Windows Already Up and Running On ARM Architecture 348
syngularyx writes "Over at Microsoft's MIX Developer Conference in sunny Las Vegas, Microsoft has demoed a new preview build of Internet Explorer 10 (which you too can take for a spin, if you feel so inclined), and also dropped a little premature Easter egg – the build of IE10, and the underlying Windows OS, were both running on a 1GHz ARM chip. Sneaky."
can you hack the iphone / ipad to run windows 8? (Score:2)
can you hack the iphone / ipad to run windows 8?
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If Android has not been made to run on Apple iOS hardware, then it's very, very doubtful that Windows can be made to do so, as the source code isn't even available.
Re:can you hack the iphone / ipad to run windows 8 (Score:5, Interesting)
Except that is Android does run on iOS hardware, good point.
http://www.idroidproject.org/ [idroidproject.org]
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Wow, no more posting when I'm half asleep! :/
Re:can you hack the iphone / ipad to run windows 8 (Score:4, Informative)
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I think you missed the point. The ISA (instruction set architecture) may be standardized (even then, there are dozens of variants), but you don't even really have an idea what sort of bus you're going to be sitting on, let alone anything else. On an x86 system you know you've got a north bridge, a south bridge, a particular type of PIC, a certain kind of timer, PCI, etc. While you could certainly build a computer based on an x86 that is completely unlike that, it would be an oddball. On ARM systems, no, pre
Re:can you hack the iphone / ipad to run windows 8 (Score:4, Insightful)
You clearly haven't worked with any embedded systems. The PC architecture is well defined and, for the most part, backwards compatible. There's a reason you can still put a windows 95 CD in a machine and it will be able to find the display controller, enumerate the PCI busses etc. It's because much of that stuff is not going to change. Might be because the BIOS or the chipsets provide a static abstraction layer over the underlying system, but it doesn't matter - from a software view everything works the same.
When you get an embedded system what you have is a cpu core (ARM, PPC, whatever) and a whole bunch of other silicon IP on the same chip that provides additional functions. So if you want to get to the PCI bus, you need to know how that's been interfaced. Presumably there's some IP core on the chip somewhere that provides the PCI connectivity, but how do you access it? Is it at a certain memory address, do you need to write some magic control register to enable it, do you even know how it works?
If you want an example - have a look at your linux source. In my arch/x86/config I have two defconfig files, one for x86 and one for x86_64. That's it for every single PC platform out there, laptop, desktop, server, whatever. Now have a look at arch/arm/configs or arch/powerpc/configs. See the difference? Many of those will come associated with platform specific code to support that architecture. That's how Linux does it - you provide the interface between the standard system code and the underlying hardware and everything falls into place, no doubt the Windows port is similar. ARM is a CPU core, not an architecture.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:can you hack the iphone / ipad to run windows 8 (Score:4, Informative)
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Fortunately Windows will probably be all but dead by then (except for in the business world).
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Adobe? Why Adobe? Don't they introduce more exploits to a Windows machine than even Microsoft? I know I've read articles in the recent past that say more exploits are using Adobe products as the vector than all other vectors combined. And, you're going to give Adobe some kind of a free pass on the new architecture? Wow - you should be a politician. You certainly have the smarts for it!
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Does anyone write "Pure .Net apps" though? A serious question, as I can't think of an app that I've written that is pure .Net. I always need to include some pInvoke (Platform Invoke or Windows API calls), which can make code less than portable (depending on memory packing / variable alignment, pointer size, etc.). However, since I write code to help maintain our Windows images and also as utilities for users (not as large applications), perhaps my perception is a bit skewed.
I need to use p/invoke in about half of my projects, usually to shell functions (e.g. requesting information about explorer shell items, building context menus, and the like). That's necessary for seemless integration with the desktop. But I suspect p/invoke to windows api functions will still work, it's only p/invoke to a custom dll or using a non-MS COM object/activex control that is likely to fail, so we should both be in the clear...
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CLR/.Net stuff should run fine I imagine. Also, I remember Alpha had FX32! which would run x86 code at decent speeds using static recompilation and that was many years ago now.
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There does not (yet, I suppose, but it's hard to see this changing) seem to be much interest in ARM for "non-appliances". People don't expect their OS X app
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Thing is, emulation introduces a huge overhead. You really don't want to do it unless the architecture you're emulating is several times slower than the host architecture you're emulating it on.
That's not the case with emulating x86 on ARM.
I think the purpose is less to do with "let's run Windows everywhere" and more to do with "this way we only need to maintain one OS and maybe a different shell for tablet devices. With the added bonus that we can still take advantage of the Windows name as a marketing t
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Thing is, emulation introduces a huge overhead
The thing is, no it doesn't. For one thing, most modern emulators don't emulate everything. A platform like Windows ships with a large number of standard libraries, including things for drawing and even video playback. When you draw a line in a window, 99% of the CPU time is spent computing the pixel intersections, and this is all done in Win32 code. When you draw a character on the screen, you're drawing a set of antialiased bezier curves and compositing them onto a buffer. Pretty processor intensive
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IE running on Windows is about as exciting as grass growing in dirt - it works, but it is not exactly novel. As you said, Windows NT was designed on architecture independence. In fact, Windows itself is even endian independent, but it still reads and writes files in the native endian-ness (or so I remember from Alpha-NT). With ARM endian-ness is not a problem because ARM is bi-endian, so they can just use little-endian and be happy. If IE only uses the Windows API and the Windows API only uses a kernel buil
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I think we'll be surprised how many Windows apps will run on Windows 8 with just a recompile - or for that matter, just running through the .NET CLR. MS appeared to be pushing this way, one way or another, since the "Microsoft Java" days for application development, and their programming frameworks improving significantly along the way... it's not MSVC++6 anymore...
On the phone, I think the value Windows will provide will be:
* Real Outlook
* OneNote
* Modern security models
* More mature kernel with proper mem
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Windows can't open OOXML documents. Office can. That's a whole 'nother kettle of fish, they had big problems getting Office for Mac from PowerPC to x86, and reportedly the Office for Windows codebase is even older and more convoluted. It'll be hard if not impossible to port to ARM.
The big problem, Windows will be at a big big disadvantage, and in fact I don't thik it'll be competitive:
1) It's bloated and poor-performing when com
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Compatibility? (Score:5, Funny)
How are they going to make it compatible with all those viruses and trojans out there?
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IE 10 Already? (Score:2)
It seems that everyone is going to go for the accelerated releases now.
10 is much bigger than 5 (firefox), so I think IE is going to win.
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It seems that everyone is going to go for the accelerated releases now.
10 is much bigger than 5 (firefox), so I think IE is going to win.
Chrome Canary build is already at 12, though I will admit it's a bit flaky still.
Re:IE 10 Already? (Score:5, Funny)
Pfft. That's nothing. My browser release goes all the way to 11. It also supports the "beating-a-dead-meme" tag.
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My installer says nothing below win 7 is supported either - are they already leaving Vista in the lurch?
Window always tested many architectures (Score:2)
I thought one of the biggest Windows / SQL Server computers in the world was the Nasdaq Tandem (now HP) MIPS computer.
http://news.cnet.com/Nasdaq-upgrades-HP-based-trading-system/2110-1010_3-5628950.html [cnet.com]
though it seems Microsoft phased it out for other customers:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1996/oct96/mipspr.mspx [microsoft.com]
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Was that really running Windows or just WINE?
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Sure it did:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1996/may96/tandmspr.mspx [microsoft.com]
http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/product-review/mips-nt-allied-from-birth [windowsitpro.com]
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I'm sure they had it skunkworks years ago (Score:4, Interesting)
At least based on my MS friend's claims... they probably have many such projects (say, like, a fully functional web-based MS office)
In fact I'd say this is one of those companies where such innovative ideas usually go to die, as they often "might windows or office cashflows".
Now that windows is threatened, then the skunkworks projects get revealed. The battle for ARM dominance is joined and now there are many contenders (WebOS, iOS, ChromeOS, etc).
Re:I'm sure they had it skunkworks years ago (Score:4, Interesting)
In fact I'd say this is one of those companies where such innovative ideas usually go to die, as they often "might windows or office cashflows".
Having worked at Microsoft, here's my take.
Microsoft's products must be compatible with a huge variety of hardware and software configurations, with at least 10 years of backward compatibility. Yes, Microsoft has redundant projects and a lot of prototypes that never see the light of day. But it's better to kill an internal ARM build than to release a version which won't play nice with existing environments.
Believe me, Microsoft has a lot of smart engineers, programmers and researchers. Most people have NO IDEA of the level of talent that exists in Microsoft Research. At the same time, Microsoft is a huge company which must cater to the interests of businesses which insist on using IE6. Thus, it generally can't afford the luxury of breaking compatibility for the sake of agile development.
