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Microsoft: Only the Latest Version of Windows Will Support New CPU Generations (windows.com)
Joe_Dragon sends news from Microsoft about how the company will support Windows now and in the future. The company says PCs built with Intel's Skylake chip, and other new architectures in the future, will require the latest version of Windows for support. This doesn't take effect right away; Windows 7 and 8.1 will be supported on older chips until their planned end-of-life dates, in 2020 and 2023 respectively. They'll also be supported on a list of current Skylake devices for the next 18 months. After that, only the latest version of Windows will support integration between the operating system and new CPU features. "For example, Windows 10 will be the only supported Windows platform on Intel's upcoming 'Kaby Lake' silicon, Qualcomm's upcoming '8996' silicon, and AMD's upcoming 'Bristol Ridge' silicon." Microsoft also mentioned that for new supported systems, the company will "ensure all drivers will be on Windows Update with published BIOS/UEFI upgrading tools." The submitter adds, "Putting BIOS/UEFI updates in to the Windows 10 auto- / forced-update system may open Microsoft to paying $600-$1,000+ to replace broken laptops. If Windows tries to update BIOS/UEFI at a bad/risky time (like during power instability in a big storm), it could lead to an update loop or worse."
wow microsoft, you are really working OVERTIME to make sure we all really hate and despise your horrible joke of an operating system.
just say no to windoz 10
I hate the new Microsoft.
Microsoft's record for botching updates is shocking. Win10 leaves people with unusable machines, deleted devices, and screens that are rendered black with no recovery options. And now the want to start fucking around with the mobo's firmware?
Glad I run Debian
What is this, 1995? Every motherboard should have enough logic and memory for a failsafe bootstrapper, and a copy of the previous known-good firmware to boot if the current one is written improperly or doesn't work. I realise that most computing devices are becoming throwaway walled-garden appliances, but the beauty of PC architecture has been precisely that it's better than that: it followed the '80s IBM/Microsoft dream (by modern standards, an archaic ideal of freedom and personal ownership!) of computing power on every desktop.
As long as the chips adhere to the X86/x64 standards, how relevant is this announcement? Yes, newly introduced extensions and features may not be backported to Windows 7, but unless this OS will not run at all on next-gen silicone, this is nothing but FUD.
Am I missing something here? Do Skylake et al. really require substantial modificaitons to existing OSs?
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
Seriously, how much longer are you Microsoft holdouts going to put up with this imperialistic, authoritarian bullshit from Microsoft? They are doing everything they can to jam their spyware/malware OS down your throat whether you asked for it or not: as you well know if you have 7, Vista, 8, or 8.1, you're getting it shoved in your face, installed whether you ask for it or not, and if somehow you manage to dodge all that, they're still trying to sneak in their 'telemetery' (read as: spyware/malware) updates onto your systems so they can collect your personal data, steal your files, and whatever else it is they're doing that qualifies as cybercrime. When is someone who has the power to do so going to step in and stop them?
Go ahead, Microsoft shills, mod me down to neg one troll, go right ahead, you're just proving that what I'm saying is true by trying to silence me -- but you can't, and you can't silence everyone else out there who is saying the exact same things!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Just run your favorite version of Windows inside a virtual machine on a Linux box.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
"We're designing future versions of Windows to only work with certain chipsets to prevent people from downgrading their OS on newer machines, and from transferring the OS they have from older machines. Hey, this kinda bullshit works for Apple, right?"
We're currently at the point where Linux is pretty much at the point where it is no longer necessary to run Windows on a machine. The only real reason to run Windows outside of a VM today is, essentially, games and all the other applications that require certain hardware features. Which are few and far between by now.
Linux gaming is gaining steam (you may keep the pun), so that problem should be sorted by 2020. Most applications that are unavailable in Windows (mostly specialized applications that have no counterpart in Linux) will work in a VM.
There is hope that by 2020 saying good bye (or rather, good riddance) to Redmond is quite painless.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't see how I would get a Windows 7 license now anyway, it was already hard to get a few years ago, and I'm keen to stop buying PCs now I largely use an Android tablet for everything.
So what does it matter?
I guess if you're stuck with some particular app in Windows, then you can end of life your Windows PC in 4 years time or update then. Until then its difficult to see how/why you'd replace the hardware without the OS.
In Feb, I'm going to buy a Lenovo T460. Skylake i7, 32GB of RAM and a Samsung 1TB 850 Pro SSD. This is the first year when it is possible to put lots of RAM and disk space in a laptop at a reasonable price. Not cheap, but now mere mortals can do it. I'm going to try Ubuntu as the main OS, then run VMware to host Win 7. I have no problem paying for software, but I expect it to work and work without sending god knows what back to its maker. Unfortunately, I need Sql Server, SolidWorks, Excel and my heart rate monitor watch software... Those all need Windows.
I know the year of Linux on the desktop has been one year away for two decades, but I think I've got to make it work for me this year. I'm not going to Win10.
This is the same as its always been, it applies to linux as well. It's normal for old OS's to not support new cpu features, they'll still run just fine.
Skylake chips support some new power management features that allow the chip to throttle based on load far more efficiently than older chips. Microsoft is not adding special support to that to Windows 7 for example. The chip will still work on Windows 7 but not all features will work.
If you use a Debian install from 5 years ago it also won't support any of those new power management features and they are not going to backport those features. You can install a new kernel and a new version of some of the power management libraries, that will probably involve rebuilding a lot of user space and in the end you are probably going to break something else. What you would have to do is just use a distribution new enough to support all the features on your new processor.
OSX is going to do EXACTLY the same thing. Apple is not going to backport skylake power management to a 5 year old version of OSX and all the risks that could have. They are going to take the newest version, work out the details on that, validate it and support it.
Intels and AMDs new processors will continue to work on older Windows and Linux versions just like before. It is just that Microsoft has officially announced they are not going to backport new processor features to older operating system versions.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
Windows is dead.
Microsoft is dying.
Nothing to see here.
I'll put up with it until 2020, when windows 7 is no longer updated. That seems reasonable, since I can block the telemetry patches.
