Linux, Windows and rPi

Well, it's not gonna be the full Win10 but Win10 IoT (mostly likely a non-graphical developement system)

Linux already leads with ARM-arch...

Windows Mobile/CE and Windows Phone have lost out rather badly to Linux mobile AKA Android. MSFT's frantic scrabble to get a bigger piece of the mobile devices market is the reason Windows 8 sucked so badly.

Linux has taken a big chunck out of the embedded software market that Microsoft would have liked to have. But they neglected the non-Intel market for a long time.

The big misunderstanding going around is that "Windows on the Pi" will be something like "Windows on the PC". It will not be. It is the Windows IoT version, a Windows version that is targeted to the embedded systems market and that does not have much to do with Windows for the PC.

Microsoft hope to replace Linux on devices with this Windows version, and if this is ever to happen they will have to have a demo platform and a way to introduce it to the kids. That is why there is "Windows for Pi". Not to run IE, Word or Outlook on the Pi.

The Pi has made Linux more visible to some people. Microsoft of course don't like that, and they want to do something about it. But when people now finally start to use Linux as their desktop OS instead of Windows, it will not be because of the Pi, but because of their changing ways of doing business. Not that I think that will happen, the general public normally does not really care where their data is and who is peeking into it.

In practice, it may well be that more devices are running Linux than are running Windows. But most people don't know.

Thats largely due to Microsoft's abrupt axing of Windows Mobile/CE about a year ago, soon followed by the disappearance of all PDAs and PNAs from shops except those running Android or proprietary OSen.

And unlike a Raspberry Pi with Linux which can natively run any number of development environments with a text or graphical GUI, a Pi running Win10IOT needs to be connected to a PC running full Windows 10 to be able to write even the simplest program.

---druck

Yes, but Win10 for the development machine can be had for nothing.

...but only if you've got a license for Win 7 or 8.x

Discontinuing the product is a symptom of its fairly negligible market share, not a cause.

That's not so clear. My understanding is that they are giving it away for now, but plan to make it a subscription service in the future. You will have to pay every year rather than just once.

You already have to pay now, by handing them your personal data and by agreeing to their terms of usage. (have you read them?) Maybe later they'll ask for money as well.

Maybe so, but the sudden disappearance of many brands of satnavs (Binatone, Vertica, Medion to name a few) from Maplins and online shops a month or three after M$ killed WM5/6 without an apparent successor and their subsequent arrival as NIB items on eBay looked too well choreographed to be coincidence.

Maybe I and my gliding friends and I noticed it more than the general public because we jail broke these WM5/6 PNAs to run specialised FOSS navigation programs on them.

Is Windows 10 free for everybody? I don't have any Windows license at the moment, and I'm not going to have - can I just download Windows 10 and run it?

All in all, it seems like Microsoft is desperately trying to gain more users. Add compulsory Secure Boot on x86 to all of that.

On 04/08/2015 10:28, John Doe wrote: []

Win-10 upgrade is free for existing, non-pirate, non-enterprise Win-7 and Win-8 users for a period of one year. Having the chance to get all PCs up to the same level is quite helpful if you have more than one PC, and so far the upgrades here have gone very smoothly. For developing with the RPi2 you would need a Windows licence.

I doubt that the Insider Preview is still available, but if it was that /might/ have been a free way in. Perhaps someone still has a ISO you could try installing?

I don't see it as "desperately trying to gain more users", although there will likely be a small increase in 'phone users.

Thats part of default W10 configuration: agreeing that M$ can see your stuff and acting as a free download server for W10 updates are both defaults. Apparently a lot of people are just clicking through that to accept the defaults without bothering to look at what they are agreeing to.

As a result they have or may shortly find their broadband data upload volumes jump as their use as an MS proxy update server kicks in. That is, of course, fine if you're an SME with a bunch of local PCs where a single download over the broadband will update all the SME's systems but it may not be so clever of you're a single PC house with a low broadband cap and discover that you've become the local update server

Given the last release of WM6 was 2010, and WM5 in 2007, the writing wasn't so much on the wall, as the wall had been condemned and earmarked for redevelopment. Since WM6 has been out of support for 2.5 years, and WM5 will do so in a couple of months, it's not very responsible for OEMs to sell new systems that won't receive security updates.

Theo

Sure, but all I'm saying is that its kind of interesting that it all collapsed so suddenly and that this was the death warrant for a whole class of GPS-equipped devices, namely low cost, phoneless satnavs. Its a market that Android hasn't really taken over.

I expect it will now.

Exactly. With an arm core and enough RAM and some flash to run a striped down linux on, costing peanuts, why reinvent a free wheel?