Windows CE [obsolete]

[kramlat]

anyone think of porting this FOSS project? ReactOS

[lucaspirolla]

ReactOS cannot be ported, simply because it's not multi platform. At least not the last there I checked.

[ghans]

Their ARM port is woefully incomplete and has been
bit-rotting for so long that i'd be afraid of releasing some
ancient curse by checking it out.

And it doesn't solve the problem that no Win32 ARM apps
exist , and that nobody is gonna port them.


ghans

[6677]

And it doesn't solve the problem that no Win32 ARM apps
exist , and that nobody is gonna port them.

*cough*
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthr ... ?t=2092348

Specifically it is for windows RT but is still mostly using the old win32 runtime on ARM. They have alot of their own issues and of course those binaries probably would not carry over to ReactOS on ARM but it shows it is possible.





Anyway. It would likely be cheaper for an individual company to port their application to run on raspbian that it would be to port Windows CE over to the pi.

[ghans]

I KNEW somebody would come up with THOSE
specific counter-examples.

Curse you !


ghans

[6677]

I KNEW somebody would come up with THOSE
specific counter-examples.

Curse you !


ghans

Sorry

My example was more to show that win32 applications can be run on ARM. But the technique used there is specific to ARMv7 and windows RT. Just because it works in this situation does not mean it will work for ReactOS on ARM. Hell these guys already have enough problems with non existant toolchains which would probably be even worse for a pi ReactOS port.

[kramlat]

actually that is more than I expected, I expected 0 apps on arm that are win32, that a hacked mingw for arm would be needed. as for a toolchain for reactos, it indeed does exist and it is similar to the android build system in its design, so a port would indeed be possible, as for probable, that is for time to tell, though I expect unlikely. And what does this have to do with the topic? you want win32 on raspberry pi, and I feel it is a bad idea, at the rate things are going, soon mac and linux will be the top leaders, not windows.

[gritz]

...you want win32 on raspberry pi, and I feel it is a bad idea, at the rate things are going, soon mac and linux will be the top leaders, not windows.

That depends entirely on the external hardware you want to use and the software that you wish to run. Pretty much everything here is Mac friendly as well as Windows, but linux? forget it. ARM? ditto. I'm probably not the average usercase, but then who is? There's more to the P.C. than networking, media consumption and internet. Apple's increasingly walled-garden attitude to third party developers (as well as their habit of breaking things with OS updates) doesn't make them terribly attractive for industrial applications, while most hardware manufacturers (barring makers of the odd printer, wifi stick and $5 audio dongle) still avoid linux like the plague. Same with software developers.

Oh, you forgot about Google. All these years the nerds have been hating on Microsoft (and not entirely without justification) and all the while we've been sleepwalking our way into a monopoly that makes the mob at Redmond look like Santa and his army of elves.

I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere, but I have no idea what it is.

[kramlat]

try teaching your granny how to use Windows 8 and you will see what I mean. "Where the #$%@ did the start menu go !?" lulz.
on the other hand, give them a KDE 4 system and they will recognise the kmenu as something very much like that start button remember. chances are if anyone sticks with Windows, they don't buy anything past Windows 7 if they are over the age of 50 because metro confuses them. If microsoft keeps this up, they will lose larger and larger customer bases. Oh and rumors are that apple is intending to do the same with its further advancements they started with lion and mountain lion which may alienate mac users. as for linux, it will always be linux. no sudden UI changes that we get surprised with. When they happen we know why and anticipate them in advance. besides there are a lot of desktop choices. ex-windows users can migrate to gnome, kde, or lxde. kde's setup wizard can even configure the keyboard shortcuts to mimic a mac's even, and top-style menubar can be added to plasma-desktop to use in a panel.

[gritz]

Such has always been the compromise between backwards compatibility / legacy support and taking advantage of technological advancement / embracing cultural change. It's impossible to do both, but when I saw Windows 8 customer preview I thought it was all some kind of elaborate joke...

I suppose that Linux (depending on distro) has an air of continuity about it, but ARM is rather "here today gone tomorrow" consumer focussed, so there's a bit of a basic incompatibility there. Of course, just because a processor is "legacy" doesn't mean that it will stop working of it's own accord, but it's harder to convince mainstream software developers to support a piece of hardware who's time has technically been and gone. I guess that's one of the fundamental differences between ARM and x86 and why there's still room for both.

[rurwin]

it's harder to convince mainstream software developers to support a piece of hardware who's time has technically been and gone. I guess that's one of the fundamental differences between ARM and x86 and why there's still room for both.

Yes, I dare say we will still get x86 software for a while yet.