And security researchers are having a field day looking for new telemetry patches, so I'm not even worried about surprises.
Normal precautions until then.
Microsoft really wants everyone off Windows 7 ASAP, apparently. They probably just want to make sure there are no more XP-style holdouts like last time. By saying you can't put anything other than Windows 10 on new hardware you get from manufacturers, that's a pretty big stake in the ground for traditional enterprise desktop customers. Traditional desktops are on an 18-month production cycle, but companies typically stick with the same OS version for as long as possible unless there's a real reason to upgrade. This is going to pretty much force enterprises to move to 10 at the next hardware cycle. So, Windows 7 will probably be done on new hardware pretty soon. I'm not a big fan of making PCs appliances, but I'm an old fart so I might as well get with the times. :-)
On the other hand, it might be interesting to see what happens to Windows when the need to support all the legacy hardware falls away. Part of OS design for an open platform is a compromise because you can't use every single cool new chipset feature, you have to provide support for IDE hard disks, you need to allow for 10 year old architectures, etc. Phone manufacturers like Apple write the OS directly for the processor and hardware in the devices which might allow them to take advantage of a very specific feature and assume it will always be available on any system the OS runs on.
I wonder how Microsoft is going to handle VMs.
Since when has a company had any responsibility for an update bricking a system because of it getting interrupted by external issues? Why should a software manufacturer be responsible for damage caused by your crappy power infrastructure?
So what the fuck do you recommend they use instead of Windows?
Linux? HAH! It has become less-stable than Windows now that all of the major distros force systemd on their users. GNOME 3 is a goddamn disaster, but it's the default desktop environment for many distros. KDE isn't much better, either, and Unity is arguably much worse than both GNOME 3 and KDE. Firefox has gotten really shitty, too. Linux used to be a competitor to Windows, but that was a decade ago.
iOS? Android? HAH! They're goddamn awful mobile OSes that don't even run on desktops or laptops. Useless!
OS X? It's probably the best choice, if you're going to get a new computer. It gives the best experience, but you have to pay a lot to get this experience.
ChromeOS? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Look, Windows is the only option for a lot of people these days, now that the Linux distros and the major open source projects have gone all dumbo and ruined their software.
If people are to move away from Windows then they need some real options. The only real alternative to Windows is OS X, which may not actually be any better for a lot of users.
Outside of battery life they are not important. I have all my laptops set to run full boat with zero throttling when on AC power.
Those of us that do real work on a laptop plug in anyways, would it be nice to run 24 hours on battery? sure, but I am always within a few feet of a plug, so it's just catering to the lazy that are so feeble and worn out from carrying a 1 pound laptop to get out the power brick and plug it in.
Please barista, bring me another latte before I expire! Have woe on me for my bag has 8 pounds in it and I shall perish if I have to move....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
One word: Cinnamon.
silly rabbit, you have to wait for Netcraft to confirm it!
MoD ThE PARENT UP Freetards!!!
Thank you.
Although to be fair, the zealots seem to care a whole lot.
This is because Windows IS and will be FREE
Windows 10 is already freely downloadble and unactivatable (with personalisation locked out) on their own website.
(Pro, Home and IoT editions are free now)
In the future, ALL Windows will be FREE, if you want "features" such as personalisation and customisation you will have to get a license to activate.
So, it is not a problem, they WANT you to be on their walled garden app store. In order to succeeed, Windows MUST be freely available at no cost.
Your kind is very good at pretending serious problems don't exist. That you accuse others of ideology and religion is quite amusing.
Next to my usual ubuntu studio setup, I find win10 closeto unusable. Windows has got worse since win2k, and continues to do so.
John_Chalisque
The difference is that my old Debian system is still going to be officially supported, even if the chip doesn't have all the latest shiny features.
Your difference is people don't like what they did with Win10. If you don't like what they did with Win10 and up and want to use those new features you are out of luck. Debian hasn't done things that piss people off and going to the new versions won't annoy users.
MS is trying to avoid the issue of XP being used 15 years later with Win7.
I personally don't see the issue here at all. If you want it to "just work" use Linux. If you are a Windows user you should already be used to being abused by MS and your OS and this will not be anything different than you have already put up with for years.
systemd? Seriously? Get over it man! And Gnome 3 and KDE stuff as well.
You are trolling here. Your argument is lame. You blame Gnome 3 and systemd to make Linux be like Windows and you conclude Windows 10 will then be found much better by people. Really? You are just trying to coat your old complains with new frosting.
However, I believe Microsoft is perfectly entitled to drop support for newer processors in old versions of Windows. Supporting old versions of Windows cost money and doesn't gather money anymore. Microsoft has made it clear; Windows 10 is the last stop and Windows 10 will be a rolling distro. They clearly no longer play the marketing confusion game with multiple versions of Windows. They will put the money where it is likely to profit. Supporting old versions of Windows is not profitable whatever the prima dona think about how better they were.
Now, I really fear for the enterprise I am working for these days. They are just starting to migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7 on the desktop. Soon they will be forced to migrate to Windows 10 as the old generations of Intel processors will be phased out. Someone will have to kick his own arse before being kicked hard.
Achille Talon
Hop!
It says ensure that there are published BIOS update tools, not that it will be forced via Windows Update.
But even if BIOSes can be upgraded by Windows Update, they can't force vendors to supply the BIOS. More than likely anyone that does provide a BIOS, will ensure that they do so for hardware that can update safely (e.g. has dual BIOS capability). After all, it won't be MS on the hook, but the vendors.
Given that CPUs have bugs - see Intel Skylake freezing issue - and fixes are applied via BIOS, ensuring these fixes get distributed to people (safely) without them having to hunt out the problems / solutions, and apply them manually, is actually a good thing.
"Putting BIOS/UEFI updates in to the Windows 10 auto- / forced-update system may open Microsoft to paying $600-$1,000+ to replace broken laptops. If Windows tries to update BIOS/UEFI at a bad/risky time (like during power instability in a big storm), it could lead to an update loop or worse."
Laptop... power instability in a storm....