Of course, this is one side of the story. Management also makes mistakes.
If you must remember something, consider this: Microsoft doesn't want ARM Windows to be like Vista.
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Historically Microsoft's biggest problem is they feel Windows is the solution to every problem, which has started to not work so well (the worst examples being Windows Tablet Edition and Project Origami, with the later absolutely blowing up in Microsoft's face, ever seen an Origami device in the wild?). It's the same old Windows running on a new processor. If "innovative" is "we ported to ARM" then Microsoft is not going to win this battle. And I don't feel as if Microsoft running the same operating system
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Preposterous! That's like claiming they grab the best talent just so that nobody else can.
Oh wait...
Web server running Windows on Arm? (Score:2)
Users will hate it. [depending] (Score:4, Insightful)
Assuming that Microsoft doesnt jump the shark and do something totally unlike their past releases, like overtly junking all back-compatibility with x86 legacy applications (I see this windows offering being adapted for use on the emerging tablet market, where existing legacy application support, even if crippled, would be a big selling point), this offering will be technologically inferior to the existing (and based on more portable technologies) offerings like iOS and Android.
The reason is because this new windows flavor will have to JIT emulate the x86 instruction set for those legacy apps, and do all kinds of calisthenics to make shit happen between native binaries and emulated binaries. The ARM cpu uses less power, but is also somewhat more gutless compared to desktop x86 chips. It will suck hard trying to emulate that bloated dinosaur of an instruction set.
If microsoft finally sacrifices the holy vestal virgin of legacy compatibility (Its major strongpoint in corporate environments by a long shot-- Look at the immense power of zombie IE6) for its ARM port, it will suffer the same fate as all the previous alternative architecture builds (PPC, SPARC, Itanium, et al.)-- That is to say, it will die on the vine because users will hate it with purple pasion.
I am curious to see how microsoft pulls this off. If they were smart, they would do something similar to what Apple did when they switched from PPC to x86 commodity chips, and incorporate a special abstraction layer like Roseta. (Note, I am NOT an apple fanboi-- If you call me one, you are an idiot. Just pointing out something I thought apple did that was interesting.)
Sadly, like so many things microsoft does these days, it will probably be filled with so much useless bloat and duct-tape code that it will run like congealed dogpoo even on high end ARM hardware when trying to do such legacy support-- (again, if they even do it at all.)
I will reserve further judgement until I see it in the wild. It might be great-- but I wont get my hopes up.
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They already have the solution to that,. .net, it is just in time compiled on x86 too and so once they port the .net framework over all things written in it will work just fine.
Sure you will lose native x86 compatibility, but there are many apps already out in .net that will work just fine, and you can code for x86 windows and arm windows in the same way.
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The main target for ARM will be touch-tablets. It's likely that emulation would be fast enough to handle the old legacy apps. They were built for slower computers after all. If you were to put win8 on a ipad like device, the app-store could sandbox things in the same way that win phone 7's x-app system does. For native stuff, If MS releases a decent compiler, I don't see any reason why companies like adobe wouldn't offer arm versions as well to avoid the emulation layer. And besides, it's hard to know how w
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You are missing one of the biggest reasons people use Windows - business network integration. Admins love being able to administer desktops and laptops remotely, and now they will be able to do it with phones, tablets and thin clients too. Supporting Android, iOS and Blackberry phones is a pain in the arse at the moment but a Windows based system would be able to use Active Directory.
MS are moving away from long term legacy support now anyway. If you look at the support lifetimes for newer products they are
Reality check (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes Microsoft is going to chase the trend and make something for ARM, otherwise they cede the mobile space to Apple and Google. However, while they will call it Windows 8 it won't bear much relationship to the x86 edition we all know and either loath or love.
1. Anyone think Microsoft (or any of their hardware OEM partners) are remotely interested in releasing what we think of as an Operating System on a new mobile platform? Not when they can lock it down hard and rake in the same 30% Apple gets from thei
Real Reality Check (Score:2, Insightful)
Holy cow, Batman! How much more backward can you understand the problem?
The reason x86 can emulate ARM is because ARM is *simple by design*. ARM cannot emulate x86 at decent speeds because x86 is a *pile of crap* from 30 years ago with legacy bullshit bolted on top of each new generation.
