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Comment by withinrafael | Hacker News Reader

This is Microsoft's second go at a developer-focused ARM kit. You may recall the first was called the Snapdragon Developer Kit [1] and was a miserable machine. It appears Microsoft has already pulled it from the Microsoft Store [2].

There is no other supported desktop/CI/etc. solution for Windows on ARM. (Mac mini with Parallels/VMware is a popular unsupported alternative. It may still be your fastest.)

Seems like a truly decent machine (ordered one) but I'm not sure if there's remaining appetite for Windows target-specific development. After years and years of development platform missteps and PC usage pattern changes, I fear web (electron, etc.) has become good enough for Windows users.

[1] https://developer.qualcomm.com/hardware/windows-on-snapdrago...

[2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/ecs-liva-mini-box-qc710-de...

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Snapdragon Developer Kit was built with a "cost above all" mandate, $219 target pricing but it just wasn't powerful enough.

> There is no other supported desktop/CI/etc. solution for Windows on ARM. (Mac mini with Parallels/VMware is a popular unsupported alternative. It may still be your fastest.)

Azure cloud instances are also an option.

> but I'm not sure if there's remaining appetite for Windows target-specific development

I think that there is. If there isn't, Windows has bigger problems...

> Azure cloud instances are also an option.

I couldn’t find ARM with windows, can you help?

It's in Public Preview, I believe. I was able to create one relatively easily. https://imgur.com/a/bHXcNTz

That doesn't show desktop Windows on an ARM VM.

It is desktop Windows afaik. Server Windows is not quite publicly available yet (on arm64).

I feel Microsoft is in a similar position to it’s windows phones in regards to ARM.

Additionally they don’t have a system like Rosetta 2 to help with translation, a LOT of windows apps are x32/64 based, and there has to be an incentive for devs to make the switch, Apple faced this issue when moving from PPC, they used I believe Carbon to help, and over time took carbon off and forced devs to update to apples current architecture at the time.

Electron unfortunately does seem like the potential way forward for apps, not just because of Windows and their handling of ARM, but it’s also potentially cheaper to develop against as its multi platform, 1Password is a prime example of this, and outside of the hardcore audience like us, they won’t notice the increased resource use of electron.

Microsoft has proven however electron can be good, see Visual Studio Code, plus with the advent of chrome os gaining traction, it’s likely we may head into a web first world, outside a niche subset of users.

Yes they have it indeed, Arm64EC.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/arm64ec

> and there has to be an incentive for devs to make the switch

Why make the devs switch? It would be much more in the spirit of Microsoft (opposed to the common spirit of Apple and GNU/Linux) to encourage to develop parallelly for ARM, too.

The switch from 16 to 32 bit Windows was "support running 16 bit applications still for a long time". Similarly for 32 to 64 bit Windows (32 bit applications are still perfectly supported). This is in contrast to how how it is typically done on GNU/Linux (distributions typically make it hard to support 32 and 64 bit at the same time) or what Apple typically does (only support the old architecture only for a short time and nudge developers heavily to do the switch).

> Additionally they don’t have a system like Rosetta 2 to help with translation

They do. I'm not sure it covers x86-64 yet, but it does x86.

x86_64 is covered since Windows 11

Electron is on the way out on Windows as they move to WebView2. https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview...

I like the idea of WebView2, but it seems to be abandonware. They don't fix the most obvious bugs you run into immediately when trying it out. https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/WebView2Feedback/issues/229...

It's not abandonware... it's a core component to all of Microsofts desktop apps starting with the new Teams and Outlook.

> but it just wasn't powerful enough.

4 GB of RAM and eMMC would never be comfortable for Windows development. I have a very small laptop like that and I'd never think of using it to do .NET development on it. OTOH, for Python-backed web apps and API-based services, it's quite sufficient.

That devkit wasn't intended to be a development but a testing device.

But then they made a big mistake: putting Windows Home on it instead of Pro... so that it didn't have RDP...

I am working on the Windows on Arm project at Linaro, enabling various OSS programs for WoA (currently working in Blender), there is some appetite :)

Feel free to ask questions!

How long do you think it will be until many things are ported to arm?

Define 'many'! Several large projects that may well be prerequisites/dependencies (ie, Python, CMake, .NET) are available natively, so most projects should be able to be ported with relative ease.

I remember when that came out. Shocking it's already replaced.

Anyone who is still interested can buy one on eBay straight from Microsoft's eBay Outlet (which surprisingly exists):

https://www.ebay.com/itm/255784903190

> There is no other supported desktop/CI/etc. solution for Windows on ARM.

What about Surface Pro X? Not desktop enough?

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/surface-pro-arm-ap...

>> but I'm not sure if there's remaining appetite for Windows target-specific development

I mean.....video games are still huge?

In general yes, however not sure windows on arm is a target platform for game devs?

I am hearing great things about the Lenovo Thinkpad X13s (both performance and battery-wise), and hope more ARM models will follow.

> I fear web (electron, etc.) has become good enough for Windows users.

You seem to be talking without regard to the actual facts. Plenty of programming languages offer first class Windows support, including:

Go, Rust, Zig, D, Nim, Python, PHP, Ruby, and others.

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