NETworkManager for Windows ARM

[xavidpr4]

Happy new year!

Well, title is self explanatory. I think it would be nice to start having this incredible software natively for Windows ARM too. More and more laptops are being announced with new Qualcomm processors and in my company we are starting to evaluate this new architecture to add them in the approved hardware inventory. Additionally I am personally looking for moving from old x86 ultrabook to these new ones as the battery endurance is much much better :-D.

Most probably some of the features won't be available yet because it integrates with third party features that might be not yet converted, but most of the features that use OS tools I think will work.

Thx!

[BornToBeRoot]

Hi @xavidpr4,

it should already be possible to run NETworkManager on ARM devices, at least with Windows 11 24H2 (it's also optimized for Qualcomm 😉):

How emulation works on Arm
Emulation makes the rich ecosystem of Windows apps available on Arm, so you can run the apps you care about without any modifications to the app. Emulation is transparent to you and is part of Windows; it doesn't require any extra components to be installed.

Windows 11 on Arm supports emulation of both x86 and x64 apps. Performance is enhanced with the introduction of the new emulator Prism in Windows 11 24H2. Windows 10 on Arm also supports emulation, but only for x86 apps.

Prism
Prism is the new emulator included with Windows 11 24H2. Compared to previous emulation technology included in Windows, it includes significant optimizations that improve the performance and lower CPU usage of apps under emulation.

Prism is optimized and tuned specifically for Qualcomm Snapdragon processors. Some performance features within Prism require hardware features only available in the Snapdragon X series, but Prism is available for all supported Windows 11 on Arm devices with Windows 11 24H2.
See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/apps-on-arm-x86-emulation

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Unfortunately I don't have a Windows on ARM device available to test this myself.
According to #1314 (comment) it should also be possible to build a native ARM binary, but if the emulator runs well enough, I'm not sure whether it's worth investing the time right now.