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> The reason x86 can emulate ARM is because ARM is *simple by design*
Which is only a nicer way of saying RISC. Bottom line is you need more cycles to get the same work done and the fastest ARM chips clock slower than the slowest x86 chips. ARM products that play music and video for example, always offload that sort of compute intensive work because pure software decoding is pitiful. Yes, I own a Nokia N770. Where ARM totally owns Intel is power consumption, both idle power and computing work per unit
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but there is no way ARM is going to emulate x86 apps at a usable speed.
When people usually talk about emulater speeds it's running the whole OS, virtual box style. But in this case the Windows OS and all the standard APIs would be running native ARM so it would only be the application code itself that was emulated. There are plenty of apps written in say Python that are maybe 1/30th the speed of a native app but still plenty usable.
Combine a native OS with the experts they have on JIT tech (CLR is really hard to JIT, so you know these people are wicked good) and tons of core
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Why do you think Microsoft is only doing this for mobile platforms?
Didn't nVidia announce at CES that they are developing a 64-bit higher performance ARM processor [nvidia.com]? They claim it will be suitable for "personal computers to servers and supercomputers" with "awesome performance". And have integrated nVidia graphics as well.
If that does indeed come to pass, we will have a whole different ballgame,
So what? It's the apps .... (Score:3, Insightful)
Running the OS on an ARM chip isn't even half the battle. What about the apps? Has Microsoft created a "fat binary" format, the way Apple did for its migration from PowerPC to Intel? Are the development tools ready? Are all the Windows application developers lined up to recompile and migrate? How much of that stuff is still tangled up in assembler, anyway?
Microsoft's advantage has always been the breadth of its ecosystem. Now that's Microsoft's disadvantage. There's not much point to owning a power-miserly ARM-based Windows machine if the apps you've come to depend on aren't available. You might as well swallow the medicine and migrate to a more secure, stable OS with a future.
.NET (Score:2)
Has Microsoft created a "fat binary" format
No, but Microsoft does have .NET, and it might even have a compatibility layer to run CE apps.
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.Net is great for portability in the Microsoft ecosystem. However the big problem is COM and ActiveX. Take a look at Office 2010 is a list of features that don't work on the 64 bit mode. MS even recommends you install Office 32bit on AM64 systems because of this.
Migrating non-.Net corporate applications from 32XP to 32Win 7 is very difficult. I can't wait for Windows 8 so we can deal with x86, AM64, and ARM Windows all with their own incompatibilities. On the server Windows is easy because they are mo
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Migrating non-.Net corporate applications from 32XP to 32Win 7 is very difficult.
No it is not. There are some issues but it is not that difficult.
Re:So what? It's the apps .... (Score:4, Informative)
Has Microsoft created a "fat binary" format, the way Apple did for its migration from PowerPC to Intel?
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False, PE has never supported fat binaries. Instead, they encouraged separate directories for each arch. AutoRun has also supported separate sections for each arch.
Re:So what? It's the apps .... (Score:4, Insightful)
The PE format most decidedly doesn't support fat EXEs. Read the spec [microsoft.com], page 12, if you need proof. There's only one field in the file for the architecture type, and that field can only hold one value. There are no currently documented methods for embedding multiple PE sections for multiple architectures into a single file. That isn't to say there isn't some way it could be shoehorned in, but as of yet, there is no way to have a fat EXE on Windows.
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Can symantec to catch up? (Score:2)
Better word: Desprate (Score:2)
For some reason I think the better word is "Desperate" Like they notice their customers (well they assume they are customers) jumping on a new ship...
Didnt NT3 run on ARM and (Score:2)
Alpha and several other non-x86 platforms?
I seem to recall this was back when Windows NT Workstation was aspiring to supplant Unices on a variety of Unix vendor hardware in the early '90s.
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NT4 ran on x86, Alpha, PPC, and MIPS
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How many applications do they have? (Score:4, Insightful)
The real value of Windows is in the massive installed base of applications that it has. I wonder how many vendors of important Windows applications will release an ARM build. I do hope that it will be as simple (for the most part) as recompiling the same source in an ARM-based build environment, but even so I wonder how many developers would do it. Good luck getting all those legacy VB6 apps running on ARM Windows though, or any other app for which the source is gone. Without the application ecosystem one might as well be using some other platform.
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I wonder how many vendors of important Windows applications will release an ARM build.