To my mind nobody has yet developed the next technology, or if they have it hasn't achieved popularity. There was the Transputer, but it was rather ahead of its time. I saw a laptop the other day with dual 16 core Xeon processors. That's 64 hyper-threaded cores. (Yes it's a gimmick... for now.) The development environment for such a machine is not there yet; we cannot use 64 cores in any software other than web servers and mathematics engines. And all 64 of those cores contend for the same 64GB of RAM. The next step comes when we solve the problem of massive multi-processing; the hardware is there for the asking, if only we knew how to hook it up and use it effectively. Until then we're marking time, and it doesn't matter what technology we use to do that.

[6677]

Don't you mean the transmeta? From my understanding it was a 128bit CPU with 32 bit x86 emulation embedded as part of its microcode.

I saw a few windows XP tablets used it, used to be the equivelant on the Intel atom back in the day.

[rurwin]

No.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transputer

The modern successor is probably the Parallella: http://www.designspark.com/blog/a-close ... parallella

[Mika76]

Even though this topic seems to have been hijacked, I'm still interested how far dboling got with the BSP? Any news?

[bbking]

dboling, thanks for your commitment on WinCE!!!!!

Post deleted for rudeness and language. If you insist on promoting a dead OS, please make it polite.

Censoring what I wrote is OK as long as you censor rude words. But censoring because of your bias opinion (="prompting a dead OS") is definitely not in the interest of this forum/general information.


For those here (esp jamesh, tonyhughes and others), who ignorantly post their views on WinCE beeing an old/dead OS, get this:
WinCE is a real time OS, which is appreciated by lots of vendors in the automation business.
Microsoft releases every few years a new version, after CE 6.0 there came Windows Embedded Compact 7.0 and recently Windows Embedded 8 was released.
In case if you wonder, lots of things around you are manufactured on machines operated by WinCE.
Just to give you a few examples/vendors:
Siemens Touch Panel running WinCE for their HMI tool called WinCC: http://www.automation.siemens.com/mcms/ ... fault.aspx (go and find a few hundred other products with WinCE there)

B&R panel doing the same : http://www.br-automation.com/en/product ... panel-300/
B&R industrial PC: http://www.br-automation.com/en/product ... on-pc-510/ (click on operating systems to see CE 6.0 and XP Embedded [=Embedded Standard 2009] available)

See BECKHOFF's industrial PCs equipped all with WinCE here: http://www.beckhoff.com/english/industr ... 4315987734
Also, their embedded PCs have CE http://www.beckhoff.com/english/embedde ... 4315987759

In case, these names don't mean anything to you (why should they? otherwise you wouldn't say what you said repeatedly), you might know
EATON (go, find youself some devices with CE)
Rockwell Automation also offers their panels with CE, find a few here: http://ab.rockwellautomation.com/Graphi ... -Terminals
random datasheet here http://literature.rockwellautomation.co ... -en-p.pdf

If you want to look further, take a look at all the TomTom and other navi equipment, medical machinery and other things. CE costs something around 6$/licence for a vendor and they get all the sources afters signing an NDA.

Gee, these vendors must be all wrong when they use CE and probably don't have anybody in their company to tell them CE is outdated. Oh, yeah, tell them to rewrite their complete automation softwaare on linux because YOU think it is a better idea (there is VxWorks from WindRiver, which is a kind of linux running in kernel mode only. Costs heck of a money AFAIK).

So putting together a WinCE image is not a good idea for learning purposes in a 30 billion $ industry worldwide?!?! You better get more infos on this topic, even when the rasp has not quite the stuff to make it to be a choice of the industry - for learning it would be awesome, not to talk about running small apps for fun, for what I'd have to buy an industry PC for several hundred dollars.

By the way, I am a linux user on my desktop but still can see the advantages that CE offers.

[skeeta2011]

I would like to see one of these Pi's working in a Citrix enviroment. Since we are currently using overpriced dumb terminals (wyse c10le, V10le, Espirt, & HP) in our company to connect to our virtual Server 2008 R2. The HP terminals running an embeded version of XP and 7. The Espirts are running CE I believe and they Wyse are running ThinOS. I think the Pi could be a cheaper alternative abd how would something like that work?

[ghans]

@skeeta2011

A bit off-topic , but this has been discussed
from the very beginning on. Complete distros have been
released , tailored to this only purpose. Just search a bit.

ghans

[skeeta2011]

Thank you. I am new to looking at the Pi's. I've heard of them but never got around to getting one. I was hoping someone would point me in the right direction as I am trying to convince my IT manager to purchse one although he seems to think we need thin clients with 4GB of ram to run in the enviroment. Might as well buy desktops if spending $400 on them. Anyhow, thanks again.

