Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2 • Hacker News Board

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#311

Post by pjmlp » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 9:45 PM UTC

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #118

nkuttler wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unfortunate that you apparently had bad experiences with Ubuntu, but this thread is about development tools, not installing third party games from external sources. Yes, if you want to game, windows seems like a more convenient choice, nobody disputes that.

>Yes, if you want to game, windows seems like a more convenient choice, nobody disputes that. Gaben is closing that gap for us. Also, Minecraft runs fine on Linux. If GP poster had trouble, it's probably down to a video driver issue (which aren't unique to Linux, but are arguably more painful), or a new-environment-learning-curve thing.

I don't think Valve will doing for longer time if the studios don't care.

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#312

Post by freehunter » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 9:46 PM UTC

dandelion_lover wrote: post #261

freehunter wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it not more productive for teachers to teach something they know? If a kid has a question about Linux and the teacher doesn't know Linux, they won't be able to answer the question. Likewise if a kid has a question about Windows and the teacher doesn't know Windows, they can't answer it. It doesn't matter what system it is, teachers are best at teaching what they already know.

If a teacher only knows DOS, he/she should teach DOS? ;)

I didn't say "should only teach". If your (obvious facetious, I know that) argument actually followed mine, it would say "A teacher only knows DOS, they would be most effective at teaching DOS". Which is true.

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#313

Post by jarjoura » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 9:47 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #44

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…

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. I even mentioned libc. There is more to an operating system than a kernel. In fact, this was an important part of my early computer education: when I was 12 (1994) I bought a copy of Slackware Linux because it had a free compiler (even Turb…

Doesn't Visual Studio ship with full source code to it's C & C++ libraries?

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#314

Post by WorldWideWayne » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 9:53 PM UTC

rebootthesystem wrote: post #243

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…

I think you are operating with a very narrow view. Only a ver, very small percentage of people, adults included, will dive into OS and kernel source code. A lot of computing can and does happen without having to operate at that level. In 35 years as a software/hardware engineer I have never had to go into OS source code for either embedded or worstation applications. I have written real-time operating systems from sc…

This is a great point, well said and does not deserve a single downvote. The problem is that you disagreed with the primary constituency of nix lovers around here. It should not be done on a highly visible thread if you value your karma.

Offering free software is only a crime when Microsoft does it. I find it laughable that these people typically support new tech, they back all sorts of non-open source projects and questionable schemes like growth-hacking when it suits them, but when it comes to Microsoft they just love to hate. (EDIT: I personally don't give a hoot, so downvote away Micro$oft haters ;)

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#315

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 10:00 PM UTC

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #306

bohol wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by scientific? There's a lot of Windows only software for research. Mostly for applied things. But also things like data collection. There's even more if you look at development in things like engineering. Even industrial is surisingly much Windows only.

Well, yes, I'll give you that "scientific software" is indeed too broad. If I restrict it to "software developed by teams of scientists working at universities and research labs" it's better. And yes, lots of data aquisition stuff is Windows only, particularly the stuff that gets sold along instruments. But then, in that category, the trend seems to be requiring a (preferrably air-gapped) PC running XP. I've even see…

[deleted]

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#316

Post by Marat_Dukhan » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 10:01 PM UTC

sremani wrote: post #229

sebastianavina wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

In the kernel:

1. Access to hardware performance counters and energy counters

2. Easily loadable custom drivers

3. File system that is not slow as hell ("Getting the modification time of a file ... seems to be about 100 times slower on Windows than it is on Linux"[1])

4. Practical mechanism to allocate large pages

5. Futex

In the ecosystem:

1. Package manager

2. C99 compiler

3. POSIX environment (a lot of scientific libraries and tools depend on it)

[1] http://www.aosabook.org/en/posa/ninja.html

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#317

Post by emptybits » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 10:18 PM UTC

bohol wrote: post #58

microtonal wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I even mentioned libc. There is more to an operating system than a kernel. In fact, this was an important part of my early computer education: when I was 12 (1994) I bought a copy of Slackware Linux because it had a free compiler (even Turb…