Depends on how much Microsoft decides to pay them. Microsoft is not above using it's hoard of cash to inspire such things.
To me, it depends on what these things are going to be used for. If the theory is that my next PC/Laptop will run on an ARM chip, this could be an issue. If the theory is that my new tablet or netbook or large phone is going to run on an ARM chip, I probably don't want to port a desktop-like UI to that because it simply won't sell.
I probably don't want to run those legacy VB6 apps on
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VB6 all depends on if MS chooses to build in the runtimes into Windows 8. I would be more worried about native COM.
Already? (Score:2)
They're something like a decade late to the ARM party. "Already" is hardly the right work for it.
will IE finally have WebGL? (Score:2)
MSFT, the only ones without WebGL...
Firefox4 has it
Chrome has it
Opera beta has it
Safari beta has it
Perfect platform for a demo (Score:2)
Does nobody remember MS's "portability" promises? (Score:4, Interesting)
Windows NT was originally positioned as a portable, platform-neutral system and Microsoft made a big deal of it not being just limited to Intel architecture but also running on ACE platforms (remember ACE?), MIPS, Digital Alpha, and at least one other whose name escapes me. IBM PowerPC maybe?
Microsoft seduced and abandoned companies that committed to Windows on non-Intel platforms, with the abandonment beginning almost as soon as the seduction was complete. My employer made a significant commitment to Windows-on-DEC-Alpha--at that time, their specific application benchmarked over twice as fast on Alpha as on Intel. It was NT 3.51, IIRC, and Microsoft moved up to Windows 4.0 on Intel and kept dragging feet and making excuses on Alpha, finally acknowledging that it was not going to be supported. At that point, the Alpha systems bought by my employer's customers were barely a year old, and those customers were not happy with us for selling them such rapidly orphaned products.
What matters is not whether Windows can run on ARM, but whether Microsoft actually has any serious or durable commitment to supporting it on that platform.
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Your memory is suspect... NT 4.0 had Alpha support at launch. It was even in Windows 2000 RCs, and only dropped come release time, though I do recall Compaq selling Alpha servers with 2000 despite that.
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I'm not sure "seduced and abandoned" really captures the flavour of those heady days. From what I can recall, most of the companies involved were fighting fires on three fronts: their old-line proprietary businesses were getting chopped to bits by PC's and the war of attrition that was Unix at the time - the company I worked for had internal in-fighting as the unix and PC business started to threaten the old mid-range server business and competition BETWEEN companies was even more cut-throat. Sun was pla
Oh give it a rest (Score:5, Insightful)
"Seduced and abandoned?" Not hardly. MS makes their OS for the processors it feels there is a market for. In the NT days, they decided to try it on some other platforms, since it was portable. Problem was hardly anyone was buying. Yes, yes your employer got on board, well one company is not enough to make a market for this kind of thing.
You are also incorrect about support, NT 4.0 supported Alpha, MIPS, PPC, and x86. With Windows 2000 they were dropping support for MIPS and PPC due to massive lack of interest, but initially planning on keeping Alpha support. You could get it in beta. However, Compaq announced they were dropping Windows on Alpha, so MS dropped it with RC1, since that was the last major vendor that gave a shit.
That means they supported Alpha versions of Windows NT from July 1993 (Windows NT 3.1) to June of 2004 (the date they stopped support for NT4) and they were releasing new updates for the OS until November 1999 (SP6's release date). That is not an insignificant timeline. They didn't exactly role it out and kill it a year later.
The thing is Alpha was dying by the end of 1999, when Windows 2000 was launched. Like I said, Compaq stopped supporting Windows on Alpha (and they owned DEC at that point). In 2001 they sold Alpha to Intel, killing all development for it.
So either you are pissed off because you made a bad decision, and got bitten for it (if it got orphaned in one year, you were selling your products in 2003, which means Alpha had been officially dead for two years) or you are just making stuff up because you dislike MS (given that your statements do not fit the facts).
So, what'll happen with Windows on ARM (presuming they release it, could be just a test or for embedded applications)? Well that'll depend on the market. If there is strong demand, they'll keep making it. If nobody wants it'll they'll phase it out.