I'd like to add back to the submitter: Laptops are the least likely thing to suffer from power instability in a storm, unless your battery is completely dead and can't ride through a basic power outage, in which case I doubt your laptop is worth $600-1000 anymore.
...and I suspect they know it, this is their ALL-IN-OR-NOTHING last nail in the coffin investment, too bad they didn't smarten up and joined the club instead of trying to go down screaming and burning.
...with STEAM...as they where true gamers). I bought a system based on their recommendations, and I was NOT disappointed.
I'm an 50 something computer user/programmer/admin/whatever that has been using and coding computers since I was 12 years old, the days when I had to make my own video games because I was an early adopter and nothing was available to us. Didn't stop me from getting what I want. And guess what? That's the way of the world, this is how customers work - they want something? You have it? You can sell it! But trying to shove stuff down their throats doesn't really work well in the long run. History repeats itself.
I've been using Windows alongside Linux since 1998 (before that, it was all about Commodore 64, Amiga / Atari etc. for me). I basically went over to Linux back then in order to rid myself of proprietary stuff and take back the control of my computer - make it do what I WANT to do. Of course, in those days that was simply too much for the Joneses and they would prefer the mainstream instead of messing around under the hood just to get basic stuff up and running - and guess what - we...the Linux users NEVER blamed them for that. In fact, I understand this perfectly, heck...that was partially the Mac's big success - you could just plug it in and no messing around with stupid drivers and whatnot. Normal people just want to use their computers.
But something happened - Google started to support Android bigtime, and Android is essentially Linux under the hood - and then Hardware support EXPLODED. before we knew it - we saw companies like Ubuntu and many others fight like mad against Windows (or rather, run their own course as a decent competitor regardless of losses and support), because they knew - eventually - they'll catch up. And we did - together!
I use Mint Linux today - when I discovered this combo (Ubuntu + Cinnamon) I could basically say goodbye to my Windows partition for good. It was just an annoying liability of worms, constant numerous battles with worms, updates, turning of disk trashing...oh sorry...caching / optimizing or whatever they call necessary to optimize that slow running disk trashing system that took forever to boot each time I wanted to run something that demanded Windows only. It was getting further and further away from me, I had hardly touched Windows for ages.
AND HERE...is where things get fun...
I decided that I needed a new computer, so I went and bought the most BLEEDING edge hardware I could get my hands on, in my big ego...(basically only running Linux) I had totally forgotten that there was an operating system called windows (and curiously so had the people at the computer store, they themselves ran Linux mainly at home
When I assembled the entire computer at home - latest bleeding specs - latest Mint Linux - it all installed in less than 15 minutes WITH EVERYTHING I NEEDED (try that with windows unless you have a Ghosted Image with the EXACT specs of that computer), and it boots in between 3 and 6 seconds from start to finish! And this is just with a STOCK EVO 850 Samsung SSD HD.
Try to imagine the speed if they had the PCI SSD In stock....(gonna get that one!).
And every part of the hardware was supported - straight away - not only that, my setup surpassed EVERY RENDERING TEST done with BLENDER open source 3D software CYCLES (software rendering, not Nvidia GPU) done on tested Windows machines with exactly the same specs as mine.
Bye Windows, may you rest in peace.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
(1) Sound used to use OSSv3 and ESD. Then someone decided to make OSSv4 proprietary, forcing Linux to switch to ALSA, which duplicated the functionality of both and was difficult to configure, and some other stuff used inexplicably, followed by PulseAudio by our benefactor Lennart Poettering, which fixed it for all time
(2) Everyone knew the old way of initing a system was broken on these new systems with more states to transition between than 'on' and 'off', there were a variety of systems, the eventually selected solution was systemd from our benefactor Lennart Poettering, which fixed init for all time, by switching to a binary log format and replacing a dhcpcd and ntpd
(3) Gnome 2's GTK2 toolkit got this really cool runtime reflection feature, which was added to the gobject object system, and enabled desktop apps to be written in Javascript. So all the work on Gnome 2 needed to be thrown away and replaced by whatever web developers, such as, presumably, our benefactor Lennart Poettering thought looked cool and was suggested by usability studies presumably conducted by asking their friends what would be cool
(4) Firefox needed new features to get new users, everyone knows that. Can't get new users without adding new features. Fixing the core functionality is too hard, ain't nobody got time for that. Chrome has new features and Firefox needs new users.
As often as Microsoft screws up regular updates, why in hell would we trust them to update something that can brick our computers when it fails?
Fuck. That.
First they beat the bigger companies by offering a one-time sale of an OS for a PC you owned, in contrast to the industry dinosaurs who'd been raking in the cash by leasing computers and charging monthly fees for the software. This worked well in the 80's and into the 90's before they achieved market saturation.
Then they discovered why the industry dinosaurs had used the leased hardware and monthly fees model; after everybody is your customer you need a new scheme to increase profits and keep your Wall Street investors happy.
Then they noticed that by getting into everybody's web browsing and spying on them and selling the information thus gained, Google and Facebook had become bigger than some governments and they realized that with control of the desktop they had better access to user info then anybody else.
Their apparent conclusions:
1. They need everybody to use their newest software in order fro them to be able to inject themselves into everybody's browsing and to snoop on and advertise to everybody in the manner Google and Facebook do ---- and that means giving away, indeed FORCING, updates to the newest Windows code. Once they are on the newest code, they will be unable to stop the constant forced future updates no matter how intrusive and offensive they become.
2. They need to gradually introduce people to the idea of ads appearing on the desktop directly via Windows, rather than just within the browser.
3. They need to gradually update their EULA texts to include more and more spying, which users are presumed to agree to when they use the code.
4. They need to increasingly drive users away from the older and perfectly usable versions of Windows which did not include the auto-forced-update capability.
The future revenue model for Microsoft seems to be the Google/Facebook model, and the people at Google need to double-down on their efforts to introduce average users to a Windows-free world soon if they hope to avoid the Google-free world Microsoft seems to be planning. Sadly, Linux advocates will blow this totally as they always seem to by pushing ever-more junked-up user experiences and all the new code they find interesting to work on, while not fixing basic usability issues and basic things like decent audio and printer/printing support thus remaining too painful for average users.
