Microsoft Plans Linux Tools, RTX Spark Desktop For Windows Devs (arstechnica.com) 21
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft's Build developer conference kicked off today, and as with almost everything the company has done in the last few years, Microsoft's opening keynote focused overwhelmingly on AI and other closely related technologies. [...] On the hardware front, we didn't get any updates for existing Surface devices (not counting yesterday's Surface Laptop Ultra announcement), but we did get something new: the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is "a compact developer PC" built around Nvidia's new RTX Spark chip with up to 128GB of built-in memory. The Dev Box looks a little like a cartoon anvil or piano fell onto an Xbox Series X and flattened it. Its aluminum casing was designed "to double as a heatsink," and its preloaded version of Windows 11 Pro will include a "purposeful" set of developer-centric default settings and preinstalled tools.
This is a follow-up of sorts to the Windows Dev Kit 2023, also known as "Project Volterra." This Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3-powered PC was essentially the system board from a Surface Pro tablet stuffed into a plastic box, and it was introduced alongside Arm-native versions of several Microsoft developer tools. It helped to set the stage for the Arm-based flagship Surface devices that launched the next year, which benefitted from a better and faster x86-to-Arm code translation technology called Prism and a greater number of Arm-native third-party apps that didn't need to be translated in the first place. Microsoft didn't announce pricing or specific specs for the RTX Spark Dev Box, but you can probably expect it to cost quite a bit more than the $600 that Project Volterra did. Hopefully, Microsoft can keep the price at least somewhat lower than the $4,699 asking price for Nvidia's similarly specced DGX Spark box.
On the software side, several developer-centric changes are coming to Windows 11, particularly for users of the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Microsoft is introducing a Windows-native version of the coreutils command line tools, so that commands or scripts made for Linux work within Windows and the other way around; the ability to run WSL inside of containers, said to be arriving in "the coming months"; and something called Windows Developer Configurations that uses the WinGet tool to quickly set up "a distraction-free dev environment with VS Code, GitHub Copilot, WSL, PowerShell 7 and developer-optimized settings with one command on any Windows 11 device." Microsoft also introduced Microsoft Execution Containers (MXC), as "enterprise-grade sandboxed environments" that let AI agents like OpenClaw operate on Windows without getting unrestricted access to the whole system. In theory, MXC could let organizations enforce agent-specific limits, such as blocking access to personal accounts, separating work and personal data, or requiring permission before deleting files.
The MXC GitHub repo also notes support for "multiple containment backends," meaning the same sandboxing concept could apply beyond AI agents to other plugins, tools, and workloads.
Further reading: Microsoft Unveils Scout, an Autonomous AI Agent Built On OpenClaw
This is a follow-up of sorts to the Windows Dev Kit 2023, also known as "Project Volterra." This Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3-powered PC was essentially the system board from a Surface Pro tablet stuffed into a plastic box, and it was introduced alongside Arm-native versions of several Microsoft developer tools. It helped to set the stage for the Arm-based flagship Surface devices that launched the next year, which benefitted from a better and faster x86-to-Arm code translation technology called Prism and a greater number of Arm-native third-party apps that didn't need to be translated in the first place. Microsoft didn't announce pricing or specific specs for the RTX Spark Dev Box, but you can probably expect it to cost quite a bit more than the $600 that Project Volterra did. Hopefully, Microsoft can keep the price at least somewhat lower than the $4,699 asking price for Nvidia's similarly specced DGX Spark box.
On the software side, several developer-centric changes are coming to Windows 11, particularly for users of the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Microsoft is introducing a Windows-native version of the coreutils command line tools, so that commands or scripts made for Linux work within Windows and the other way around; the ability to run WSL inside of containers, said to be arriving in "the coming months"; and something called Windows Developer Configurations that uses the WinGet tool to quickly set up "a distraction-free dev environment with VS Code, GitHub Copilot, WSL, PowerShell 7 and developer-optimized settings with one command on any Windows 11 device." Microsoft also introduced Microsoft Execution Containers (MXC), as "enterprise-grade sandboxed environments" that let AI agents like OpenClaw operate on Windows without getting unrestricted access to the whole system. In theory, MXC could let organizations enforce agent-specific limits, such as blocking access to personal accounts, separating work and personal data, or requiring permission before deleting files.
The MXC GitHub repo also notes support for "multiple containment backends," meaning the same sandboxing concept could apply beyond AI agents to other plugins, tools, and workloads.
Further reading: Microsoft Unveils Scout, an Autonomous AI Agent Built On OpenClaw
Could you...? (Score:3)
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Raw? no. The drivers don't exist (yet). I expect MS to roll out a few flavors of Linux for WSL as this is targeted to be a dev box.
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That will depend on Microsoft. The SoC most likely has the dtsi files since it is basically the same a s the DGX spark, but the boards dts files will need to be supplied by the manufacture. Both are required to create the DTB blobs required for boot. I would be very surprised if Microsoft provided them. They will say WSL is enough.
Microsoft Execution Containers? (Score:2)
who is this for? (Score:2)
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Interesting how Nvidia has become associated with AI and nothing else.
This product is about Nvidia making what they can make. No reason to think a market is actually targeted.
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And failing sound output after the last "update". I have it on two instances of completely different hardware as of about 2 weeks ago. Fortunately, these are the last instances of the rotting Windows crap that MS puts out. I hope that by the end of the year just one will be left.
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Old is new? (Score:2)
Windows for ARM, MinGW-lite, and non-docker microVMs/containers. What year is it?
Also I think Ars got the WSL Container-stuff backwards, instead it's Linux containers on WSL. As it appears to from the Microsoft docs [microsoft.com]. That plus an an API for Windows Apps to use those Linux containers. Probably the most useful of the announcements.
FUD & embrace, extend, extinguish (Score:1)
The M$ of the 90s sure has turned around on Linux. When decades of FUD did not kill their hated competition, they now just embrace, extend and extinguish as the new m.o. - and they already basically killed GitHub that way.
Nobody should allow M$ any foothold in F/OSS.
Will go better than Qualcomm's Dev Windows Desktop (Score:1)
Uh, no way (Score:2)
Mr. MS, I'm a Mac user and everything you ever produced for the Mac is about as appetizing as cat vomit. Now you want to do the same for Linux. Please stop and go away.
Buy our Slop machine (Score:1)
So, can i replace the windows UI with XFCE? (Score:2)
I got too used to the rat and how quick things are, can't quite see myself going back to sluggish windows managers.
My sig (Score:2)
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lol, my nearly 30 year old signature line is one more step towards coming true.
30 years? You are probably too young to have heard of Xenix.
"more than $600" - understatement of the year (Score:2)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Surfa... [reddit.com]
"Our checks with PC brands at this yearâ(TM)s Computex suggest AI PCs with N1X will need to price at US$2,899, while N1 models will be priced at US$1,799."
Yes, you read that right, US$2,899 for 16GBs and US$1,799 for 8GBs. That's total, not GPU RAM. Sure, it has a splash of RTX graphics but what to do with it? AI is out of the question (unless it's some model you'd run on a regular machine anyway). Gaming also unlikely with the GPU being married to some third class Medi