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Microsoft Developing Windows for Low-End Machines
Jeff writes "According to the Washington Post, Microsoft is developing a version of Windows to run on old machines that currently run 95 or 98. It would be very similar to XP, but run faster on the older hardware. The move is to appease businesses and universities that don't want to scrap the old hardware. This is likely aimed at preventing Linux from gaining market share where MS is currently alienating their customers."
They aren't really making a faster version of XP for old machines. They are making old machines into dumb terminals that run things off a central server. It will look like XP in terms of interface, but isn't anything close.
My guess is that this won't work especially well with older apps anyway. That central server would also have be orders of magnitude faster if you want to allow multiple people the ability to run their apps at the same time.
What you might see is a situation in which small offices could either upgrade each machine for $500 and get way better performance, or purchase some high end server for tens of thousands of dollars and still be limited by the junk machines you have around. Also, any PC that old has to be near the end of it's life anyway. Any money you might save by converting these PCs will probably be lost when you have to replace all of the parts over the next year.
/. ++
I normally don't respond to AC's but in this case I'll make an exception...
Windows XP requires an absolute minimum of 64 MB RAM with corresponding minimums for CPU speed, graphics cards, hard drives, etc. This is before any applications are added (don't forget, IE is so tightly integrated into the system that it is always there). Windows 95 required an absolute minimum of 4 MB of RAM, etc., and you actually could remove IE if you wanted to (although, the 4 MB requirement assumed IE was still there). That is a 8 fold difference. I was being nice when I said it took 4 times the hardware.
So, I reiterate...exactly what crap am I being forced to run in my XP system that could be removed?
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Have you tried running KDE on a low-end machine lately? Or Gnome? And I mean a 100MHz pentium here with 16M of RAM. Modern Linux desktop is certainly not much of a competitor with Windows 95 on that hardware.
The Eiger is a mountain top in Switzerland, and notoriously famous for people dying while trying to climb the northern side. The first successful attempt took place in 1938, but two years early four people died tragically in front of the eyes of witnesses, who were watching the climbing from nearby views, the last one only a few yards away from a rescue team.
I thus don't think it's a good idea to name a project after a mountain top famous for failed and deadly attempts to finally climb it.
>So, I reiterate...exactly what crap am I being forced to run in my XP system that could be removed?
...
Well, if they are going to a terminal services based system, I'd start with:
- Direct-X and all the gaming video stuff
- all the 3-d stuff
- Many performance-related drivers
- APIs related to getting applications to inter-operate
- All generic APIs that aren't used for apps shipped with the OS, including legacy.
- Any of the networking components not directly related to the shipped apps.
I know this is slashdot, but please RTFA.
This isn't about making a custom version of windows that is more optimized so that it can run on old hardware. What they are doing is running the slow applications remotly, probably using citrix like technology (MS has their own version but I can't remember the name).
So what this probably is is a version of windows that cuts out a few OS features that affects performance, and then preconfiguring it so that it will run a pile of applications from a central server.
Of course, this is something that's always been easy to do on unix. Linux sounds better and better with every announcement comming out of Redmond these days...
Failing to learn from history dooms you to repeat it.
The kernel is actually not very fat. At a former employer, we did some experimenting with XP Embedded. It needed around 3-4 Mbyte for itself to run the kernel and boot our application instead of the usual graphic shell.
Now add a low-feature Explorer as in Windows 95 and you might get something that has memory consumption similar to Win98. Of course, you'd have to get rid of all services that are not necessary for a typical desktop. Otherwise, you would be back at a Win2000-like memory hog.
Microsoft will have to compromise here, some applications might not run on the "XP light".
C - the footgun of programming languages
Shit I got XP to work smoothly on a 300MHZ machine the other day. Just turned most of the services to manual mode and turned the graphics to performace mode. And it runs fine (won't install SPSS for some reason, but thats a whole nother story)
The Eiger is also one peak of 3 mountains in a mountain chaain: Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, which have an interesting story to them.
The names Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau roughly translate to Ogre, Monk and Young Woman (Or Virgin).
The story as told to me is that The Ogre is attacking the Virgin, but the Monk is standing betweee the Ogre and the Virgin.
Should Microsoft name their product after a monster & rapist?
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
The difference is that you can run a current, maintained Linux distro on old hardware (hint: use a light window manager). But the equivalent Windows version will be obsolete and non-maintained. Security updates are good, yes?
And as far as drivers go, Windows drivers tend to disappear (or become hard to find) after several years, and will probably never be updated. I'd much rather deal with open source drivers, once a driver is written it tends to be included with the Kernel source.
Microsoft's solution is thin clients. Well, I have run a 100MHz machine with 16M of RAM as a Linux X server with a relatively unimpressive desktop as the application machine which does run KDE and it's quite nice.
You can even play quite a few games as it turns out; stuff like LBreakout work fine. The fact is that an X terminal runs a much smaller footprint than the one proposed for Eiger.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
What are you talking about? Windows 2000 doesn't care about how old your BIOS is.
hello dear sirs my name is jamesh i are india (bihar) can u guide me install red had linux 9?
I'm a big fan of "thin clients." And while I think that Citrix is the current thin-client leader, Microsoft has done an EXCELLENT job with Windows Remote Desktop, that's built into Windows XP.
In fact, one reason we recommend Windows XP for many applications over, say Mac OS X, is the ability to remote into machines easily and with built-in software.
Best Buy can have you arrested
In fact, one reason we recommend Windows XP for many applications over, say Mac OS X, is the ability to remote into machines easily and with built-in software.
Yeah because higher costs, Microsoft lock-in, constant security issues and greater hardware difficulties are less trouble than installing VNC.