This sounds a lot worse than it is. New chips will continue working just fine with older versions of Windows.
All CPUs have a set of flags that software can query, to find out exactly what features they support. The only consequence of this decision is that any new features or instruction-set extensions will not be used by older Windows versions. The impact on your average user will be precisely zero.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Just look at Windows XP. Support for it ended LONG ago, it's not getting any new patches.
Latest intel CPUs still work on it.
So really, this news means NOTHING.
You will still be able to use any OS with any CPU you want. Intel or AMD won't just lock which OS you are allowed to use.
dude... just roflmao... systemd just takes a little getting used to. LO5 is a fine office app it has no ribbon shit. Firefox is needed because of sync if you use a phone and computer. GIMP is just preparing to release a new version with GPU computing.
As for WM just fuck you and pick one that you like or just draw something yourself. Just keep kdelib and GTK installed on your computer...
you m$ shill... go fetch your check from Nadella...
Yes maybe by 2020 will be the year of the Linux Desktop!
.
The next step will be a monthly subscription fee to have Microsoft Windows "continuously updated" to support those new CPUs.
Fucking QUIT you idiotic moron! You, Sinofsky, and Ballmer are going to KILL MICROSOFT you stupid fucks.
I would do exactly the same if I would lead Microsoft. Why would they have to support outdated software? Microsoft want users to switch to Windows 10. It will simplify their future software development, cut costs and allow to sell apps through their store. Let me paraphrase famous saying. "Microsoft is not in the business of making software. Microsoft is in the business of making money." It offers windows 10 for free for God's sake. If you don't like it, stay with the system you have or switch to competition - Apple or Linux. Just don't expect that private business is somehow morally or otherwise obligated to support outdated software forever for a few of people who refuse to switch. No software company does that. Even open source community does not supports older versions of their creations. They expect you to switch to the latest version sooner or later.
Businesses will love this, I know one fortune 500 company I work at is allowing employees to opt for MACs and almost every one I work with is. People can also opt for RHEL, which I did to years ago. At this point I know of no one who is opting for a windows PC when their time comes for a replacement.
Guess this is a good way for Microsoft to get out of the fortune 500 market :)
posted anonymously for a reason
if Microsoft would simply keep the classic Windows XP shell and UI at least conveniently available as an option. It seems that the vast majority of the complaints about the newer Windows versions involve the UI being forced onto everyone.
"I believe Microsoft is perfectly entitled to drop support for newer processors in old versions of Windows."
Even more: that's not dropping support. "Dropping" implies something was supported and it is supported no more. If doing something, like being able to boot up on processor X, was never in the feature list, you are not "dropping" anything by still being unable to boot up on processor X.
A different issue, and one that, given Microsoft history, wouldn't surprise me, would be if Microsoft were to go out of their way to add an "update" to test for the new processor and refuse to boot on that.
The push to get everyone onto Windows 10 may be towards usage based billing in the future when everyone is finally running Windows as a service. I won't even touch on the privacy intrusions and other nefarious issues here.
I have been coding Windows at the wndproc/c/c++ level (incl drivers) for Windows since the early 90s.
With Microsoft's new direction, that is about to end. I am looking at eval'ing *nix OSs in the near future and leverage my skills on a new platform. Enough said.
People are complaining that Microsoft isn’t going to support Windows 7 and 8 on newer processors. This is mostly artificial. New drivers ARE needed, but Microsoft could write those without TOO much trouble and make it part of the update process to install them. It’s unlikely that Windows’ installer would totally be unable to run on these newer systems. That being said, Linux deprecates hardware (new software not compatible with old hardware) and fails to back-port (old software not compatible with new hardware) all the time. An effort is required and Microsoft doesn’t want to make that effort. Moreover, as they push people away from Windows 7 and 8 into running Windows 10, the costs to support those older OS’s decline (not just drivers and bug fixes but also customer service and tech support).
Personally, I only run Windows in VMs, and I have a Windows 7 installation in VMware that I use strictly for development. Everything else is on Mac and Linux for me. This isn’t a hard choice FOR ME because I don’t run any of the major game titles that require Windows. Also I own a PS3, but not a PS4. If you are willing to sacrifice a few things, it’s possible to almost completely move away from Windows. The people who care are tech savvy enough to do this. The people who DON’T care don’t give a crap if they’re running Windows 10 or not, so the whole point is moot.
Microsoft is making a selfish business decision that is affecting some people, but most of those people shouldn’t have been using Windows to begin with. So accept the fact that if you’re going to use Windows, you’re GOING to get jerked around by a company that cares very little about software freedom (and only to the extent that it benefits themselves). This is a fact of reality, and the only way to really prevent this from happening is to stop using Windows.
Systemd does not allow me to interrupt a filesystem check at startup. The corresponding regression was closed with a rant about their drug induced visions and made up issues that you will not find any mention of outside that rant.
That alone makes systemd look like a bad joke.
Outside of battery life they are not important.
Fucking hell, what a pathetic and self-obsessed view you have. Me, me, me. Whaaaa, meee morrrrmy. How about servers, racks and large data centers? Most are idle, and cranking back on the power creates massive savings for the businesses - in addition to the huge benefit od reducing pollution. But no, you cannot see the big picture. You must be gay or a pathetic dweeb that still lives alone or with their parents.
systemd? Seriously? Get over it man! And Gnome 3 and KDE stuff as well.
Don't tell me what to like and hate, "i do wah i want!" :P
You are trolling here. Your argument is lame.
Quite right though regarding the parent post.
There is plenty to hate in systemd, there's no need to make up lies to imply its worse than it is (and probably gnome3/kde too, though I rarely use DEs enough to have any complaints)
However, I believe Microsoft is perfectly entitled to drop support for newer processors in old versions of Windows. Supporting old versions of Windows cost money and doesn't gather money anymore.
Now there I must disagree, and do so for the exact reason you listed as a counter-argument
*IF* Microsoft went out of their way and spent time, money, and man hours to *write new code* specifically for the purpose of removing an existing feature that came with the product/OS as shipped - I would be very rightfully pissed off.
