Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2 • Hacker News Board

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#251

Post by ntakasaki » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 5:35 PM UTC

chernevik wrote: post #167

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…

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…

>Yesterday I was setting up Crouton on my 11 year old daughter's Chromebook

Yet you decided to buy her a Chromebook, which is the most locked down laptop out there with heavy DRM with everything locked to Google's services and only Google code being allowed to run natively. Even Windows is much more open in comparison and doesn't wipe the hard disk when you try to install an alternate OS. Nor do you have to "root" it.

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#252

Post by gknoy » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 5:35 PM UTC

zxcvcxz wrote: post #111

watty wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree. I used Ubuntu for a year and I spent more time fixing things or trying to do things in the OS than I have in all other operating systems combined. My nephew tried to install Ubuntu on his new build and hit brick wall after brick wall trying to install the OS and Minecraft. It simply hasn't gotten easy enough and I'm afraid it's too late now. I don't see a comeback for linux. http://www.google.c…

Well, using your logic, Linux has already surpassed OS X: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=linux%2C OS X&cmpt=q&tz= Anyway, Ubuntu works fine on most laptops. We can safely say it works across more hardware than OS X. We can also buy an Ubuntu certified laptop/desktop and have excellent support. I wish Windows fan boys would stop pretending as if they never run into issues using Windows. I have to fix my dads c…

Oh god. I run 8.1 at home, and it randomly fails to "sleep" -- about half the time (or more), it will boot from scratch the next time I turn it on. I don't know if it's a problem with my hardware, or drivers, or what. Worst of all, the only sleep/hibernate related things I'vebeen able to find on the Windows help pages seem to be for people where it either always fails, or where they don't know how to turn it on. :-(

The most frustrating thing is the mystery about what causes it, since I haven't been able to find errors that explain it in the system logs.

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#253

Post by oscargrouch » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 5:40 PM UTC

rplnt wrote: post #233

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.

Is it more expensive than OS X though? Windows licenses are like $50 for OEM. With OS X you have to constantly buy upgrades since their support period is short. I might be wrong though, never bought an OS X license.

Using the uglier to say that something ugly is not that ugly, is using logic in a dishonest and misleading way

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#254

Post by qb45 » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 5:45 PM UTC

rburhum wrote: post #178

ekr wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now, while legally, you are perfectly right, Windows is as close as ever, it's not actually that hard to look under the hood. I work as a Windows device driver developer, and sometimes I need to reverse engineer some of the internals, and the source code from WRK is easily available on the internet : ( http://gate.upm.ro/os/LABs/Windows_OS_Internals_Curriculum_R... ). These are sources from 2005-2006 timeframe, but t…

So basically, you can set the example for kids to not give a crap about IP and that it is OK to study/do whatever they want with something they find online. Nevermind that because they have not signed the MS agreement it is basically stolen property. I see somebody mirrored it already.

Are Snowden's files a stolen property of NSA?

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#255

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 5:46 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#256

Post by peatmoss » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 5:50 PM UTC

okasaki wrote: post #235

sremani wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

Just off the top of my head: package management, live-cd functionality, architecture support, command-line interfaces, GUI variety, kernel customization, scaling to low-powered harware, licencing.

Package management covers this, but is too understated: many of the applications that researchers use are downright hard to get working on Windows--particularly if you require any customization. I've run into this in a maddening way when working with geospatial tools. Need custom OGR/GDAL support? Prepare to spend hours figuring out how to make it work with Windows. Some deal to a lesser extent with R. Amount of time spent on edge cases is Windows > Mac > Linux. I use a Mac, but every time I build up an R environment with lots of library dependencies on Linux, I find myself saying, "well, that was easier than I expected." Conversely, when I use Windows, I'm right back to fighting library dependencies.

Windows makes simple things easy, but complex things nearly intractable.

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#257

Post by mark-r » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 5:51 PM UTC

zxcvcxz wrote: post #113

nmeofthestate wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For hardcore nerds like yourself there will still be Linux. I don't see it as an ominous development. And for old stick-in-the-mud people who never got into Linux like me, this could make doing stuff with a RPi much easier. (Edit: btw I'm using "hardcore nerd" as a compliment).

How would you use a ras pi with windows installed on it? I'm assuming windows 10 is going to have a decent CLI that you're all going to have to learn and pretty soon all the windows programmers who never had time to learn the Linux command line will have plenty of time to learn the new windows command line.

On an ARM processor I'd be surprised to see any kind of command shell at all. Certainly it wouldn't be the DOS based command window.

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#258

Post by forrestthewoods » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 5:51 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…

A co-worker completely corrupted his install of Mint and had to start fresh because he changed his background. So, uh, no, I politely disagree. It's not user friendly.

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#259

Post by Sanddancer » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 5:54 PM UTC

FlyingSnake wrote: post #40

tegeek wrote: post #31

I personally want a trimmed down version of .NET (perhaps the new Core CLR which is just 10 MB) so I can run F#. Mono is too heavy and have millions other dependencies I dont want to grab. Running a modern & practical functional language on RB Pi will be extremely joyful for me.

Does .Net micro framework fit the bill? http://www.netmf.com/

Micro's interpreted, and is missing a lot of the bits and pieces of .NET that make it a real nice platform to work with. So you end up with something slow, and a fairly limited standard library.

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#260

Post by wfunction » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 5:56 PM UTC

okasaki wrote: post #235

sremani wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

Just off the top of my head: package management, live-cd functionality, architecture support, command-line interfaces, GUI variety, kernel customization, scaling to low-powered harware, licencing.

GUI "variety"? Are you joking? The very reason there exists so much "variety" is that they all suck. Windows has one GUI system and it's worked darn well for quite a long time, and will continue to do so. Linux might be able to let you make your windows do somersaults so you can show off to your friends, but it still hasn't been able to get the basics right, like focus-stealing prevention. Windows is miles ahead of Linux on GUI -- if there's one thing I can tell you for sure, it's that.

And Linux is "miles ahead of Windows for research because of its command-line interfaces"? Really? Since when are 25-year-old command-line shells research products? Not to mention stuff like http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashPitfalls

As for package management, when it works it works, but sometimes I wish it could burn in hell. I can't tell you how many times I've run into problems getting packages to work because their dependencies were either (1) no longer available ("sorry! our servers changed, your version of Linux is outdated"), (2) only available in source code form (but good luck compiling it!), or (3) not available for my version ("sorry, this version is too new for your OS"), among other things. Distributing your dependencies along with your application might not be sound engineering practice, but it sure as hell can make things actually work out of the box so you can focus on what you actually want to do.