Desktop apps ported to Windows RT

MrGreencastle · Jan 11, 2013

I notice Bochs doesn't have networking. If a bittorrent client were to be compiled, would it have the same limitation? What about Chromium or Firefox?

MinhBao92 · Jan 11, 2013

thank you guys for explaining it for me. I will try asking the source code of the application from the network provider. Thank you so much for your effort.

netham45 · Jan 11, 2013

MrGreencastle said:
I notice Bochs doesn't have networking. If a bittorrent client were to be compiled, would it have the same limitation? What about Chromium or Firefox?

Bochs requires a kernel-mode driver (winpcap) for networking that we don't have.

pth6 · Jan 11, 2013

Do you think it would work with a PDF editor?
http://pdfedit.cz/en/pdfedit_windows.html

dawmail333 · Jan 11, 2013

Can I humbly recommend that we move to create a central repository of compatible software? I don't have the money to set up anything other than a Sourceforge site to attempt this, but I'm more than happy to take a crack at developing some package management for openRT. I doubt I could do it all by myself, but then again I'm pretty sure apt and yum had multiple developers too.

If we can centralise the downloads, we can signal to Microsoft we really care about this, concentrate development/porting efforts, and just make it easier in general to reap the fruits of our labours!

Much Love.

GoodDayToDie · Jan 11, 2013

@pth6: Might be possible. Bear in mind that Word 2013 (ships with Windows RT) is actually capable of importing and editing PDFs, as well as saving (exporting) them. The conversion takes a while and isn't perfect, but for simple documents it works fine.

pth6 · Jan 11, 2013

GoodDayToDie said:
@pth6: Might be possible. Bear in mind that Word 2013 (ships with Windows RT) is actually capable of importing and editing PDFs, as well as saving (exporting) them. The conversion takes a while and isn't perfect, but for simple documents it works fine.

I did not know Word could do that...
No need another software, thanks

My dream: an offline dropbox client

but I did found any open source project

ingramator · Jan 11, 2013

Python 2.7 would be awesome on RT, is anyone working on a port? What we need is a simple website with direct downloads because by the sounds of things this page is going to explode! I'm willing to contribute to simple recompiling and a distribution centre! Awesome work so far guys, keep it up!

djboo · Jan 11, 2013

dawmail333 said:
Can I humbly recommend that we move to create a central repository of compatible software? I don't have the money to set up anything other than a Sourceforge site to attempt this, but I'm more than happy to take a crack at developing some package management for openRT. I doubt I could do it all by myself, but then again I'm pretty sure apt and yum had multiple developers too.

If we can centralise the downloads, we can signal to Microsoft we really care about this, concentrate development/porting efforts, and just make it easier in general to reap the fruits of our labours!

Much Love.

I have a dedicated windows server that could be used. I shall have a play after work getting a simple 'marketplace' app running.

hoan999999 · Jan 11, 2013

Emulators?

Today I go on XDA and see this ... you guys sure have outdone yourselves...

Now if someone could just port/recompile every emulators existed, our lives on the RT would be so much more interesting (I'd do it myself, if I were a capable dev)

dawmail333 · Jan 11, 2013

djboo said:
I have a dedicated windows server that could be used. I shall have a play after work getting a simple 'marketplace' app running.

I've started refocussing my dev skills towards web development, so if you wanted me to try and knock something up, gimme a buzz.

fahdriyami · Jan 11, 2013

How about porting GPU-Z or CPU-Z to ARM?

lilstevie · Jan 11, 2013

dawmail333 said:
Can I humbly recommend that we move to create a central repository of compatible software? I don't have the money to set up anything other than a Sourceforge site to attempt this, but I'm more than happy to take a crack at developing some package management for openRT. I doubt I could do it all by myself, but then again I'm pretty sure apt and yum had multiple developers too.

If we can centralise the downloads, we can signal to Microsoft we really care about this, concentrate development/porting efforts, and just make it easier in general to reap the fruits of our labours!

Much Love.

I've started to assemble something to this purpose, it is taking a bit of effort though as I am trying to get it sorted so it can be used on desktop windows 8 grabbing correct binaries etc

killerduck · Jan 11, 2013

Unisgned Drivers

So , with these advances, does the future of installing unsigned drivers look promising ??
Anybody already having any luck with this ?

