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Microsoft Releases Windows 10 IoT Core For Small, Embedded Devices
An anonymous reader writes: One of the more interesting aspects of Microsoft's Windows 10 push is their desire to see it running on hobbyist hardware platforms. Today they released Windows 10 IoT Core for the Raspberry Pi 2 and the MinnowBoard Max. They say, "Windows 10 IoT Core is a new edition for Windows targeted towards small, embedded devices that may or may not have screens. For devices with screens, Windows 10 IoT Core does not have a Windows shell experience; instead you can write a Universal Windows app that is the interface and "personality" for your device." Microsoft has posted a list of release notes for this version, calling out improved support for Python and Node.js, significantly improved GPIO performance, and more electronics support for breakout boards. Under a heading cheekily named 'Developers, Developer, Developers,' they lay out their plan for language support and provide a code sample.
Some people working on embedded systems have day-jobs working with the Microsoft stack. I would wager a guess that a fair number of them would rather not bother with Java or Python when they already know C# and F# and are already familiar with the tooling in a way that no hobbyist would ever be. Personally, I fall into that category. I work with C# daily (and F# occasionally). I've done some Arduino stuff and have played around with the Raspberry Pi. But my familiarity with C#, F#, Visual Studio, and Windows in general make me feel much more comfortable and open up so many more possibilities to me.
Just because you don't like Microsoft doesn't mean everybody, or even anybody (how do you know what other people are thinking? can you read minds?) else shares that opinion with you.
And what does another option hurt? Isn't it about user choice? Stop choosing for me. Go be a zealot elsewhere. And by "elsewhere", I mean not on this planet.
Taking away the buzz word quotient, IOT is fine. Have appliances and devices that interact with one another in a clean, secure, interoperable way. That sounds great. I'd love more home automation and more safe interaction with the environment I walk through. The problems is nobody seems to talk to one another, they're horribly expensive, everyone's out to maximize the self-fullfilling non-existing profits in this space; all of which cripples any meaniungful adoption.
Just like 'cloud' before it, there was real meat behind the buzz, but it took time, open platform designs and simple integration before any real traction occurred in pushing LAN services into others' hosting.
Bye!
Win10IoT isn't for hobbyists, it's for embedded system vendors.
This is the play by MS to prevent all the ATMs, kiosks, and point of sale systems that still run XP/Vista/7 from getting replaced with Linux solutions. There's already one airline running rPi+Raspian on their airport gate screens. And if you've been wondering how the hell Redmond has any chance of hitting their "1 billion Win10 devices" goal, this is the lion's share of it. No way they sell that many PC/Surface/Xbone/WinPhone units and get that many people to upgrade from 7 and 8.x.
MS has never cared about hobbyist developers, and they never will. Everything they do is from a B2B perspective.
RTFA - "This means full support for the standard UWP languages like C++, C#, JS and VB, but it also means bringing support – including full tools, debugging, and project systems – for Node.js and Python."
You neckbeards stuck in ca. 1997 amuse me to no end. Your tech knowledge is as dated as your "last laid on" date.
First, Windows is quite secure these days. Nothing's perfect, but it certainly will match mainstream Linux.
Second, it's not bloated at all. This is a small version specifically intended for IoT. They didn't take "Windoze" (as you probably still call it) 98 (the version you are probably most familiar with) and dump it on a USB drive, you ponce.