8 ms·

I set out to try the Desktop App Converter with some of my own apps the other day, on a laptop that had just been updated with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update

by cannam 10y ago

I set out to try the Desktop App Converter with some of my own apps the other day, on a laptop that had just been updated with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. Trouble was, the laptop had Windows 10 Home Edition on it and the Desktop App Converter won't run on that. Or so I deduced after chasing an obscure error message awhile. This seems to be because the converter needs virtualisation support, which isn't included in the Home edition. But it wasn't clear to me whether a £100 upgrade to Win10 Pro would be enough to permit me to run it, or whether I'd need to have Win10 Enterprise which doesn't seem (?) to be a thing a person can just go out and buy. (Something very 90s about all this worrying about the base OS licence level stuff.)

yuhong 10y ago
pro should be enough I think.
- jstarks 10y ago
  I helped work on the converter. That's correct; Pro is sufficient.
LyalinDotCom 10y ago
Good question on which edition supports virtualization, so i looked it up. There is a downloadable table on the compare editions page, its located here in PDF: http://wincom.blob.core.windows.net/documents/Win10CompareTable_FY17.pdf http://wincom.blob.core.windows.net/documents/Win10CompareTa... On there it indicates that Hyper-V comes with Pro or above. So basically only Windows 10 Home doesn't seem to have it.
- joosters 10y ago
  That same confusing document also lists 'Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V)' as a feature that doesn't exist on Pro. Is having Hyper-V sufficient? What actually is the 'App-V' feature listed? (It comes in a 'management' section, so it is unclear if it is about managing apps or just letting them run in the first place). Still very confusing...
  - WorldMaker 10y ago
    Hyper-V is sufficient. (Hyper-V is the virtualization hypervisor that runs virtual machines; App-V is an Enterprise-targeted application container management system/tool.)
KirinDave 10y ago
I wish MS was more clear that 90% of devs will be best served by the pro edition. HyperV is basically indispensable to a dev of most any kind given enough time.
- Alupis 10y ago
  > HyperV is basically indispensable to a dev of most any kind given enough time. Or any of the free alternatives that do the job just as well (or better) but don't require a special license version to run. VirtualBox and KVM/VirtManager come to mind, both work for free, VirtualBox will run on Windows computers, and both work on Linux machines. There are many others too.
  - KirinDave 10y ago
    > VirtualBox and KVM/VirtManager come to mind, both work for free, VirtualBox will run on Windows computers, and both work on Linux machines. There are many others too. I have both and have used both, and while VirtualBox is a servicable product and is free, it does not "work as well" in my experience as HyperV. Notably, even before Docker For Windows Beta, a hand-built Docker HyperV instance was notably faster than the VBoxHeadless variant. I'm not sure why paying money for a good virtualization package is bad. Certainly on the OSX side VMware is a truckload more stable and light years better at supporting any sort of task that has a display requirement.
    - pawadu 10y ago
      Yes, but that applies only to very limited headless machines. As soon as you want to use graphics or peripherals hyper-v will not suffice.
      - my123 10y ago
        Enable the RemoteFX GPU support in the VM then.
      - KirinDave 10y ago
megablast 10y ago
> Windows 10 Home Edition I don't miss Windows at all.
skrebbel 10y ago
I agree that this is completely nuts. FWIW i found a much cheaper pro license (around €40, iirc) by using some product comparison sites. Basically, even though it's 2016 you can actually buy software from webshops the way you'd order hardware or shoes, and many of these shops also sell Windows 10 Pro licenses. Somehow, they're often much cheaper than what MS sells in their own store. Completely nuts if you ask me, but ok. All you get after you pay is a text file with a license code, but that's also all you need. I still think it's insane that MS, who so badly want developers to come back to their platform, force you to be on Pro for a lot of useful stuff (including running the WinPhone emulator (!)). This disqualifies nearly all nice laptops you can buy at a good price point, unless you subsequently go through the trouble of manually finding, buying, and entering a Pro license like I did. If anyone from MSFT is reading this: fix this! I can't walk into a store, buy some nice cheap Asus convertible, and just start coding Windows Mobile apps, and that's stupid. Your OS is getting better again, WSL is promising, we all love how badass you've been with cross platform .NET and VS Code and getting Node.JS to work great on Windows, but you're really scaring people away here.
- MichaelApproved 10y ago
  I'd worry about those licenses being real. Are the places you found them reputable? I'd be willing to be they are not.
  - reacweb 10y ago
    Where I work, the PC are bought with Windows preinstalled, the disks are wiped and Windows enterprise is installed. Maybe there is a market to sell and buy the unused original license ??
    - wila 10y ago
      The "unused original license" is an OEM license. An OEM license lives and dies with the hardware it comes with. Quite often it is even tied to the hardware, so you cannot even install it on PCs of a different brand and/or model.

by cannam 10y ago

yuhong 10y ago

pro should be enough I think.

jstarks 10y ago
I helped work on the converter. That's correct; Pro is sufficient.

LyalinDotCom 10y ago

Good question on which edition supports virtualization, so i looked it up. There is a downloadable table on the compare editions page, its located here in PDF: http://wincom.blob.core.windows.net/documents/Win10CompareTable_FY17.pdf http://wincom.blob.core.windows.net/documents/Win10CompareTa... On there it indicates that Hyper-V comes with Pro or above. So basically only Windows 10 Home doesn't seem to have it.

joosters 10y ago
That same confusing document also lists 'Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V)' as a feature that doesn't exist on Pro. Is having Hyper-V sufficient? What actually is the 'App-V' feature listed? (It comes in a 'management' section, so it is unclear if it is about managing apps or just letting them run in the first place). Still very confusing...
- WorldMaker 10y ago
  Hyper-V is sufficient. (Hyper-V is the virtualization hypervisor that runs virtual machines; App-V is an Enterprise-targeted application container management system/tool.)

KirinDave 10y ago

I wish MS was more clear that 90% of devs will be best served by the pro edition. HyperV is basically indispensable to a dev of most any kind given enough time.

Alupis 10y ago
> HyperV is basically indispensable to a dev of most any kind given enough time. Or any of the free alternatives that do the job just as well (or better) but don't require a special license version to run. VirtualBox and KVM/VirtManager come to mind, both work for free, VirtualBox will run on Windows computers, and both work on Linux machines. There are many others too.
- KirinDave 10y ago
  > VirtualBox and KVM/VirtManager come to mind, both work for free, VirtualBox will run on Windows computers, and both work on Linux machines. There are many others too. I have both and have used both, and while VirtualBox is a servicable product and is free, it does not "work as well" in my experience as HyperV. Notably, even before Docker For Windows Beta, a hand-built Docker HyperV instance was notably faster than the VBoxHeadless variant. I'm not sure why paying money for a good virtualization package is bad. Certainly on the OSX side VMware is a truckload more stable and light years better at supporting any sort of task that has a display requirement.
  - pawadu 10y ago
    Yes, but that applies only to very limited headless machines. As soon as you want to use graphics or peripherals hyper-v will not suffice.
    - my123 10y ago
      Enable the RemoteFX GPU support in the VM then.
    - KirinDave 10y ago

megablast 10y ago

> Windows 10 Home Edition I don't miss Windows at all.

skrebbel 10y ago

I agree that this is completely nuts. FWIW i found a much cheaper pro license (around €40, iirc) by using some product comparison sites. Basically, even though it's 2016 you can actually buy software from webshops the way you'd order hardware or shoes, and many of these shops also sell Windows 10 Pro licenses. Somehow, they're often much cheaper than what MS sells in their own store. Completely nuts if you ask me, but ok. All you get after you pay is a text file with a license code, but that's also all you need. I still think it's insane that MS, who so badly want developers to come back to their platform, force you to be on Pro for a lot of useful stuff (including running the WinPhone emulator (!)). This disqualifies nearly all nice laptops you can buy at a good price point, unless you subsequently go through the trouble of manually finding, buying, and entering a Pro license like I did. If anyone from MSFT is reading this: fix this! I can't walk into a store, buy some nice cheap Asus convertible, and just start coding Windows Mobile apps, and that's stupid. Your OS is getting better again, WSL is promising, we all love how badass you've been with cross platform .NET and VS Code and getting Node.JS to work great on Windows, but you're really scaring people away here.

MichaelApproved 10y ago
I'd worry about those licenses being real. Are the places you found them reputable? I'd be willing to be they are not.
- reacweb 10y ago
  Where I work, the PC are bought with Windows preinstalled, the disks are wiped and Windows enterprise is installed. Maybe there is a market to sell and buy the unused original license ??
  - wila 10y ago
    The "unused original license" is an OEM license. An OEM license lives and dies with the hardware it comes with. Quite often it is even tied to the hardware, so you cannot even install it on PCs of a different brand and/or model.