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Ditch Linux For Windows 10 On Your Raspberry Pi With Microsoft's IoT Kit
An anonymous reader writes: Partnering with Adafruit, Microsoft has announced the Windows IoT Core Starter Kit. The $75 kit comes comes with an SD card preloaded with Windows 10 IoT. According to the Raspberry Pi blog: "The pack is available with a Pi 2 for people who are are new to Raspberry Pi or who'd like a dedicated device for their projects, or without one for those who'll be using a Pi they already own. The box contains an SD card with Windows 10 Core and a case, power supply, wifi module and Ethernet cable for your Pi; a breadboard, jumper wires and components including LEDs, potentiometers and switches; and sensors for light, colour, temperature and pressure. There's everything you need to start building."
As if IoT wasn't insecure enough already - let's put the BIGGEST consumer malware target into everything!
Anyone else think this is bad idea?
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
'why' for developers and 'why' for microsoft as well.
For developers, MS is so mismatched to the sensibilities of the embedded space, business and technology wise. Picking up the ball and going home from one linux to another or even to something like a BSD is easy enough if you have to. If you commit to MS ecosystem, there's no where to go if things pan out poorly (e.g, Windows mobile, windows ce, windows phone (at least 7 was a dead end), Windows RT). MS has a terrible track record in this space, even when their wheelhouse of desktop application ecosystem has some relevance, where the Pi has pretty much no relevance (it may have video out, but there are better choices for even ARM based graphical systems than Pi). MS ecosystem is in general so *alien* compared to the rest of the industry, you *really* have to believe in it to commit. It's silly to bet your project on MS's technology and ongoing commitment to the platform in this market.
For MS, what do they hope to get out of this? They are coming into this from behind, against a competitor that gives away for free and where the entire ecosystem is tilted against them. They are going in to explore with no royalties, and no path to profit, or even revenue. Incidentally this has some resemblance to when they tried to break into 'supercomputing' nearly a decade ago, only to give up and let the resources mostly scatter to the winds when they figured out that there was no money to be made in the market, despite the prestige.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I did a while ago. But you still need win 10 as a development station for Windows 10 IoT Core. kinda lame.
http://ms-iot.github.io/content/en-US/win10/SetupPCRPI.htm
"
To setup your Windows 10 IoT Core development PC, you first need to install the following:
Make sure you are running the public release of Windows 10 (version 10240) or better. You can upgrade from here. If you are already running Windows 10, you can find your current build number by clicking the start button and typing “winver” and hitting enter.
Install Visual Studio 2015
We recommend Community Edition.
If you already have or choose to install Visual Studio Professional 2015 or Visual Studio Enterprise 2015 (available here), make sure to do a Custom install and select the checkbox Universal Windows App Development Tools -> Tools and Windows SDK.
Install Windows IoT Core Project Templates from here. Alternatively, the templates can be found by searching for Windows IoT Core Project Templates in the Visual Studio Gallery or directly from Visual Studio in the Extension and Updates dialog (Tools > Extensions and Updates > Online).
Make sure you’ve enabled developer mode by following these instructions."
Microsoft's contribution to this kit is Windows 10 Lite OS installed on the memory card. Jameco sells a similar kit for $60. If you're willing to scrounge around for individual parts, you might put together a identical kit that cost less.
http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10001_10001_2156164_-1