[ingramator]

Haha the things "mods" say on this forum are hilarious. Just because this may be a haven for Linux faboys as ignorant as they come, doesnt mean you can ignore the presence of Windows Embedded Compact (CE). Windows CE has embedded market share of over 40%. It is the SINGLE most popular embedded OS family with Linux derivatives actually coming after it. The potential for .NET applications to run on the Raspberry Pi is absolutely enormous also given that the NT kernel is FAR more hardware independent (the hardware abstraction layers are starting to pay off) then Linux is and to be honest, it would have probably been a lot easier to port CE then some crappy Linux distribution that runs like a sick dog.

Just my 2cents bu seriously filtering out comments because they aren't in line with your "open source" philosophy is nothing more than ridiculous.

[jamesh]

Haha the things "mods" say on this forum are hilarious. Just because this may be a haven for Linux faboys as ignorant as they come, doesnt mean you can ignore the presence of Windows Embedded Compact (CE). Windows CE has embedded market share of over 40%. It is the SINGLE most popular embedded OS family with Linux derivatives actually coming after it. The potential for .NET applications to run on the Raspberry Pi is absolutely enormous also given that the NT kernel is FAR more hardware independent (the hardware abstraction layers are starting to pay off) then Linux is and to be honest, it would have probably been a lot easier to port CE then some crappy Linux distribution that runs like a sick dog.

Just my 2cents bu seriously filtering out comments because they aren't in line with your "open source" philosophy is nothing more than ridiculous.

Complete Rubbish from start to finish, and you had to add insults as well since you cannot actually produce any evidence. Laughable. CE has nowhere near 40% embedded market (if it has, can I have the evidence please, because EVERYTHING I have seem says CE is a dying/dead). The huge majority of embedded devices (set top boxes, TV's, mobile devices [Android] etc) run Linux. More embedded platforms are available for Linux than CE, it supports more processor architectures

CE on Pi will not happen. Live with it.

I'm not a LInux fanboy BTW, most of my embedded experience comes from other OS's. The VC4 GPU runs threadX, previous experiences with baremetal and a couple of others I cannot remember right now. Never had the need to use CE though.

Any more insults,and you are gone. Argument is fine (evidence would be nice), insults are not. And no comments have been filtered out btw, unless they are rude/insulting. Keep it civil (and accurate), then comments remain.

[GSerg]

Windows CE has embedded market share of over 40%.

Laughable. CE has nowhere near 40% embedded market (if it has, can I have the evidence please, because EVERYTHING I have seem says CE is a dying/dead). The huge majority of embedded devices (set top boxes, TV's, mobile devices [Android] etc) run Linux.

I believe you are talking about different markets here.
There is, I believe, almost no Windows CE on the end-user devices market, which covers set top boxes, TVs etc.
There is, however, quite a few Windows CE on the corporate devices market (e.g.), those you can see in any big store, and I'm yet to find a similar device that would run Linux.

[6677]

Windows CE has embedded market share of over 40%.

Laughable. CE has nowhere near 40% embedded market (if it has, can I have the evidence please, because EVERYTHING I have seem says CE is a dying/dead). The huge majority of embedded devices (set top boxes, TV's, mobile devices [Android] etc) run Linux.

I believe you are talking about different markets here.
There is, I believe, almost no Windows CE on the end-user devices market, which covers set top boxes, TVs etc.
There is, however, quite a few Windows CE on the corporate devices market (e.g.), those you can see in any big store, and I'm yet to find a similar device that would run Linux.

Anything that CE runs on will easily run linux.

[6677]

The potential for .NET applications to run on the Raspberry Pi is absolutely enormous.

Never heard of mono have you.....


.NET applications do run on the pi already.

[jamesh]

Windows CE has embedded market share of over 40%.

Laughable. CE has nowhere near 40% embedded market (if it has, can I have the evidence please, because EVERYTHING I have seem says CE is a dying/dead). The huge majority of embedded devices (set top boxes, TV's, mobile devices [Android] etc) run Linux.

I believe you are talking about different markets here.
There is, I believe, almost no Windows CE on the end-user devices market, which covers set top boxes, TVs etc.
There is, however, quite a few Windows CE on the corporate devices market (e.g.), those you can see in any big store, and I'm yet to find a similar device that would run Linux.

Statement was "40% embedded market share", which is clearly incorrect. Embedded market encompasses mobile phones, end user equipment, and industrial equipment. The first two are clearly much larger markets than the third, and in them Linux is dominant. That dominance is creeping in to the third area as well, due to cost - cheaper than CE - processor coverage - more processors run Linux than anything.

[malucullus]

At the risk of reviving a dead thread, does anyone have any more news on dboling's BSP port attempt? I've just gotten a RPi, but I've got quite a bit of experience with CE and ARM (and have the PB and related toolkits) and I'd quite like to help with any attempt that is being made.