Not to mention actually doing that would COST them money, compared to doing nothing at all and spending no money.
But at least for the topic at hand, Microsoft has not done this and isn't dropping CPU support, so the argument is really moot for now.
Of course they have done such things in the past, so I won't claim they will never do such a thing, but we should at least wait for them to do the bad thing before complaining they did the bad thing.
Not writing new code for an old OS, aka not adding new features, which is what the case here is, makes perfect sense to me.
Writing new code for an old OS, aka adding or removing existing features, clearly costs money and in the case of a no longer supported OS does not make sense to me (at least in general)
Now, I really fear for the enterprise I am working for these days. They are just starting to migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7 on the desktop. Soon they will be forced to migrate to Windows 10 as the old generations of Intel processors will be phased out.
Ack! Your enterprise consists of nothing but laptops without a desktop in sight???
Yea I must say that would make me fear that enterprise just a bit too. I'm sorry you're in that situation.
At least at my enterprise we thankfully only have a tiny number of laptops (like 10?), and so will be the only concern relating to battery life if I attempted to install Windows 7 on a new Skylake laptop.
We pay industrial rates for electricity so our Windows 7 desktops using the same amperage draw with Skylake chips as they are using right now with Core i7's is perfectly acceptable to us.
Sure it would be nice to use less power with the new Skylake power management features, but not "use windows 10" nice :P
I'm of the opinion that Microsoft sees this as their main chance, with the near term arrival of "instant suspend / resume" in the laptop form factor, because otherwise, who the hell cares about the 3% annual performance increment that Intel presently eeks out year over year?
TrendForce Reports Intel's 3D XPoint to Shake High-End SSD Market in 3Q16
It's sort of well known that Kaby / Cannon with have some interesting new shit.
Says the LOW IQ moron that cant remember his login information here.
Waaaa meee Mommy What is my slashdot password? And I need more hot pockets! BTW being a 700 pound blob that you are is not a life achievement,
If you think I'm going to put up with an OS as terminally stupid as yours that tries to auto-update BIOS/EFI on the fly, YOU ARE ON FUCKING DRUGS!
Enjoy the huge lawsuits this evolves into.
Fucking morons...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Filesystem check? are you still running ext2?
I realise you're joking, but one of the interesting possibilities on that sort of time scale might be for Google to start targetting desktop/laptop PCs with some variation of Android, in which case we really might see mass market Linux on the desktop. It would be interesting to see how that would affect the whole client/server/cloud strategy Google have been pursuing in recent years.
Some other plausible moves in the industry on that timescale might be changes at Apple leading to much increased desktop/laptop market share, possibly combined with a move into the server/back office space.
An outside possibility would be another big player aggressively moving into business computing, perhaps building off Linux and existing OSS initially but also developing substantial new applications of their own, and displacing the Microsoft ecosystem but without shifting so much towards the Google or Apple business models. There are a few organisations that probably have the resources to pull this off if they see an opportunity and decide to commit to it: IBM and Oracle are the first that come to mind.
And of course, there could be a complete change in direction at Microsoft by then. If Windows 10 doesn't do very well by the one year mark despite the extremely aggressive tactics MS have used to promote it -- and if I were a betting man, I'd probably bet it won't do well enough based on sentiment so far -- Nadella is unlikely to retain his position, and a successor who moved back towards more familiar territory might be able to turn things around.
So, plausible options I'm seeing for mainstream computing in 2020 if Win10 doesn't become a huge success: Google spying everywhere, Apple locking up everywhere in its walled garden, old school giant corporations on desktop, or Microsoft almost collapsing but recovering under new leadership. That's quite a depressing prospect. :-(
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Microsoft will not support fancy new features which require OS support. They will support the processors of fucking course. I mean Jesus fucking Christ when did Slashdot get so credulous?
Of course the real theft is the collective with its government (proxy thugs) is stealing from the people and businesses with all of these income and wealth related taxes. Corporate, income, wealth taxes are theft that prevents freedom and oppresses individuals who actually make the money. People must be free to earn and keep every single penny they earn. Government stands in the way of sound economy and progress, that is what all of the government programs, including every form of welfare and military are. It is all theft, it is amazing what government 'education' does, it turns honest people into thieves by instilling the idea into them that theft is the right thing to do.
People who are not stolen from can save their money and apply it however they think is best. People who make lots of money are good at it, they use their money to make more of it and in the free market (free from government oppression and theft) capitalist economy (private ownership and operation of property) the money is spent to make more and better producrs , which is what making money is - creating more products and services that others voluntarily exchange for.
Income and wealth taxes are both immoral theft and economic illiteracy.
You can't handle the truth.
And that's REALLY saying something.
Microsoft are committing suicide.
Informative? If I had mod points I'd rate this troll. It looks like getthefacts 2.0, kindly hosted by slashdot.org via the usual anonymous coward (there must be a reason why it's called anonymous coward). The critics of systemd is a moot point, it's got its shortcomings but at least is the first good effort at getting rid of that cumbersome relic from the era of the decline of Unix (the '80s) that is SystemV. It may not be the best thing, but at least it's better in every conceivable way than SystemV and its script, and than Windows and its register.
GNOME 3 did get a lot of criticism and I never used it, but KDE is good and no way slow (it's actually faster and more optimized than many lightweight DEs), XFCE is surely better than a few years ago, then there are Unity, LXDE, Cinnamon etc.: you have the choice.
LibreOffice is not very good, but find me a good Office suite. LaTeX, Scribus and LyX are what you need. GIMP is getting some really useful update, Krita too, and I'd like to know what Photoshop supporters will say once GIMP 2.10 is out.
Hardware support is getting better (thanks to Android, Steam and all that stuff), software is getting better, with a lot of open source and closed source software coming to Linux: I really don't know what you are talking about, mr Getthefacts.
Dude, I appreciate that you have an opinion. Perhaps you should post about it... where it is relevant.
This thread is about Windows no longer supporting old[er] CPUs after a certain point.
Windows is not Linux.
New (or old) CPUs are not about Linux.