GoodDayToDie · Jan 11, 2013

@ingramator: Thank you for demonstrating why there's a restriction on posting to these forums (which I see you managed to get yourself over). READ THE THREAD BEFORE POSTING cripes it's only a few pages long! Short version: Python (any version) will be hard to port as it uses inline assembly.

With that said, if you, or djboo, or somebody else would like to build a hosting service for recompiled RT desktop apps, that would be fantastic! You're also more than welcome (no seriously, please do this) to get started on recompiling apps yourself. I'm currently working on Chromium... no promises, though, modern browsers are horrifically complex and often user platform-specific code. I know it *can* compile on ARM, but that doesn't mean it will do so gracefully under Windows.

@hoan999999: Working on it! Bochs (x86 emulator) is of course already ported, as is a Gameboy emulator. DOSbox is probably possible too. Qemu might be possible... it's a bit more complex but not unreasonably so. Other console emulators should be possible at least to a point; remember that Windows RT hardware isn't going to be as powerful as recent x86 systems, and emulators are CPU-devouring beasts. The best ones use dynamic recompilation, but that is *extremely* platform-specific. On the VMs side of things, ScummVM is being investigated, and might be portable.

GoodDayToDie · Jan 11, 2013

@killerduck: The same hack used for this "jailbreak" can quite possibly be used to put the kernel into testsigning mode, which will permit installing drivers with untrusted certificates. It might also be possible to bypass the driver signature check entirely... but I suspect that this hack, as currently implemented, won't do it. Windows on x64 already has no executable signature requirement (i.e. it's already like a jailbroken RT device) but it still enforces driver signatures (unless in debug or testsigning mode, which the RT bootloader can't set due to Secure Boot).

djboo · Jan 11, 2013

GoodDayToDie said:
With that said, if you, or djboo, or somebody else would like to build a hosting service for recompiled RT desktop apps, that would be fantastic!

Till the day job is done, I've got this running:

http://rtd.madgamedev.com/ArmApps/

for the time being, ill be adding anything i find posted here. I'll set up a proper submission thing once the app works (which i'll do tonight after work - i previously made a steam clone type thing that never saw the light of day so a lot of the code already exists)

after that, ill be going back to porting sharpdev - which is mostly making it work on .net 4.5 - not as simple as youd hope - especially with a project of that complexity.

dawmail333 · Jan 11, 2013

I had a fantastic idea, I just don't have a server to set it up on:

The idea would be to revolve everything around a Git server. Each repository on this server would be a separate app, and there would be a web interface that would let people sign up. Once they sign up, they can create a repository, add other people to the permitted list, and generate an SSH key to push files into the repository (creating a release). The web interface would also allow the user to download the apps, of course.

This would allow us to re-invent the wheel as little as possible, and half writes our package management for us (git pull will update changed files, just need to work out what to do with config files when we go to build the package manager)

If there's a concern about using Git (e.g. it's pretty POSIX-y), Mercurial might be a more manageable port, and can serve exactly the same purposes.

As a final note, Git offers great ways to modify the publishing process. An example would be if copyrighted content kept going up - we would be able to add an intermediate verification stage before the release got publicly published. Point is, it would handle so much of our work for us.

I'm off to bed, feel free to critique, move this to its own thread, or PM me as you see fit.

djboo · Jan 11, 2013

im currently working with the idea of KISS.

zips with an install batch and the store remembers the last version you downloaded and will check that theres no new ones when you open it up.

the obvious option would be for someone to port NSIS

ingramator · Jan 11, 2013

GoodDayToDie said:
@ingramator: Thank you for demonstrating why there's a restriction on posting to these forums (which I see you managed to get yourself over). READ THE THREAD BEFORE POSTING cripes it's only a few pages long! Short version: Python (any version) will be hard to port as it uses inline assembly.

I know mate I've read everything in this thread and that's why I asked if anyone was going to actually do it because it seemed like everyone dismissed it as too hard! I know my post count is low, I haven't used XDA for discussion before but I can assure you I am no n00b and I'm willing to help out! Good luck with porting Chromium a lot of people will rejoice if you are successful! I'm trying to get a couple of my networking apps going but they all require Winpcap which at this stage (as discussed on a couple of the other threads) isn't going to be easy

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