Same shit with IA-64. MS supported that in Windows 2000 Server, and has continued support for it with Windows 2008R2. However demand has been declining, so they've said 2008R2 will be the last Itanium version unless anything changes. They didn't support it for one version and drop it, they supported it as long as there was demand, and if demand picks up again, so can support. It also isn't like they make it a surprise. They've announced support is stopping, however 2008R2 will be supported at least until 7/10/2018 (that is their guaranteed date for support, they can extend it). So it isn't like there isn't some time to make a change.
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Big deal Atom is just x86 plenty of other OSs run on the architecture other Linux's, BSDs, Solaris, etc...
Windows is no longer relevant (Score:2)
It's the early 90's all over again... (Score:2)
Windows had been ported to the DEC Alpha, and was going to be running on mainframes, MIPS, and SPARC soon after.
How is this any different?
Yawn.
Don't forget Oak Trail (Score:2)
Intel has just launched Oak Trail, which is the name for the combination of Atom Z600 and SM35 PCH. In particular, the SM35 PCH provides compatibility with the main IBM PC compatible x86 platform with all the legacy, so it can run any standard x86 OS, but it is still low-power ("Put together, Oak Trail's Atom Z620 processor and SM35 Express hub have a thermal envelope of just 3.75W."):
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/20753 [techreport.com]
Suprise... and Microsoft will suprise everybody (Score:4, Interesting)
So... I will surprise everybody.
WIN8 running very very well already on ARM processors.
They rebooted WIN8 to the originally planned WIN7 micro kernel.
Win8 is a one microkernel with multiple interfaces to be booted up within 3sec.
1. It can be traditional PC
2. CAN be Tablet
3. Can be WInphone (Bye bye WInphone 7... if you didn’t realize it was/is just a research and UI project)
4. It runs inside TVs (Hello Samsung!)
5. Runs in the cloud.
6. It is the embedded.
The same Win8.
The Winphone 7 software delivery packaging implemented and further enhanced for consistent solution delivery.
One development toolkit to develop solution across all platforms.
You think it is not true. You don't believe that MS can pull this off. They already did it!!! Just they have learnt from Apple. SILENCE! You will be shocked.
People talking about the backward comp ability as an issue. This is NOT a problem anymore because of what MS done in the virtualization.
The virtualization is part of the kernel and can natively virtualize anything to achieve backward compability.
Have you ever thought what this Really really means? You should have goose bumps...
Windows on ARM for eight(?) years (Score:4, Informative)
It's about frickin' time! As usual MS take the longest to get on the trend train.
Windows CE has been running on ARM for about eight (?) years.
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Re:Windows on ARM for eight(?) years (Score:4, Informative)
Windows CE 2.0 came out in November 1997 with support for DEC's StrongARM processor (now evolved into Marvell's Xscale range).
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Proof positive that marketing works! The parent can't tell the difference between wince and winnt. Wow. Just wow.
Wow, what a bad guess. CE or NT is irrelevant to whether MS has supported ARM, or as the original post put it: joined the ARM trend. They are not joining it, they are offering an additional operating system.
Re:Why is it sneaky? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's about frickin' time! As usual MS take the longest to get on the trend train.
It's too little, too late. Even if Microsoft was able to get "true" Windows working perfectly on arm, what about all the 3rd party apps? What about Office? Outlook? Anything that matters in the Microsoft ecosystem?
With arm, Microsoft has to start from zero and compete on a level playing field. Something it has never been good at.
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Exactly. Plus I seriously doubt they are going to get anywhere near the performance or efficiency that Linux (Android Linux, other Linuxes) or iOS does on ARM because they are so late to the game. I bet it would take years to tune it to work "well enough", which would STILL be way behind the competition.
So start with no apps, no performance, no efficiency, and probably not much demand. If they can pull off MS-Windows on ARM as a market success, I would be REALLY surprised.
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Office 2010 on ARM was demonstrated during CES in January. Also, .NET apps should be binary compatible. It would not surprise me if it is easier to port 32-bit apps to ARM than it is to port them to amd64.
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Office 2010 on ARM was demonstrated during CES in January. Also, .NET apps should be binary compatible. It would not surprise me if it is easier to port 32-bit apps to ARM than it is to port them to amd64.
AMD64 is capable of running 32-bit code. So, are you saying Windows doesn't have some kind of functional equivalent to Linux's multilib? If not, that would be surprising. One would expect that a port to ARM would be much more difficult than getting 32-bit code to run on AMD64, an operation which has no good reason to require a port.
