For a long time now, Microsoft has been trying to get Windows running on the ARM platform and to make sure that this operating system and its applications can be used on it in the same way as today on AMD and Intel processors. Notebooks with Windows 10 and 11 have been on the market since 2018, although only this year with Snapdragon X Elite processors can they be said to be a serious “threat”. But all the time there is a strange situation where ARM Windows cannot normally be found outside of pre-installed computers.
Although Windows 10 and Windows 11 for ARM computers are not as limited and closed a platform as the former Windows 8 RT on tablets, they still do not work in the way that is normal in a PC – that you can get some hardware, download the Windows media separately, install it and that’s it it works. ARM Windows, on the other hand, is normally only available pre-installed on the computer, which can be quite a problem if, for example, the SSD breaks and you need to install from scratch.
The options for getting Windows on some other ARM board or perhaps a Raspberry Pi were quite tortuous. You had to register for the Insider program (so it was only a trial version, not a stable version) and even then you could not directly download installation images (ISO), they can be directly made into installation media. Microsoft only offered virtual disk images for virtualization this way.
But now Microsoft is officially releasing Windows 11 for ARM as a separate product with everything. And that includes the installation media. So we don’t know if there will be physical sales somewhere, nowadays you usually download the system via the Internet and then make an installation USB “flask” yourself from the ISO. But exactly these ISO files with installation media can now be downloaded for the first time after the ARM version of Windows 11, you can find them here.
The image can be used for a clean install on a virtual machine (this might be of interest to Apple PC users, or ARM Windows laptop users who want to have another instance of Windows virtually via Hyper-V), on physical hardware, or from run the installation (especially the upgrade) directly from running Windows.
This version released to the public is specifically Windows 11 2024 Update (so-called “24H2”), installer images of older versions are probably not available.
The operating system is of course one thing, another is whether the ARM hardware you try to get it on will run. Usually, you might be missing drivers for various devices, graphics card, etc. According to some information, some drivers for older ARM notebooks with Snapdragon processors are missing directly on the media, so it is necessary to manually add them to the media before installation. However, the current Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite and Plus processors are supposed to work “out of the box”, the installation ISO can be used for them as is.
With this perhaps at first glance symbolic step, perhaps ARM could slowly become a more standard platform where the necessary drivers will eventually be available and the principle known from mobile phones, where the operating system and device are Siamese twins, will no longer apply. And instead, a more flexible and free mode known from classic PCs on the x86 platform.
The current release of the images after their long absence may be related to the fact that until now Windows on ARM was actually Windows on Snapdragon – MS collaborated with Qualcomm on their development and in return it had many years of exclusivity. But it is supposed to end soon or has already ended. It is therefore possible that the unavailability of installation media and images had such a cause.
Hopefully, with this, the approach to hardware will also change and Windows will start to be supported on a wider range of ARM processors, or at least run on them, if it is no longer directly official support. Whether it’s hardware from Apple, ARM processors for servers (which should also be able to be used as workstations), or the Raspberry Pi, which is now, except for its rather limited GPU, a slower but relatively mature computer that can have 8 GB of RAM and a full-fat NVMe SSD (albeit again with limited performance).
Sources: Microsoft (1, 2), VideoCardz
Source: www.cnews.cz
