Windows on Raspberry imager

9 Comments

1. 2020-07-20 10:00 pm

   cpcf

   I’m no expert, but I assume this is just the start.

   So is it time yet to bring out those old original Surface or Lumia devices?
• 2020-07-20 10:46 pm

  sukru

  Microsoft specifically supports the Raspberry PI hardware (but only version 4, afaik).

  Older devices might need updated drivers or support code which might never come.
• 2020-07-21 12:26 am

  Calamarain

  The linked how to says Pi 3 is also supported: ‘A Raspberry Pi 3 B/B+ or Raspberry Pi 4 B single board computer’.
• 2020-07-22 2:29 am

  sukru

  Thanks, it looks like someone actually did the job:

  “Andrei Warkentin for providing a working UEFI firmware for the Raspberry Pi 3B/B+.”

  But the main point stands. The Windows 10 ARM is not a general purpose OS for all ARM boards (neither is Linux). ARM manufacturers depend too much on binary blobs. (Raspberry is fully open source, so that helps)
2. 2020-07-21 1:24 am

   cpcf

   I had to pose the question, because when I think of the millions of Qualcomm based devices sold around the world, it seems rather arbitrary to pick and choose which ARM based devices you’ll support with drivers.

   Any one of the old Lumia phones probably equals or out performs the typical Raspberry Pi device, and certainly the early Surface models would have Raspberry Pi covered.

   It seems such a waste, any old Lumia device poking around could be more than a very viable IoT development platform. Surely if you want in on that market you give kids and developers access to what would be effectively free hardware!
• 2020-07-22 3:21 am

  Alfman verbose=1

  Here’s experience of Thoms Hardware running windows 10 on a raspberry pi last year…
  https://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-10-raspberry-pi-hands-on,38629.html

  Loading web pages in Edge is an exercise in frustration, even with a high-speed Internet connection. Tomshardware.com takes a minute and a half or more to load and render. And doing something as simple as clicking the browser’s address bar requires another load of patience because the cursor doesn’t start showing input for several seconds. Just forget about using the Windows search box, which is so slow that I literally can’t find simple programs like the snipping tool. However, some sites, such as had-trailers.net, loaded quite a bit faster.

  The worst thing about having a system this unresponsive is that you can’t always tell when your input has registered, which leads to a lot of errors when the system finally catches up with you. For example, when I clicked the Start button and nothing happened right away, I clicked it again a few times, which ultimately led it to open and close. Another time I entered a search term into the Netflix app and ended up with a typo because I didn’t know whether my first few keystrokes had registered until they appeared 5 or 10 seconds later.

  The WOR faq indicates bad performance and to make matters worse their image doesn’t support ethernet or wifi.
  At least Thoms Hardware got ethernet working on Pi3b, I wonder if the same driver would work here?

  It doesn’t sound like a good experience. Native ARM optimized code shouldn’t be bad, but who knows what’s going on here. I wonder how much is due to x86 emulation overhead? Oh well, I’ve got no reason to run windows software on ARM anyways, haha.

  Edit: cpcf, wordpress responded to you even though it wasn’t my intention…
• 2020-07-24 3:04 pm

  Zan Lynx

  I hope it didn’t install x86 versions of Microsoft software somehow.

  Microsoft does have a binary translator for 32-bit x86 to ARM and I’ve read they are working on a 64 bit version of that.

  But all Microsoft products should have a native ARM version.

  I’ve got one of those Surface X tablets with an 8 core Qualcomm ARM64, and it runs Microsoft’s Edge really, really well. Very snappy and fast.
• 2020-07-24 8:15 pm

  cpcf

  I’ve been pondering the purchase of one of these as my next tablet, how do you find it overall, battery life, general purpose apps, etc., etc.. I’m an Edge fan, and I’d really like a users perspective rather than the Apple Fanboy dominated derision that most reviews seem to suffer. I get it, it’s not Apple, it’s not an iPad.

  My main requirement is something light with long battery life that can run my basic apps without needing to do a lot of creativity. I’ve an old Surface at the moment that I take with me when I travel, it’s tiny and not powerful but I can open and inspect most things I need to access with buying 3rd party apps as nearly all my Desktop Apps will install. I do have cloud access to a Remote Desktop most of the time, but I still prefer to have local if possible.

  If I wanted to do a lot of work on one, I realise a Pro is a better choice.
• 2020-07-24 8:47 pm

  Alfman verbose=1

  Zan Lynx,

  But all Microsoft products should have a native ARM version.

  I don’t if it’s still true, but a couple years ago the native ARM versions office software were the “Modern/UWP” versions, which wasn’t the same software as on the desktop.

  https://office-watch.com/2017/microsoft-office-work-arm-windows-10/

  The Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote apps are ‘light’ versions of the Windows desktop programs.

  img 5a2a9ab5f18a9 – Does Microsoft Office work on ARM Windows 10?

  These ‘Modern’ or UWP apps are available free to all Windows 10 and 10S users, get them from the Windows Store. UWP = Universal Windows Platform.

  With an Office 365 ‘subscription’ those apps get some additional features.

  Outlook doesn’t have a Windows 10 app. You’re expected to use the Mail, People and Calendar apps that come with Windows 10.

  The apps are still nowhere near the quality of the proper Office for Windows.
  Office for Windows

  It’s also possible to get ‘full’ Office 2016 for Windows from the Windows Store that will work on ARM chip devices. The combination works, but not very well. Any decent sized document will grind the computer to a halt with the slower chip and limited memory.

  Why? Getting full x86 Office for Windows to run on an ARM chip requires a few layers of emulation and what developers call ‘abstraction’. Those extra layers slow down work and add more possibilities for bugs.

  There’s a Project Centennial/Desktop Bridge layer to let traditional desktop programs to run on Windows 10S as a app.

  ARM devices need another layer of WOW (Windows on Windows) to make programs designed for Intel chips to work on another type of hardware.

  A more recent article about windows 10 on arm from last year…
  https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-on-arm-what-you-need-to-know-before-you-buy-a-surface-pro-x/

  Interestingly, Microsoft Edge (the original version, included as the default browser with Windows 10 versions 1909 and earlier) runs as a 64-bit native ARM app. The new Microsoft Edge, based on the Chromium open source engine and available as a beta release now, runs as a 32-bit emulated Win32 app. Presumably, the official release of the new Edge-on-Chromium browser will be available as a native 64-bit app for Windows 10 on Arm.

  When my colleague Chris Duckett looked at the Arm-powered Samsung Galaxy Book2 a few months ago, he noted that “installing games from Steam is an absolute crapshoot, they might work, they might not.” That Samsung device was hobbled by memory starvation, with a default configuration of only 4GB of RAM and a list price of $1,000. By contrast, the Lenovo C630 includes 8GB of RAM and sells for around $600, making it a much better value.

  Still, even with the proper resources, the overhead of emulation and the relatively weak graphics on an Arm-based PC mean that performance is an issue for anything beyond basic productivity tasks and video playback. If you accept that limitation as a reasonable trade-off for a much longer battery life, you’ll be fine with an Arm-based PC. If, on the other hand, you find yourself annoyed by delays of a few hundred milliseconds here and a half-second there, well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

  The impression I get is that there’s still a mishmash of native plus emulated software, but perhaps my impression is based on out of date information?