You Can Now Run Windows 10 on the Raspberry Pi 3

[zaroth]

Wouldn't the license cost more than the hardware?

The site where they are sourcing the Windows ISO from seems sketchy, but apparently is legit...? [1] [2]

I guess the site is just an index of Microsoft hosted ISOs, so they are just providing a UI to generate the correct link, and you can check the link is actually going to Microsoft servers before downloading.

[1] - https://uup.rg-adguard.net/

[2] - https://www.ghacks.net/2017/03/13/adguard-website-download-w...

[withinrafael]

It's effectively emulating a Windows Update client to retrieve all the update bits. Then there's some hoop jumps to bake an ISO.

It's also important to point out Insider builds are free for use, with some restrictions, providing a cheap alternative. [1]

[1] https://insider.windows.com/en-us/program-agreement/

[asdff]

Are there any reasons to register windows 10, besides being able to change your desktop background? AFAIK the "this copy of windows is not genuine" message is benign.

[Fredej]

I believe Win10 license price scales roughly with processor power, so it might be fine.

[trumped]

licenses are about 5$ on ebay

[voltagex_]

uupdump.ml is another site that does the same thing.

[MagicPropmaker]

> Wouldn't the license cost more than the hardware?

That's an odd argument. Software has to cost less than the hardware that runs it? When you can get computers for $35 or less, that doesn't leave much of a margin.

[muterad_murilax]

Well, at least you'll have a Windows machine that isn't vulnerable to Meltdown or Spectre.

[trumped]

But can it run x86 software?

[buzzert]

Can anyone think of a good reason why you would want to run Windows 10 on the Raspberry Pi? I'm not trying to start a Windows/Linux debate, I'm just wondering if the wealth of Windows software is largely unavailable on ARM anyway, why not just run Raspbian anyway?

[WorldMaker]

For the joy of the hobby? Isn't that why most things get done on a Raspberry Pi?

Also, this is recent builds of Windows 10 on ARM that includes the x86 emulator to run a ton of traditional x86 Windows software.

(Not far from here is the rabbit hole of folks installing these same Windows 10 on ARM builds on Microsoft's Lumia 950 and 950 XL hardware. One such video I saw showed someone running Steam on it to grab and play Fallout 1.)

[petecox]

Testing? e.g. your main machine is Ubuntu|macos and you just want to fire up Windows 10 Edge.

That said, it seems unpowered for general usage. Perhaps MS might look at officially supporting sub-$US100 SBCs such as ROCKPro64.

[sixothree]

Because raspberry pi is just one of many single board computers; and they are getting more powerful by the day.

[aliswe]

Familiarity?

[runjake]

Caution: To do this you need to run a rat's nest of a batch file that runs a bunch of different code obtained from the web.

If you're going to try this, try on devices you don't care about. Or spend innumerable hours auditing code.

Pass -- for now.

[Crosseye_Jack]

Did they ever fix the SD Card issue? IoT-Core has been possible on the RPi3 for a while but none of my micro SD cards would boot the image but would happily run every other OS for the RPi I never bothered playing with it.

[Topgamer7]

This is different than the IOT version. It's just Windows on ARM.

[sebazzz]

Windows IoT has specific storage requirements if I recall correctly. This is regarding SD card speed.

[babyslothzoo]

Personally I think the Github page is more informative than the very brief article

https://github.com/WoA-project/WoA-Installer/blob/master/Doc...

[Uehreka]

Linus Tech Tips had an interesting video[1] last year about a Zotac micro-PC which costs something like $180[2]. It got me thinking, if the included Windows license cost $100 (though I'm sure they get it cheaper as an OEM) then the device would fall into the Raspberry Pi's "a computer for less than $100" range. When dealing with tiny cheap hardware, the cost of Windows no longer fades into the background (like it does with a $1000-2000 workstation) and becomes the most expense part of the device. The "free-as-in-beer"dom of Linux really stands out in these kinds of situations.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32g1ByDRzO0 [2] https://www.amazon.com/ZOTAC-Fanless-Dual-Core-1-10GHz-ZBOX-...

[voidwtf]

Microsoft was (nearly) giving away Windows 10 Home OEM licenses for SFF Intel Atom pcs for a short period of time. I cannot remember what this program was called to get a link for reference. Maybe someone else familiar with the program can throw in a link.

