely (they obviously don't think about servers, they use Windows servers and use the magic that IIS + .NET does for them), don't see outside the Windows development world and pronounce Linux as Lyenucks. Giving them a Raspberry Pi with Linux on them would kill them.

I think they should widen out.

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#227

Post by zxcvcxz » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 4:50 PM UTC

72deluxe wrote: post #220

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Win 10 is about teaching kids to code. But then I don't think the Pi is really about teaching kids to code either. The Pi Foundation has done a good job of persuading everyone otherwise, but I'm left with a nagging suspicion that a computer designed for kids from the ground up would look very different. It's just too damn complicated for most kids. The nerds get it, but expecting the average ten year ol…

But is Linux about teaching kids to code? I don't think it is. I spent more time on RH6.2 attempting to learn how the system worked and how the heck to make my rubbish graphics card run X than running egcs or g++ back in the day. There was terse documentation for all the GTK stuff, and it was particularly daunting if you had not written any advanced C or C++ (like me). I did manage to write some rubbish programs unde…

It sounds like you were running Linux on hardware that wasn't Ubuntu certified.

This is like complaining about how hard it is to get OS X up and running when installing on a Dell, but I see where you're coming from and realize this wasn't you whole point.

Anywho.. I would say it's easier to take skills learned from using Linux and apply them to the Windows OS than the other way around.

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#228

Post by 72deluxe » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 4:50 PM UTC

spdustin wrote: post #165

dandelion_lover wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not kids. Teachers.

Sorry, and it pains me to say it as I'm the patriarch of an OS X family, but: Kids. Their first exposure to computers will be at home. And it'll therefore likely be Windows. My kids don't know Windows, they know OS X and iOS. Sometimes, after they've visited friends, they comment that they played on a computer that "looked weird", but they've never had a problem adapting. It's that last bit that seems to suggest a "w…

Was this weird computer they used a Windows machine or was it an old OSX version? :-)

Only kidding. I went to PC World the other day and attempted to use one of the Windows PCs and quickly became angry with Windows 8.1. Seems I have been using Macs for too long (and I used to use Windows daily, now I do but in a VM and it pains me).

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#229

Post by sremani » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 4:51 PM UTC

sebastianavina wrote: post #218

zxcvcxz wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates can't continue espousing the ideas that everyone should have access to healthcare/technology/internet and be on the board of a company that charges way too much for an OS that --let's be honest-- isn't really miles ahead of any other OS... I did like the fact that he posted a picture of kids using Ubuntu on his FB page though.

Depending on the type of user you are, but Linux is miles ahead of Windows for research.

Which way is Linux miles ahead ? This is not a rhetorical question, I really want to understand. What features and functionality of Linux are missing in Windows that sets them miles apart ?

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#230

Post by 72deluxe » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 4:55 PM UTC

chez17 wrote: post #208

forrestthewoods wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it makes tinkering easier and simpler than ever. Linux is many things. User friendly is not one of them.

Linux is beyond user friendly these days. It just depends on what you want. I gave my wife's parents, two old hippies who live in the middle of nowhere and have literally no computer skills, an old laptop with Ubuntu on it. It's been totally fine. If they can use it, anyone can. Long gone are the days of needing editing configuration files in a terminal editor. Of course power users still can, but for novice users it…

Good point. I forget that Linux on this new Pi will be more like Ubuntu on a laptop than a CLI with a stuttery slow X interface or Wayland with much tinkering.

I wouldn't trust my parents to configure any of my machines securely (Windows, OSX or Linux). In fact, I advised my mum to use an iPad as it stops her fretting all the time. Sadly, she still struggles with using iOS since they removed all text and replaced it with obscure 1px line hieroglyphs that are apparently meant to communicate an idea (obviously, a box with a tiny arrow coming out of it means share, right??)

Let's hope that they make the SD card reader on this new Pi respect the RW/RO switch on SD cards!