Microsoft has released the Windows 10 IoT Core for the Raspberry Pi 2. It retails for 75$ without the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, or $115$ with it. Apart from the optional Pi, it is basically a pack of electronic components and an SD card that's pre-loaded with Windows 10 IoT. It is available at the Adafruit store, although both packs are currently out of stock… because of course they are.
Beyond jumper wires, a case, breadboards, resistors, LEDs, switches, and sensors, the pack also comes with a WiFi module. Interestingly, Adafruit claims that this will be the only WiFi adapter for the Raspberry Pi 2 that's supported by Windows 10 IoT. This is weird, of course, because Windows is kind-of the go-to when it comes to driver support. It makes me wonder whether Microsoft changed anything under the hood that affects hardware compatibility and, if it did, whether Windows 10 IoT loses its major advantage over Linux and other OSes in this form factor.
The kit is currently sold up, but retails for $75, or $115 with a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B.
Seeing as Linux supports more
Seeing as Linux supports more hardware currently than Windows does, saying Windows has an advantage is a bit.. far fetched.
Windows has no advantage on
Windows has no advantage on the hardware that comprises the Raspberry Pi 2, as the Linux based software ecosystem is what the IOT market has used even before the acronym IOT was coined by some marketing monkeys hacking randomly at some keyboards! The M$ ecosystem and its cloud is all about the personal metrics gathering, and who’s to know just what Key-Logger/other methods may be baked into M$’s IOT(internet of telemetry) OSs, desktop or otherwise! Those M$ binary blobs will most certainly have some unwanted functionality that is shoved down users throats. It’s much better to remain on the ecosystem that allows the user complete control over their OS, and not trust M$’s cloud tentacles 3E’s to work its way into your IOT devices!
Yea, but how do you get the
Yea, but how do you get the unwashed masses on board?
Windows has better driver
Windows has better driver support on x86 because the manufacturers of the devices makes those drivers. The manufacturers often do not make anything for Linux. In those situations you get support when someone else makes a driver to support those devices on Linux. Those usually are open source.
The situation is different on ARM architecture because the x86 Windows drivers won’t work there. Linux clearly got the better situation here. Open source drivers can be modified and compiled to work on ARM. Windows 10 IoT has (maybe) some thousands of users – not much incentive for the manufacturers to publish ARM-versions of their drivers for that platform.