[p1necone]

I got perpetual free keys from university that I just keep moving to whatever PC's I'm using.

[exitcode00]

Wow, I checked but apparently the Pi 3 DOES meet the Windows 10 system requirements just barely. I wonder how fast the UI and Cortana run...

Win 10 Specs: Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster processor or SoC. RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) for 32-bit or 2 GB for 64-bit. Hard disk space: 16 GB for 32-bit OS 20 GB for 64-bit OS. Graphics card: DirectX 9 or later with WDDM 1.0 driver. Display: 800x600

Ras Pi 3: CPU: 4× ARM Cortex-A53, 1.2GHz. GPU: Broadcom VideoCore IV. RAM: 1GB LPDDR2 (900 MHz) Networking: 10/100 Ethernet, 2.4GHz 802.11n wireless. Bluetooth: Bluetooth 4.1 Classic, Bluetooth Low Energy. Storage: microSD.

[catdog]

> Ras Pi 3: CPU: 4× ARM Cortex-A53, 1.2GHz. GPU: Broadcom VideoCore IV. RAM: 1GB LPDDR2 (900 MHz) Networking: 10/100 Ethernet, 2.4GHz 802.11n wireless. Bluetooth: Bluetooth 4.1 Classic, Bluetooth Low Energy. Storage: microSD.

That's Model B, the Model B+ specs are a little bit better. But still only 1GB of RAM which I suspect to be the biggest bottleneck here. Storage also maybe but the Pi can boot from USB nowadays which might bring it to a good enough level.

[mises]

I wonder if this could be done with LTSB? It's definitely better-suited to applications such as rpi (embedded etc.).

[criddell]

I wonder if the server version would work better since it can be run without a GUI.

[babyslothzoo]

I wondered the same thing, I would expect performance to be not great

[pexaizix]

1 GHz on x86 != 1 GHz on ARM

[voltagex_]

The image is from Microsoft's server, but the "core package", including drivers, EFI binaries and a copy of Balena's Etcher tool - where do they come from?

[kup0]

Windows 10 is already quite slow on older or low-powered desktops (like AMD A4 series), I can't imagine trying to use it on an RPi

[ddalex]

This reminds me of an old joke: Q: Can you implement Communism in Switzerland? A: Yes, but it would be a shame.

[frabert]

Are the GPIO pins accessible via APIs too?

[eberkund]

Yes. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot-core/learn-abou...

You could actually run Windows on Raspberry Pi 3 for a while now, I think it just was just a beta image or something. I'm not entirely sure, but I know I was able to install Windows IoT core on my Pi 3B.

[ocdtrekkie]

My understanding is the GPIO APIs are unique to Windows 10 IoT Core, and aren't available on full Windows 10 editions.

[amelius]

I could use one to test my websites on IE ;)

[smcl]

I know you’re kidding, but Microsoft provide VMs you can use to do this: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v...

[josteink]

This looks neat, but hardly official. Let’s hope it doesn’t suffer a takedown-notice.

I might give this a try one day when I have time.

[chadlavi]

is "it runs win10" gonna be the new "it runs doom"?

[airstrike]

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.

[lloeki]

"I've made a robot that screams!"

http://gunshowcomic.com/513

[mermella]

I mean I have been trying to do this for a while so I can put all my service tools on it and connect them to gas dispensers I service

[chewyland]

It would be incredible to be able to run Windows on ARM, especially the Pi.

Wasn't Eben hinting at something last week?

[sixothree]

SBCs do not end with just the Raspberry Pi. Many are much more powerful and have greater potential. They can include NVME M.2 and more RAM. Etc Etc.

They should. Plain and simple.

[cevn]

Not gonna lie I bust out laughing when I clicked comments and saw this first.

[hateful]

I came here to post this, but was happy it was already here.

[tombert]

I literally LOL'd upon reading this.

While I personally hate using Windows, I have been trying to get family members to update their machines from Windows Vista, and they won't because "new machines are too expensive and their computer works fine", and despite my best efforts, I cannot get said family members to let me install a Linux on there.

A Raspberry Pi is cheap enough that I might be able to swing them to using something a bit more modern.

EDIT: Not 100% sure why I'm being downvoted for this. Clearly I didn't realize how slow Windows would be.