Note, multilib has nothing to do with Linux's open-source nature. It's how users of 64-bit Linux run things like Adobe Flash which are only available as 32-bit closed-source
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Well, they *own* Office, so that shouldn't be too much of a problem. IE is obviously already working. Between those two they've probably covered the requirements of something like 40-50% of users.
Re:Why is it sneaky? (Score:4, Insightful)
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The target platform here is not fully-functional desktop PCs with ARM processors, it's tablets and other appliance-style devices.
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It's too little, too late. Even if Microsoft was able to get "true" Windows working perfectly on arm, what about all the 3rd party apps? What about Office? Outlook? Anything that matters in the Microsoft ecosystem?
Have you heard of .Net? All they need to do is write an ARM implementation of the CLR - something i'd wager they've already done - and they're good to go with all .Net apps. Why do you think there was the heavy transition by MS of so many of their apps to the .Net platform with the release of Vista and 7?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
What are you calling bullshit on? Where is your evidence that it is indeed bullshit? Do you have anything of value to actually say?
Re:Why is it sneaky? (Score:4, Informative)
He's calling bullshit the fact that Windows has no infrastructure for an ARM release. They already showed off Office for ARM months ago.
Re: (Score:2)
Just wait until they try to get a patent for this. ;)
Re:Why is it sneaky? (Score:4, Informative)
Debian has supported arm since potato (2000)...
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Computer vs Big Phone (Score:4, Informative)
Was that a joke?
Darwin, which is the actual OS underlying OS X is also the actual OS underlying iOS, which runs on iPhones and iPads. It's also open source.
Re:Computer vs Big Phone (Score:5, Funny)
OS is short for operating system. Flash has nothing to do with the operating system.
I know Slashdot has gone downhill in the last ten years, but are you sure you're on the right site?
Re: (Score:2)
Can't or doesn't?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Windows on ARM is going to suck or it won't be anything like the Windows you know( ie it will have to be _vastly_ cut down )
Re:Question (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows firewall programs aren't really firewalls, for the most part. They're more like ACLs for API calls involving sockets.
That's why when you run a Windows "firewall" program you don't generally see things like IP addresses, masks, protocols, port numbers, and state information. If you do, it's buried in the menus someplace, not the core function of the program, and likely added as a limited afterthought. They're definitely not a great example of bloat but they are certainly more resource-intensive than something like iptables and the relevant *nix kernel support.
The few times I have used a Windows sytem in the last several years, it was most disappointing. Where you could just write a few rules to cover your needs, now you have to go through a tedious list of programs and incrementally enable each one that may want to use a particular protocol after, of course, having some system tray pop-up distract you from whatever you were trying to get done. Depending on the "firewall", you may have to do it again when you upgrade/update the program since the executable has changed.
Really the only justification for this is the terrible host security of so many Windows systems, which leads to the hope that a strange executable the user has never seen before that wants to use the network might get noticed. It's one of the least efficient ways to operate a firewall. The need to enforce permissions that apply to system calls (of any kind, whether they are related to sockets, disks, etc) should be a core OS function that requires no third-party utilities. The need to regulate network traffic is a different problem that would properly have a different solution.
Honestly it's a fucking inelegant mess but it avoids the BIG SCARY OH NOES!! of requiring users who want to adjust a firewall to know a few things about how networks and firewalls work (sort of like the way we expect people who want to tinker with an engine to have skill as a mechanic and no one calls that unreasonable) or, failing that, to hire/consult someone who does. Like most of the culture surrounding Windows really. For those people who like it this way, use what you like and I say more power to you. To me, it's downright suffocating. I'd much, MUCH rather spend a few minutes reading up on networking, learn it one time, and do it the simple/elegant way from them on, rather than continuously do everything the hard way solely to avoid a little reading.
This set of priorities, more than anything else, is the difference between Windows "computing as a product" and many other systems. You can spend a great deal of time looking at differences in design and technologies without having a satisfying understanding of why things work out the way they do.
As far as antivirus goes, it's a terrible substitute for a good security system that doesn't treat the user like an illiterate idiot. I'm wondering how much worse the malware problem has to get before more people are willing to admit that antivirus is at best a band-aid and does not address the problem of security. Usually things have to become some big-ass crisis before people are willing to say "you know, the way we've been doing things doesn't work, maybe it's time to try another approach." Until then, those who said all along that something is not sustainable, is moving in the wrong direction, and lacks long-term viability are ignored and marginalized. Too often, that's the way it works.