D&C GLug - Home Page

[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]

Re: [LUG] RPi/OpenElec

 

On 07/06/16 17:51, Tremayne, Steve wrote:
> So, from that I got:
> 
> "Windows 10"..."It's like witchcraft."
> 
> ;)
> 
> Do you think Windows 10 IoT Core on a RasPi would do the screen cast magickery too?
> 
> (Or was that what you were explaining?)
> 
> I've not put W10IoT on my Pi, so I've never tried it, so I am assuming it's still 
> a GUI version, unlike Windows Server Core (CLI only)


Haha, steady on there - Win10's screencasting abilities *are* like
magic: the rest of it is business as usual really. Another predictable
steady increment of Redmond's cashcow OS. Just like people lost it when
the original Win8 came out - which was a terrible piece of work,
especially compared to the old Win7 everyone seems to love so much -
Win10 has had a rough inception. The rule of thumb as ever is give
Microsoft the best part of a year to bed things in and for the third
party tools ecosystem to mature and a calm, rational person can
immediately see the genuine benefits to the upgrade. Win8.1 for example
was a giant leap over the half-baked Win8 and with a few tweaks to
privacy, Classic Shell to sort out that nasty live tile menu and a
little bit of prodding, was a fine OS in it's own right, and superior to
Win7 in every way.

Win10 - nearly a year out of RC now - is in the same boat. The code has
really matured, features levelled out and once again, with a few handy
third party tools and a powershell script or two, you've got by far the
best OS Microsoft have managed yet (and I'm not particularly damning
with faint praise for once). Sure, out of the box in privacy-raping mode
it's horrid and I despise Microsoft for aggressively pushing it in it's
default crippled home user mode to millions of casual end users who just
don't know any better but in that regard they're no worse than Apple,
Google, Facebook and every other major software vendor who have their
fingers in everything you own and track everything you do. Despicable I
know, but that's the (crappy) reality we unfortunately deal with in
today's internet ecosystem.

For techies like us though, Win10 Pro plus a few tools to kneecap the
less desirable "features" is easily attainable (I can go from out of the
box shitware to a perfectly usable and spyware free system in about
10-15 minutes and a couple of reboots max) Win10 has now reached
critical mass and is more than ready for primetime. Let's not forget it
took MS years and up to service pack 3 before WinXP got to this point...

And finally, now Win10 has adopted a rolling release (like Arch or
Debian Sid, Kali, Suse Tumbleweed, etc) let's not forget that sometime
this month Microsoft will drop "Redstone", which is for all intents and
purposes Win10 SP1. It'll include all the feature roll-ups previously
only available to the Insider Previews like the Ubuntu bash shell
feature. Yes, seriously. I've just finished sorting a client's brand new
Macbook Air with OSX 10.11 and it's sat right next to a much older Dell
Inspiron with Win10 Pro on it - it's not even a competition and even
with the far inferior hardware, I'd take the Dell/Win10 system over the
Mac in a heartbeat. That being said, now the bootcamp drivers have
finally been fixed up, Win10 on the Mac would make a pretty compelling
on-the-road laptop for travelling about with day to day and getting
actual work done.

As for Win10 IoT, that's a vastly different beast and no, it definitely
can't do anything even remotely useful, full stop. It doesn't have a GUI
at all and is strictly an embedded platform for developers to test with
(I don't think it really has a future to be honest). Literally the only
thing you can do after setting up Win10 IoT on a RPi is switch to a
Windows machine and fire up Visual Studio. I'm not joking. Even
deploying some crappy pre-done projects (like an alarm clock) means
deploying it from VS. Avoid.

Linux (especially Open/Libre ELEC or your own choice of ARM-based distro
+ Kodi) on the RPi for the rendering backend and Win10 on the casting
client (i.e., the laptop in your front room, probably connected to
another Linux-powered media store/NAS for serving content) is where it's
at currently.

I'm as surprised as anyone!

Cheers
-- 
The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG
https://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list
FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq