Torizon Microsoft Environment

A Microsoft Developer Experience in a Linux Ecosystem

Torizon comes with the Torizon Microsoft Environment. It offers a familiar, productive environment for those used to working in Microsoft environments, with tools like Visual Studio and .Net Core.

Powerful, familiar Windows developer environment

Seamless integration
with Visual Studio

Focus on your application,
not the Linux OS

RESEARCH

Internal Research and Development

ALPHA

Very early public Alpha Release

BETA

Public beta

STABLE

Stable Version

Current Status

Who is it For?

Windows
Embedded
Compact
Developers

Windows
Desktop
Developers

.Net and C/C++
Programmers

Motivation

Toradex continues to have many customers using Windows Embedded Compact (Windows CE), and Toradex will continue to support Windows CE for many years to come. However, for new projects, alternative operating systems are preferable. After an in-depth analysis of requirements and possible solutions including Android, Windows 10 IoT Core, and various RTOS and Linux distributions, we found that Linux is the best choice for most of our customers. However, one big drawback of the previous Yocto-based Linux offering was the lacking ease of use when compared to the Windows CE-based solution.

Torizon provides an easy-to-use, industrial-grade solution with modern features for connected and secure devices. It lets you focus on your application, rather than on the kernel and drivers. To make this simplified application development possible, a seamless integration of Visual Studio and .Net is required.

Visual Studio Integration

Visual Studio 2017 Extension available from the Visual Studio Marketplace

Currently supports C/C++
On-device debugging
Abstract container management

You can keep working in the familiar and modern Visual Studio environment. The VS extension takes care of packaging your application into a docker container and deploys it to a Toradex System on Module running Torizon.

On-device debugging makes code iterations and debugging simple.

Porting from Windows and Windows Embedded Compact

The Torizon Windows Environment does not provide a solution which is source code- or binary-compatible with Windows and Windows Embedded Compact (Windows CE). Depending on the application, considerable changes to the code may be required. The idea is to give Windows developers a familiar environment, so that they can be very productive without needing to become familiar with the inner workings of Linux. We are also investigating additional measures to easily move from Windows. If you have feedback, please let us know in our Community.

Compared to Windows 10 IoT Core

In 2016, Toradex released a Windows 10 IoT Core Technical Preview Starter Kit, and its progress closely. We concluded that, while Windows 10 IoT Core is an interesting operating system, Torizon with the Microsoft Environment will be a better fit in most situations. Microsoft’s own Azure Sphere also offers Linux on the device with a Microsoft developer experience.

Windows 10 IoT Core and Torizon provide many similar features, such as Visual Studio integration, .Net, OTA and Azure integration
Torizon lets you take advantage of the unmatched Linux ecosystem of drivers, libraries, frameworks and applications - and many of them are open source
Windows 10 IoT Core can only partly take advantage of the Windows ecosystem; it only supports Universal Windows Divers, which are currently limited
Torizon offers the option of running in real time as well as offering hardware-accelerated graphics on NXP^® i.MX-based SoMs, which Windows 10 IoT Core does not provide

Current Status

Toradex Labs offers you a glimpse into this work in progress. Many features mentioned on this page are not ready at this time. In the meantime, if you'd like to take a look or even give it a try, we would welcome your participation and feedback.