Microsoft confident Windows on Arm could beat Apple with Snapdragon X Elite
theverge.com
theverge.com
I just bought a Microsoft branded laptop and to my horror it wouldn’t let me even create a local account without giving it an email. I gave it a fake one and now it pesters me every couple minutes to validate it.
FWIW, I installed Linux two days ago and could not decrypt the root volume because of a bug that doesn't load the keyboard driver early enough in the boot process to let you actually type in the password. So you're stuck with a blinking cursor asking for your password and no keyboard input. That's a real problem and why people come crawling back to Windows.
What distro? Is it a known issue?
The amount of denial around Linux's abhorrent UX in 2024 is staggering.
There are mailing list reports dating back a few years with many other users experiencing the same issue, the going theory is a bug in GRUB's USB keyboard drivers. No one has any idea why or how to fix it.
GP is complaining about having to supply an email address and the alternative is a system that in some cases is literally unbootable after a fresh install. But it's local accounts only so it's all good.
Did you try on different hardware, or on a different USB port, or with a different keyboard? Did you try a different distro? Which Window Manager was it? You mentioned decryption, what encryption was it, and how was that set up? By what method did you install the distro? Did you ever get it working? Could be a weird USB chipset on your motherboard.
It seems like an odd complaint, because most people don't have the problem you experienced.
I bought a Ryzen minipc and the wifi didn't work on it with a "fresh install" of Windows. I didn't just give up, I downloaded the drivers onto a USB stick and fixed it. It'd be nice if everything worked immediately, but unfortunately that's not the world we live in.
I'm defensive of Linux because without Linux we're trapped in whatever monetized and locked-down hell Windows and Apple are generous enough to provide us.
Sure Linux is not perfect but I'd still want it to succeed no matter how much effort it was to get a keyboard working. Also because I actually think Linux works really great for my purposes. I have to mess with it initially to get it working, but once it's working it rarely breaks and happily chugs on forever. No forced updates, no bullshit. I feel like I actually own my PC.
Just how I like it.
No matter what OS or hardware you buy, there's always issues. Blaming Linux overall because you had what I would definitely say is an uncommon issue that may even be due to your particular hardware seems... uncharitable.
User error or bad hardware. Move along, nothing to see here.
What about computers with no network connection available until you install a driver, can you just not use Windows on such computers anymore?
Although all of this isn’t necessarily worth using such a hostile OS. I work at an MSP and unfortunately Windows is the thing.
Not to mention they are clearly forcing email so they can key it against the MUID ads cookie.
Are newer Windows versions any better about software quality or these dark patterns? Given that MacOS already is free of such nagging and is already great functionally (like on battery life and performance), I am not sure what motivation there is (other than price?) to take a chance on future Snapdragon Elite laptops.
Managed languages will do just fine, their dependencies on native libraries, or typical compiled applications and libraries not so much.
Breaking compatibility on Windows has always ended up badly for Microsoft, as it goes against the culture they themselves created on the PC.
So it remains to be seen how much will keep running under emulation.
For example, it's typical that packaging tools only build packages for the platform they run on. So if you run the tool on Windows Intel, you get packages for Windows Intel. Want ARM? You need to run it on Windows ARM. Don't have such a machine? Tough cookies.
This is one of the problems that motivated me to write Hydraulic Conveyor, and so it can build packages for every platform portably including Windows Intel and ARM regardless of what OS or CPU you run it on. It knows how to download all the different runtimes for all the different OS/CPU combinations and make and sign all the packages in parallel, without any native tooling. It knows how to strip out native binaries that appear in managed dependencies, but don't match the target. It makes download pages that detect what CPU you have (on Chrome, Safari lies unfortunately), or for Windows an installer that detects the user's CPU and downloads/installs the right arch for the user. So it handles all these details and lets you release for hardware you don't have. But that's a fairly unique party trick. For every other system you're going to be reliant on multi-platform CI, which may or may not support every target (ARM Macs took a long time to come to GitHub Actions), and in which adding extra platforms increases the cost of every build - sometimes by a lot!
Apple relied not only on Rosetta but also their whole fat binary infrastructure, and they have sticks like notarization and carrots like the App Store to encourage devs to do the work. Also Mac apps tend to be well maintained and gaming is not so common. MS don't have the same advantages, so apps will presumably be running in emulation for a lot longer and have more compatibility warts.
I would say it was less of a culture and much more of a marketing/lock-in strategy that worked extremely well for decades. Firstly by being the most popular windowing environment that still ran MS-DOS apps, then being the only windowing game in town when they rug-pulled OS/2. That consolidation enabled Office to become dominant and that compatibility took over as the cudgel to keep the world locked to Windows.
Microsoft, for the first time, is betting against their own OS with the web version of Office. I can rent Office on a monthly basis and run whatever OS I please to access it (mostly). But if I no longer absolutely have to have an Intel based Windows machine that lock-in has to shift to Office online.
What processor you have will be irrelevent to them, they'll dump native app development as soon as they can because it's no longer part of their bulwark of defences, it's now an encircling trap they need to break out of.
Google Docs is okayish if all I need is Office 97/Works kind of experience, Office 365 I would probably place it around Office 2013.
Native code is strictly required for drivers, so I'd imagine the support isn't great for USB audio devices that use custom drivers for fancy features.
I'm deeply fascinated by this. Rosetta 2 is crazy impressive. If the Qualcomm/Windows works as well then a Windows ARM laptop could be genuinely interesting.
The reason everyone is in love with Apple silicon chips is that you get amazing perf and still get twenty hours of battery life.
Apples transition worked since they could force it. Developers targeting Mac users had to work on Arm optimized versions or be stuck working through Rosetta.
But if this doesn’t sell well enough for developers to care, why would you buy a device that only runs software through emulation.
And I imagine an arm steam deck is a pretty tantalizing product they'd love to make
But Valve could ditch Mac and it would barely be noticeable. Plus apple showed off tech similar to proton for Mac last year.
An ARM steam deck sounds interesting, but it would likely have to be after enough of the gaming market moved over.
Barf
RISC-V, perhaps.