Please stay current on your meds and stop hijacking threads to spew your irrelevant nonsense.
Best regards and hopeful wishes to a good and speedy therapy,
Ehud
P.S.that clown poster behind you really IS mocking you.
LibreOffice is not very good
I don't know where this comes from. I've used LibreOffice for anything from making executive presentations to publishing a 500 page book to doing financial models. It's always done what I've needed to get done. I'm not going to get into obscure feature comparisons to "prove" MS Office is better ... just daily bread and butter work of the type done by millions of people. Where's the problem with LibreOffice? What makes it "not very good"? Lack of a crappy ribbon interface? The fact that it doesn't cost a couple of hundred dollars?
look for microsoft not only not backport new processor features to older versions, but take a cue from apple and deliberately kill performance of new versions on old hardware to force people to board the hardware upgrade train. with all the other shit microsoft has been pulling lately, DO NOT for a minute think they wouldn't do it... they have done similar things before.... more than once.
Puhlease. If Cinnamon was a beer it'd be Bud Light.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I've only ever seen anyone talk about serious problems in systemd without ever actually offering concrete examples of things wrong with it other than "look at this mailing list for yourself" where it just goes you a bunch of autists arguing about nothing
What was the old saying, "In order for Microsoft to win, the customer must lose"? Microsoft had been much better of late, particularly with regard to developer engagement - but now they do this - and ruin all the excellent work of people like Scott Hanselman.
Note: these features do not and likely will never work on Linux, for all the people vowing to switch because they've had enough of this tyranny of not putting new features into old software.
There can be non power flash mess ups.
Let's say you have this game / other software and when it crashes it makes the rest of the system quite unstable and to fix it you need to reboot. And then windows things it's a good time to force the bios update.
An upgrade from an old init system is not a "serious problem" like some are trying to pretend.
windows 10 pro + WSUS gives you control but need to buy windows sever and setup a domain
accelerated 3D with PCI-E pass though does work but then you may need 2 video cards and 2 displays or one with multi input.
I've used LibreOffice for...publishing a 500 page book
Where can I buy your book?
I fail to understood how large vendors feel they can get away with jerking their customers around.
When you go around retroactively proclaiming using x, y and z = no support 4U just for bullshit political reasons I guarantee your paying customers will take note of the fact they are being jerked around and not getting value they are paying for out of the deal.
Have been running Linux on my rig since the start of January, was sick and tired of the "Get Windows 10" nonsense I had to suffer when I had Windows 7 installed so I thought the best way to get my own back was to ditch the Microsoft ecosystem entirely. There was nothing at this stage, games included, to stop me making the switch.
Intels and AMDs new processors will continue to work on older Windows and Linux versions just like before. It is just that Microsoft has officially announced they are not going to backport new processor features to older operating system versions.
I don't think anyone expects Microsoft to reengineer previous versions of windows... backporting features..etc for free when they can charge your soul for those features in a new version of windows.
Some exerts from blog post:
"Through July 17, 2017, Skylake devices on the supported list will also be supported with Windows 7 and 8.1. During the 18-month support period, these systems should be upgraded to Windows 10 to continue receiving support after the period ends. "
"For example, Windows 10 will be the only supported Windows platform on Intelâ(TM)s upcoming âoeKaby Lakeâ silicon, Qualcommâ(TM)s upcoming âoe8996â silicon, and AMDâ(TM)s upcoming âoeBristol Ridgeâ silicon."
From wording of blog post Microsoft seems to be saying if you are using new hardware they won't support you. From my read this seems to be a separate issue from backporting new features and capabilities.. How else can you interpret them supporting you and then stop supporting you on same hardware after arbitrary date?
I thought to myself... how can Microsoft force this? All of their corporate customers have volume licenses with downgrade rights. Intel and AMD can still release drivers for Windows 7 if they wanted to. Then it occurred to me... driver signing.
Microsoft has seriously shaken up how driver signing works starting with Windows 10. The only way to sign any new driver in a way that Windows 10 will accept is to upload it to Microsoft over the web and have them cross-sign it along with your original signature. It used to be that as long as you had a certificate which came from a root CA that was cross-signed by Microsoft then you could sign it yourself and Windows would accept it as valid.
Now Windows 10 checks the time stamp on the driver and if the time stamp is earlier than July 29th, 20015 (the date Windows 10 was released) then Windows 10 will accept the old cross-signed root CA. If its after that date then only drivers that are directly signed my Microsoft are accepted as valid by the OS.
So how does this affect Windows 7? Well believe it or not, Windows 7 will accept certificates with either SHA1 or SHA2 (aka SHA256) for USER MODE signature check (aka .exe and .dll files.) For kernel mode drivers, Windows 7 will only accept SHA1 certificates! So all it takes is for Microsoft to stop providing SHA1 hashes via their driver signing website and then you instantly lock out any new kernel mode binary from being able to load on both Windows 7 and Windows 10. That doesn't prevent someone that still has an old SHA1 code signing certificate from using it to sign Windows 7 only drivers. But most of those certificates are expiring in the next year or two, if they haven't expired already. Intel/AMD/etc could probably release drivers for maybe 1 more silicon generation before their old certificates expire and they lose the ability to release Windows 7 drivers without submitting them to Microsoft for approval.
Basically Microsoft is using code signing to create planned obsolescence for Windows 7.
Supporting old versions of Windows cost money and doesn't gather money anymore.
From an accountant's viewpoint. But there is a reason that modern Nikon cameras will accept Nikon lenses from 1959. Because people buy them specifically because they do. Otherwise I might have bought something else.
Because we are not in the age when a computer is obsolete in a year any more. Because it's very counterproductive to have to change for the sake of change. Because we're no longer in a world of Microsoft BOHICA any more. And if I have to buy into a one OS only CPU - Well no thanks. side note: yes, the old lenses do have a cheap little modification needed. But worth it to use an f3.5 55 mm Micro Nikkor on my DSLR Nikon.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I don't think microsoft ever explicitly supported newer processors in deprecated versions of windows. The old versions just keep running because the cpus are backwardly compatible.