I think you overestimate the need for access to the OS for learning things. The cracking scene, demoscene and games industry was almost exclusively built on Windows. A lot of that was just as, if not more, advanced as what a Linux programmer does. I do think the trend of iOS, Android and similar Windows environments is troubling. But if they ship Windows 10 on the RPi with something like QBasic and Visual Studio it's…

The cracking scene, demo scene, and games industry were all built long before Windows. C64, Amiga, ZX Spectrum, Atari.

I think it's important we had a generation of instant-on machines that greeted a user with a command prompt and a programming environment. Even if you wanted to just play a game, you still found yourself LOADing, DIRing, SYSing, and maybe performing a soft-reset after a LOAD that triggered a system routine that now pointed somewhere else. There are things you'd learn after hours of playing and messing with games because, eventually, typing all this weird stuff at a command prompt made you wonder "how" or "what if". The metal and its registers and special calls were right there and you couldn't brick your machine in any way a cold boot couldn't fix, so next thing you know, your friend shows you if he POKEs this and then SYSes that, he could change the background color of the load screen. Cool. So now you need to one-up him so you spend a weekend messing around with NO TOOLS -- just a CLI -- and figure out if you POKE these other four places after LOADING and then SYS then you get unlimited lives. Of course the game crashing after a minute. And so it goes. But breaking things was encouraged because you'd instantly cold-boot and try again.

I think we owe a huge debt to instant-on machines with a command prompt and some environment (BASIC or a hex monitor or, today, bash with root on Linux and maybe Python or whatever). Any project that tries to put environments like that into kids hands again gets my vote. Windows... less so.

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#318

Post by bohol » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 10:20 PM UTC

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #306

bohol wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by scientific? There's a lot of Windows only software for research. Mostly for applied things. But also things like data collection. There's even more if you look at development in things like engineering. Even industrial is surisingly much Windows only.

Well, yes, I'll give you that "scientific software" is indeed too broad. If I restrict it to "software developed by teams of scientists working at universities and research labs" it's better. And yes, lots of data aquisition stuff is Windows only, particularly the stuff that gets sold along instruments. But then, in that category, the trend seems to be requiring a (preferrably air-gapped) PC running XP. I've even see…

Makes sense. My concern really is if Linux gets any better for these use cases. I think a lot of Linux development is to much software and to little real world "science". You hear a lot how powerful Linux is, but in a lot of cases powerful things are run by XP as you say.

I kind of gave on Linux a couple of years ago when at the same time when Apple had totally neglected the Mac Pro all you could find from the Linux community was how cool the latest 3D effects on the desktop where and chromium was much better than Firefox. Trying instead finding something like say a 2D library more modern than Cairo and there's a deafening silence.

Yes, I'm exaggerating a bit and there is some good developments. Like CERN making waves in electronics by hacking on KiCad. Though I'm sure they would be happier if they could replace Wx with something more modern, which I'm not sure the current alternatives are.

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#319

Post by walshemj » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 10:26 PM UTC

acadien wrote: post #273

wfunction wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"miles ahead of Windows for research" For example, only 2 of the currently fastest 500 super computers run Windows and 1 of them is owned by Microsoft. All of the others run Linux or Unix. "Since when are 25-year-old command-line shells research products?" The shell is a researcher's best friend as they have always been (and will be for the foreseeable future) the direct interface between data and the user. I honestl…

You have heard of powershell?

Re: Windows 10 for Raspberry Pi 2

#320

Post by bohol » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 10:30 PM UTC

peatmoss wrote: post #256

okasaki wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In my experience a lot of this isn't becuase it can't work on windows, but because the developer didn't take the time to make it work on Windows. I also had my fair share on build and dependency problems on Linux when wanting something custom.

I think this is much more a ecosystem thing than a systems thing. Which do count of course.