It’s not widely known that Microsoft has been in the embedded business for quite some time now with their various versions of Windows tailored specific for that purpose. Not that Microsoft has a particular stellar reputation in this field however as most of the time people find out that something was running Windows is when they crash spectacularly. However if you wanted to tinker with it yourself the process to do so was pretty arduous which wasn’t very conducive to generating much interest in the product. Microsoft seems set to change that however with the latest version of Windows 10 to run on the beefed up Raspberry Pi 2 and, best of all, it will be completely free to use.
Windows has supported the ARM chipset that powers the Raspberry Pi since the original 8 release however the diminutive specifications of the board precluded it from running even the cut down RT version. With the coming of Windows 10 however Microsoft is looking to develop an Internet of Things (IoT) line of Windows products which are specifically geared towards low power platforms such as the Raspberry Pi. Better still the product team behind those versions of Windows has specifically included the Raspberry Pi 2 as one of their supported platforms, meaning that it will work out of the box without needing to mess with its drivers or other configuration details. Whilst I’m sure the majority of users of the Raspberry Pi 2 will likely stick to their open source alternatives the availability of a free version of Windows for the platform does open it up to a whole host of developers who might not have considered the platform previously.
The IoT version of Windows is set to come in three different flavours: Industry, Mobile and Athens; with a revision of the .NET Micro framework for other devices that don’t fall into one of those categories. Industry is essentially the full version of Windows with features geared towards the embedded platform. The Mobile version is, funnily enough, geared towards always-on mobile devices but still retains much of the capabilities of its fully fledged brethren. Athens, the version that’s slated to be released on the Raspberry Pi 2, is a “resource focused” version of Windows 10 that still retains the ability to run Universal Apps. There’ll hopefully be some more clarity around these delineations as we get closer to Windows 10’s official release date but suffice to say if the Raspberry Pi 2 can run Universal Apps it’s definitely a platform I could see myself tinkering with.
These new flavours of Windows fit into Microsoft’s broader strategy of trying to get their ecosystem into as many places as they can, something they attempted to start with the WinRT framework and have reworked with Universal Apps. Whilst I feel that WinRT had merit it’s hard to say that it was successful in achieving what it set out to do, especially with the negative reception Metro Apps got with the wider Windows user base. Universal Apps could potentially be the Windows 7 to WinRT’s Vista, a similar idea reworked and rebranded for a new market that finds the feet its predecessors never had. The IoT versions of Windows are simply another string in this particular bow but whether or not it’ll pan out is not something I feel I can accurately predict.