Seems like status quo, unless they decide to start issuing patches that kill old versions of windows on newer hardware. Now that would suck.
Or enforce a blocking of old OS versions on newer processors by convincing Intel to add some trap functionality that makes old versions barf on new hardware.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
No Intel is making new WiFi and directX 12 and 12.1 graphics, next gen NVME 2.0, and type-c USB thunderbolt connectors.
They don't want tobackport this shit on an ancient 7 year old OS. MS typically pays for this. Windows 7 is EOL for product updates and is security only.
Try getting that to run on Ubuntu 9.4 as a comparison?
http://saveie6.com/
Telling early adopters of Skylake that the only way to get updates for their system is to update to an OS that didn't even exist at the time they bought their hardware is NOT fine.
I have no problem with Microsoft saying you need Windows 10 if you have post-Windows-10 hardware. But ending windows 7/8 support for hardware released pre-Windows-10 is wrong.
More to the point, what does Skylake hardware have that makes continuing to support Windows 7/8 on it in a way that doesn't break things on older hardware a problem?
"I believe Microsoft is perfectly entitled to drop support for newer processors in old versions of Windows."
Even more: that's not dropping support. "Dropping" implies something was supported and it is supported no more.
That's what it sounds like they are doing from the summary.
The way I interpret that is: The current Skylake devices will be supported the next 18 months, but after that they wont work anymore -- so Microsoft is removing support even though you're running a version of Windows that's considered "supported" until 2020 or 2023. That way people can't build systems with newer hardware through the end of the decade and continue to avoid Windows 10.
I don't give a fuck about what your are doing or not doing and what you like and dislike. Refraining about systemd and Gnome 3 each time there is an opportunity to do so whichever it is related or not with the subject is just annoying and childish. Mainly, guys complaining about systemd can be summarized as: "I don't know how systemd works, I know how openrc works and I don't want to learn anything new". These guys are a pain for any employer. Up to a certain point, for many business decisions it is no longer about which OS is better, it is about which OS is better for the application I need to deploy in this given context with this set of skills in-house. A bit more complex than complaining about systemd.
Achille Talon
Hop!
I will run old Windows OS through virtual emulation, so F.U. Microsoft.
Microsoft doesn't write the firmware, the hardware vendor does. There's little Microsoft can do to stop Asus or anyone else from issuing firmware and drivers that still support Windows 7 or 8, other than incentives (or threats). However, there are some things you simply can't backport, cpu extensions and things, such as SSE instructions, while you can insert a driver for the latest SATA, anything kernel level isn't going to happen. This isn't anything new, you can't (easily) run Win98 on modern hardware, nor would you get DirectX 11 or SSE 4.2 instruction support even if it did, the OS doesn't have the code for it.
That said, how long will vendors keep supporting older operating systems. Many stopped supporting XP a while back and odds are the only reason Vista is supported is because of 7 drivers often being backwards compatible. At some point you simply won't be able to get the drivers needed (just as you can't get Win98 running on the latest hardware), but again, that is not up to Microsoft. The idea of only having to make drivers for one operating system probably appeals to a lot of vendors.
With how hard MS has pushed Win10 onto people, I can see vendors rushing to dump support for older systems quickly. It's cheaper.
You better have a beefy system (or enjoy pain) if you intend to run Solidworks in VM. Even then, if you use Windows in a VM, you're still using Windows.
Cad is becoming less and less specialized as 3d printers become more and more common.
"No Intel is making new WiFi and directX 12 and 12.1 graphics, next gen NVME 2.0, and type-c USB thunderbolt connectors."
None of those have to do with the CPU.
emt 377 emt 4
It most certainly does.
All these are SOC inside the cpu these days. WiFi is out but the chipset support and some functions are in so they can be used in tablets which is all the rage
http://saveie6.com/
People who can't afford new hardware will be forced onto linux by default...
Quite right. Even though I believe systemd is very poorly designed and is badly damaging the Linux ecosystem, there is also the concept of picking your battles. Badly off-topic rants are counterproductive.
This kind of willfully-blind pro-systemd talking point is also inappropriate. This often-repeated claim is uninformed projection. If you want to join the argument, please actually listen to what the complaints about systemd actually are (it isn't an unwillingness to learn new tools)... in another thread!
Ce n'est pas une signature automatique.
Honestly Ive been using linux since 97 rh 4.1 ish and I like systemd. Once you get used to it it kicks the crap out of sysV. Personally i think all these systemd haters are a bunch of whiney horse buggy makers
I was more considering that a new instruction would be added to the CPU to unlock instructions currently available and this unlock instruction is never called on older windows versions and is instead resulting in a BSOD when the OS tries to execute locked instructions.
Take it one step further and build in the encryption features in the CPU to lock the CPU from being used with any other OS than Windows 10+.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I was more considering that a new instruction would be added to the CPU to unlock instructions currently available and this unlock instruction is never called on older windows versions and is instead resulting in a BSOD when the OS tries to execute locked instructions.
Take it one step further and build in the encryption features in the CPU to lock the CPU from being used with any other OS than Windows 10+.
According to Arstechnica the reason is these newer technologies/> like usb-type C use thunderbolt and thunderbolt 3 and 4 will support external video cards and pci express busses too in addition to powercharging SS and other things. Weird.
This is a major PITA to get working without a rewrite of the old Windows 7 code. Worse, as vendors like Toshiba and Sony customize it then incompatibilities arise as things like kernel timings and encapsulation work differently on 10 as it is more easy to modify. WDDM 2.0 which is underneath the directX and part of Aero (as an example) is different which is why DirectX12 can't be backported to Vista and Windows 7.
Come on guys before XP MS would never backport new technology in a 7 year old OS (by the time this hits)?
Ubuntu 9.10 won't be able to run on this hardware either. You all have no problem doing an apt-get and apt-upgrade. MS is doing the same. FYI I still run Windows 8.1 and see how this can be a PITA and I am not a MS fanboy.