Don't get me wrong, I use XP too, but you're argument sounds pretty lame to me. I never messed with Remote Desktop because I've been using VNC for many years without a hitch.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Poor clueless Windows user.... http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050 429153115383
It's built-in, cheaper (than buying XP Pro), and SAFER.
There's a Remote Desktop Client for Mac OS X too if you still can't give up your PC.
Depends if you're comparing VNC on Windows or VNC on UNIX/Linux. On Windows, it has to this terrible screen scraping to find out what has changed before it can send it to the client. On UNIX, VNC is providing the framebuffer, so it knows exactly what has changed, when it was changed. The end result is VNC takes up loads of CPU in the host machine, and is slow, and misdraws often.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
I can't comment on the Mac (never used one) but please explain what you mean by "fast" when comparing Windows to X?
X is just the graphics subsystem, Windows is a complete desktop operating system - you are therefore not comparing like-for-like.
If you took, say, a Pentium II 450PC with 128MB of memory, the chances are that if you ran Windows 98 on it anc compared it to Linux with Gnome 2.x or KDE 3.x, then Windows would run faster - but that's because you're comparing a 7 year old OS with Linux desktop environments that have only come out in the last couple of years.
You can't make generic statements like this because you are comparing two different entities. Added to this, what about the fact that you might be using the proper graphics driver in Windows but a generic (not so good) graphics driver in X?
Simply looking at two systems side-by-side is not a fair comparison. I can guarantee that on the same PC, RedHat 6.0 will run a alot faster than Windows XP Service Pack 2 but it's a pointless test because one's 5 years older than the other.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Also, IIRC using MS's Remote Desktop Connection the system can still only service one acting user login at a time... if another user is already logged in, you might as well forget about it. Whereas with VNC (and especially the X protocol and XDMCP) a system can handle multiple simultaneous user and client sessions. Microsoft is still over 20 years behind in timesharing design...
It has nothing to do with design; it's purely a licensing move. Windows XP Home has no Terminal Services. Windows XP Professional allows one TS connection or console session. Windows Server in "remote administration" mode allows two TS connections plus a console session. To get more than two TS sessions, you need to by TS licenses.
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try."
It's already in beta - it's not vaporware...
> (and because terminal services does not control
> the root console of a windows server like VNC
> does)
Erm, yes it does. Click Start, Run and then type "mstsc.exe -console" and it takes over the console. The only thing it doesn't do is allow you to share the console with the person sitting physically in front of the server - to them the console appears locked.
Gentoo + fluxbox seems like a good option for you.
Maybe SuSE + fvwm
Debian + blackbox.
Seems the only wm you've ever seen/used is KDE or Gnome. Time to expand your horizons.
Yeah, normal VNC on Windows has pretty bad screen updates.
However the mirror display drivers that are out there work very, very well. Unfortunately they're not 100% so I don't really recommend going hog-wild on production systems but they work great - when they work.
UltraVNC & TightVNC both have mirror drivers, there probably are some other VNC branches that support it too. Though I never did get TightVNC's driver to work...
Moof!
Using the built in remote desktop IS faster, but it also leaves a lot of data in the local profile that I could do without. VNC is a single executable that does not require the use of the local host for permanent storage. It's a bit slow sometimes, but I don't like remote desktop leaving bits of information behind about my sessions.
"so I'm not seeing the savings for the schools."
Absolutely. I work in a school now and am rolling Linux out on servers. The first to go was the CD Server. We already had a CD server that runs on NT4 but requires an upgrade for 2000/2003. A downloaded Linux disk and a 2.4GHz P4 we had laying around sorted that. Cost saved? £800.
Next was print quota software that was £1200 to replace. Pykota and Postgres meant we could re-use old PCs and save the disposal costs that we'd pay otherwise.
The 6 NT servers are going and being replaced with Mandrake running on three dual CPU servers with all the student accounts beiong pushed onto Postfix/Squirrelmail saving 100+ exchange CALs. The administration side will stick with exchange for a while for the calendaring and the ability to generate NTConfig.pol files for policies via Samba.
At the end of this, we have saved a fortune that has allowed us to upgrade every PC in the school. There is no way, repeat NO WAY that a cut down version of Windows could have allowed us to do this as there would still have been licences somewhere along the way and the lack of hassle that Linux gives us means we can spend more time supporting the users.
XP is still on the desktops but I can't help but think that that may not be forever.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
Terminal services also uses encrypted communications where VNC is totally transparent. Linux has a great terminal services client and it is so much better than VNC over broadband it's not funny.
Don't get me wrong folks, OSS is great, and I would love to see the beast from redmond defeated, but Terminal Services/Remote desktop is a solution done right, give credit where its due.
The credit belongs to the creators of X11; RDP is just your typical "me-too" product from Microsoft, a decade late and proprietary.
VNC is something different from both RDP and X11, but VNC is useful and "done right" in its own way.
Terminal Services/Remote desktop is a nice solution period. Its fast, easily an order of magnitude faster than even TightVNC.
That's an API issue specific to the Windows platform: Microsoft just doesn't make the right hooks available. An X11-based TightVNC server actually performs quite well.
In fact, one reason we recommend Windows XP for many applications over, say Mac OS X, is the ability to remote into machines easily and with built-in software.
The real reason is that you have absolutely no idea how to use Mac OS X or another OS. Ten minutes with OS X and you'd know that you can use the built-in Apple Remote Desktop or SSH to remotely access the machine or even install VNC or Microsoft's Remote Desktop, which they ported to OS X.
Copland, Sagan, Butthead Astronomer: all these
were internal codenames that caused a ruckus.
ian