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Microsoft accidentally reveals Windows 10 on ARM limitations
Microsoft launched ARM-powered Windows 10 PCs with "all-day" battery life back in December. While HP, Asus, and Lenovo's devices aren't on sale just yet, we're still waiting to hear more about the limitations of Windows 10 running on these new PCs. Microsoft published a full list of limitations last week, spotted first by Thurrott, that details what to expect from Windows 10 on ARM. This list must have been published by accident, as the software giant removed it over the weekend so only cached copies of the information are available.
Only ARM64 drivers are supported and no x64 applications are supported (yet). Games that use a version of OpenGL later than 1.1, hardware-accelerated OpenGL, or "anticheat technologies" won't work on Windows 10 on ARM. The Windows Hypervisor Platform is not supported on ARM.
Related: Big Changes Planned by Microsoft - Windows 10 on ARM, Laptops to Behave More Like Phones
First ARM Snapdragon-Based Windows 10 S Systems Announced
Microsoft Pulls Back on Windows 10 S
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Cnet reports: Windows laptops in 2017 could act and feel more like a phone
Microsoft wants its computers to be more nimble.
To that goal, the Qualcomm announced at Microsoft's Windows Hardware Engineering Community event on Wednesday that its Windows 10 devices will support the Snapdragon 835 processor, which you'll see in many top-tier phones next year. The chip will be able to provide Gigabit LTE connectivity, nearly double your battery life and pack it all into even smaller devices.
From the following story we get:
At its WinHEC hardware conference in Shenzhen today, Microsoft announced a range of hardware-driven initiatives to modernize the PC and address two big goals. The first is expanded support for mixed reality; the second is to produce a range of even more power-efficient, mobile, always-connected PCs powered by ARM processors.
[...] The second aspect of the push to modernize the PC is the desire for ever longer battery life, greater portability, and connectivity. To that end, Microsoft is bringing back something that it had before: Windows for ARM processors. Qualcomm-powered Windows 10 PCs will hit the market in 2017.
The truth is that Windows for ARM has never really gone away. The first Windows on ARM iteration was dubbed Windows RT, and it launched on the first Surface tablet. Although this system provided almost every part of Windows, just recompiled for 32-bit ARM processors, Microsoft locked it down using a certificate-based security scheme. Built-in desktop apps, such as Explorer and Calculator ran fine, as did the pre-installed version of Office, but third-party desktop apps built using the Win32 API were prohibited. The only third-party apps that were permitted were those built using the new WinRT API and distributed through the Windows Store.
With few such apps available, Windows RT and Surface didn't see much market success. Nonetheless, Microsoft continued to develop Windows on ARM, as it's an essential part of both the Windows 10 Internet of Things Core variant of the operating system and the Windows 10 Mobile version.
Traditional Windows apps can only run on X86 chips, not ARM—thus, the failed Windows RT. To get around this, Qualcomm (and only Qualcomm) is working with Microsoft to emulate X86 instructions, the companies said. [...] Sources at Microsoft and Qualcomm say the partnership is designed around the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, a chip that's in production now and is due to ship in the first half of 2017, according to Qualcomm. The first Windows-on-ARM PCs are expected by the second half of next year.
Microsoft Windows is back on ARM:
Just shy of a year after announcing that Windows was once again going to be available on ARM systems, the first two systems were announced today: the Asus NovaGo 2-in-1 laptop, and the HP Envy x2 tablet.
[...] The Asus laptop boasts 22 hours of battery life or 30 days of standby, along with LTE that can run at gigabit speeds. HP's tablet offers a 12.3 inch, 1920×1280 screen, 20 hours battery life or 29 days of standby, and a removable keyboard-cover and stylus. Both systems use the Snapdragon 835 processor and X16 LTE modem, with HP offering up to 8GB RAM and 256GB storage to go with it.
Lenovo is expected to announce a similar system in the coming weeks.
Also at The Verge, Engadget, and TechCrunch.
Previously: Big Changes Planned by Microsoft - Windows 10 on ARM, Laptops to Behave More Like Phones
Windows 10 PCs Running on Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 to Arrive this Year
New Windows 10 S Only Runs Software From Windows Store
Microsoft Knows Windows is Obsolete. Here's a Sneak Peek at Its Replacement.
New App Allows Win32 Software to Run on Windows 10 S
Intel Hints at Patent Fight With Microsoft and Qualcomm Over x86 Emulation
Windows 10 S is going to become a "mode" rather than a separate "version" of Windows. And it should be able to be disabled for free:
With the next big update to Windows 10, version 1803, Microsoft is making some big changes to how it sells the software to OEMs. The biggest casualty? Windows 10 S—the restricted version of Windows that can only run apps from the Store—is going away.
Currently, Windows 10 S is a unique edition of Windows 10. It's based on Windows 10 Pro; Windows 10 Pro has various facilities that enable system administrators to restrict which software can be run, and Windows 10 S is essentially a preconfigured version of those facilities. In addition to locking out arbitrary downloaded programs, it also prevents the use of certain built-in Windows features such as the command-line, PowerShell, and Windows Subsystem for Linux.
For those who can't abide by the constraints that S imposes, you can upgrade 10 S to the full 10 Pro. This upgrade is a one-shot deal: there's no way of re-enabling the S limitations after upgrading to Pro. It's also a paid upgrade: while Microsoft offered it as a free upgrade for a limited time for its Surface Laptop, the regular price is $49.
