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Comment by dangrossman | Hacker News Reader

Windows RT has the desktop -- with the same task bar as Windows 7, littered with icons as it's always been back to Windows 95 if you so choose, plus the familiar shell apps like Explorer and Task Manager. All the Microsoft Office apps that come bundled with Surface also run in "desktop mode" -- they're not Metro apps at all.

The only difference between Windows RT and Windows 8 is that the only sanctioned way to install software on Windows RT is from the Windows Store, where all apps run on both CPU architectures.

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Re: "...is from the Windows Store, where all apps run on both CPU architectures."

From the OP quoted article:

"While Windows 8 and Windows RT can both run so-called “Modern” apps (formerly known as “Metro” apps) designed for touch-sensitive screens, even those apps must be converted, or ported, to Windows RT, and not all Modern apps appearing in the Windows app store have been ported over, compounding compatibility issues."

If you write an HTML/JS, it will always run on all architectures.

If you write a .NET/XAML app, by default it will be compiled to a CPU neutral IL that runs on all architectures (you can disable this and target a specific CPU architecture).

If you write a C++/XAML app, by default Visual Studio will compile different versions of the app for each architecture.

For the vast majority of Win8 apps, "converting" to ARM is just a cross-compile. It is only when you are doing very specialized things that you actually need to worry about the CPU architecture your app will be running on.

Does that mean if there's an open source application you like, all you have to do to get it on your Surface is open the source code in the latest edition of Visual Studio, recompile it, transfer the files to your Surface, and you will be able to install and run it?

Unfortunately no because chances are this open source code is using some parts of the Win32 API that are not supported by WinRT, so you would have to replace the invalid API calls by the new (probably asynchronous) ones... Maybe even completely rewrite the GUI if necessary.

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