[...] Brad Sams of Thurrott.com writes that, for Windows 10 version 1803 (codenamed "Redstone 4"), this is changing. According to leaked documents provided to Microsoft's partners, with version 1803, Windows 10 S will be a mode of Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Education, and Windows 10 Pro, rather than a distinct version. Switching Windows 10 Home S and Windows 10 Education S to regular Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Education will be free; switching from Pro S to Pro will continue to cost $49.
Can Windows 10 Pro S be downgraded/upgraded to Windows 10 Home?
Microsoft opens the door to better Windows on ARM apps
Microsoft is removing one of the big limitations of Windows on ARM this week by allowing developers to create 64-bit ARM (ARM64) apps. Developers will be able to recompile existing win32 or Universal Windows Apps to run natively on Windows 10 on ARM hardware. That means 64-bit app performance should get a lot better, as long as developers take the time to recompile.
Microsoft is now relying on developers to use its tools to improve its Windows on ARM efforts. That's a situation the software giant has found itself in before, relying on developers to create Universal Windows Apps for Windows 8, Windows 10, and Windows Phone apps for a variety of new touch-based hardware. It's hard to say whether 64-bit app support will really help move Windows on ARM into the mainstream, but it's certainly laying the ground work for a bigger push by Microsoft.
Also at TechRadar.
Related: Microsoft Document Details Windows 10 on ARM Limitations
VLC Becomes One of First ARM64 Windows Apps
Microsoft is no longer bringing x64 emulation to Windows 10 on ARM
Last December, Microsoft announced that it would bring x64 emulation to Windows 10 on ARM, a feature missing from the fledgling OS. Windows 10 on ARM already supported x86 emulation but making sure you have a 32-bit installer is not ideal. Initially, Microsoft brought x64 emulation to the Windows Insider Program, although you need a preview version of the Qualcomm Adreno graphics driver for some ARM machines that supported Windows 10 ARM.
Since then, Microsoft has released Windows 11, including an ARM version. For some reason, the company has now decided to quietly drop any intentions of integrating x64 emulation within Windows 10 on ARM. Inexplicably, it only confirmed this change in a Windows Blogs post where most people would miss it.
Windows Insider blog. Also at The Verge.
Previously: Microsoft Document Details Windows 10 on ARM Limitations
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 21 2018, @06:31AM
I always knew that Micro$eft would be against ARMs! Stand up and support your second amendment rights against the illegal monopoly from Redmond! Or, am I wrong?
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday February 21 2018, @08:50AM (2 children)
So it has come to this, Microsoft can't get proper GL drivers either. Gotta run Android to get accelerated GL on ARM. That and a lot of popular ARM SoCs only support the EGL subset and they probably do not want to rewrite Windows to support that unless Windows on ARM becomes popular.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by letssee on Wednesday February 21 2018, @09:27AM (1 child)
MS doesn't like OpenGL support. They prefer you use DirectX and stay firmly locked into their ecosystem.
They could easily support OpenGL ES (all smartphones support it, so the hardware is there). They wouldn't need to 'rewrite' windows to support OpenGL ES since windows itself doesn't use OpenGL internally. It's just an extra library.
MS doesn't really support OpenGL on windows either, the GPU makers do that. The OpenGL libraries are part of your GPU driver.
It is not in MS' best interests to support OpenGL, while it is in the GPU makers best interests.
As you can't (yet?) buy discrete gpus for arm chipsets, there's no party benefiting (financially) from creating a winodws opengl driver for arm.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Wootery on Wednesday February 21 2018, @10:02AM
At least Edge supports WebGL. They even give the option of using ANGLE to translate it into Direct3D (the same translation layer used by the Windows versions of both Chrome and Firefox).
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday February 21 2018, @10:27PM (1 child)
Microsoft didn't see the phones / tablets explosion before it happened. They arrived late to the game. Similarly to how Bill Gates said the internet was just a fad. Then Microsoft suddenly awoke and worked hard to embrace the internet. Just in time.
Microsoft didn't see netbooks. But they were able to successfully cripple them by resurrecting XP, and arm twisting OEMs using leverage of potential unfavorable Windows licensing if they didn't make only crippled versions of netbooks.
Microsoft didn't see ARM in time. This was obvious in about 2007 or thereabout. All of this is the result of one thing. Moore's Law. Hardware kept getting cheaper and cheaper for reasonable specs. At some point, when a device is under $200, then the price of OEM Windows becomes the elephant in the room. Linux on netbooks was first. But a polished commercially supported version, like Chromebook, was the inevitable result -- that again, Microsoft simply had and continues to have no vision to see.
A decade ago I was saying (in different forums) that Microsoft on ARM would not really succeed. The value in Windows is and only is the ability to run legacy applications. Developers are not going to port their apps to ARM without forcing the consumer to re-buy those apps again. So legacy software that CAN be ported has no economic advantage to consumers, only developers. And I posited that MUCH legacy software could NOT be ported to ARM. Some things are not fixed with a simple recompile. Older software is no doubt deeply wedded to the Intel architecture, for better or worse.
So Windows on ARM becomes largely a new platform, but an old ported platform, competing against younger nimbler platforms that are free of decades old design decisions. So you get things like iOS, Android, Chromebooks, etc. And many consumers find this is all they actually need in a mostly-web world.
To make matters worse, Microsoft's first attempt at ARM based Windows was a disaster because Microsoft marketed it as "Windows". So consumers expected Windows RT laptops to run legacy software. Uh, NO. So there were massive returns. It might not be so bad today, but still not so good I think.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday February 21 2018, @10:28PM
In its struggle for relevance, Microsoft opens up .NET, and SQL Server to run on Linux. And offers Windows Subsystem for Linux to run Linux software on Windows OS.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.