But according to Microsoft's point of view it can't catch up to Android and MacOSX and IOS and even Linux. Things are moving forward rapidly. ... also you mentioned instructions. CPUs in 2016 are SOC and do HELL of alot more than just perform arithmetic. To cut costs and make them tablet/ultrabook friendly the new cpus have onbaord wifi, I/O, usb type c, graphics, and other technologies. So it is not a simple have the OS do new instructions. It is to get all of these things to work at the kernel and service/daemon level reliably. Thunderbolt is finally sticking thanks to SS supercharge and usb type-c compatibility. I can imagine external video card enclosures for laptop users come later this year or next year. Lots of new things mobile too are moving hardware wise.
Like the 1980s and 1990s when hardware moves fast the OS upgrades come in too. They are mvoing again but not with faster hardware, but with less power and more features onto the chips.
http://saveie6.com/
It used to be that a CPU was just a CPU too. The problem is that they're stuffing more and more stuff into the CPU, and if you don't have the driver support for all that other stuff in the CPU then you're going to have problems. Skylake has a GPU like previous generations of Intel chips, but it also USB, Thunderbolt, and SATA integrated into the CPU. So what they're really saying is that they're only going to release drivers for the USB, SATA, GPU, etc. in Skylake for Windows 10. I'm sure you'll still be able to get older versions of Windows to boot and run, but it might involve a bunch of extra add-on cards because the onboard stuff just isn't going to work. This isn't new, for example they never released XP drivers for the GPU in Haswell so if you wanted to run XP on a Haswell chip you had to find something from nVidia or AMD that was supported.
Windows, who cares.
Who cares when the state of Linux is a major fucking debacle.
Gnome 3? Pulse audio? Systemd? Nobody wants any of this bullshit, all of which has been shovelled down our throats.
Yes, most of the above solves problems present in other solutions. Systemd provides features not present and badly needed by sysvinit.
Gnome 3, ooth, is a cluster fuck of insanity. What the fuck? The stupid cunts doing gnome 3 CLEARLY only use Apple Mac OS
X. While masturbating their tiny, pathetic penises, they try, clumsily, to make a pathetic rip off of OS X. And then they stop,
Destroy, and start over again. Seriously, how
Many fucking times have gnome thrown out * and started afresh?
And this brings me to red hat and their cunty employee Harry pottering. The boy wizard should just fuck off and die, and so should sievers and every other cunt with commit access. You INCOMPETANT bunch of cunts should be made to get a sysadmin job before you are allowed to change the init system.
And if you want to change init, you don't have a blanket license to fuck with EVERY fucking daemon because you are a. Uneducated German cunt stain.
Binary logs? And the pathetic excuse about kernel buffer ring logs? What about the fucking utterly brain dead unit model?
And who said you can get in and fuck with the resolver, ntpd, dhcpd, and fuck knows
What else since I stopped caring.
Windows. Who cares. Bigger fish to fry.
Microsoft must be getting real desperate to pull a ploy like this. Windows 10 spying on users was the last straw for me. I'll keep using Windows 7 and when that finally breaks its Mactime for me.
People like you is the reason that no one takes the anti systemd people seriously. Systemd has nothing to do with the file system check at startup other than start checkfs, that you cannot interrupt the check on some systems appear to be because plymouth takes control of the keyboard at that point in time. For other distributions (like Fedora) the feature is disabled in the checkfs config file.
Let me be the first then: binary logs. Have you tried using journalctl? It's a hot piece of shit. SysV wasn't that fucking bad. Certainly the sanity of having an actual fucking log offset the pains of restarting a fucking dead process. I'd much rather ls a fucking directory than query some shit program using terminology some prick thought was cute to see what's gonna start up.
I've been moving to BSD since this happened and quite fucking frankly-- it's been great. Fuck Linux and its incessant holy wars over horseshit. Academics might jerk off to their own reflection too much, but it's a helluva lot better than assholes reinventing the fucking wheel as a square, cube, and then declaring someone a genius for finally making it fucking round again.
1) No more windows, skylake et al depend on Linux to sell
2) No more skylake et al, because current windows won't work and the ones that do are basically brazen malware
3) No more either, because it's just not worth the hassle.
As long as they do, they must support it. If their contention is that it's worthless, then their "damages" for infringement of those copyrights is likewise worthless. They insist not, so they must support it with patches until it works as advertised for as long as they hold these valuable copyrights.
The source also has to be opened. It's already out there under NDA for governments and special customers. Without the source, nobody else can support the software, so keeping it means MS are either required to support it themselves or are reneging on the quid pro quo of copyrights: their responsibility to the public domain.
So, if the planned end-of-life date for Windows 7 is 2020, then why the fuck this aggressive, unwanted, push to try and update my system to Windows 10 twice a day?!
I really shouldn't be commenting about Microsoft since I'm still a little upset that they automatically updated my laptop that wasn't compatible with Windows 10 to Windows 10 resulting in an unusable laptop that I am still recovering from even though I faithfully made backups. It got stuck in an endless loop trying to update drivers for my system, rolling back the failed updates, then again trying to update it's drivers. In the process, my stable Windows 7 system became an unbootable Windows 10 system. What more than disabling automatic updates and not deciding to update to Windows 10 despite the constant ad on my taskbar does it take for Microsoft to get the message that I don't wish to upgrade to Windows 10 and not to attempt to update my system because they feel they know better than me even though my laptop has multiple hardware issues that make it incompatible with Windows 10? It doesn't take much to lose customers and even though you have shot yourselves in the foot several times while dominating both DOS and Windows, eventually you could end up killing yourself. Hopefully people who offer laptops will give users the option of having Linux or some other OS installed instead of Windows 10 especially if they are not going to update previous editions of Windows (Win 7/8) to support these new processors and even cut short their support of older versions of Windows in an attempt to force Windows 10 down everyone's throat. Most of my Windows machines are dual booted with the exception of this Laptop but now either this laptop will not have Windows installed on it or will be dual booted. Thanks to Linux LiveDVD's I was able to recover files that didn't get updated in my most recent backup. Hopefully Microsoft makes it easier to remove all traces of Windows 10 so that when I buy a new computer I can remove Windows 10 and install another operating system instead.
Windows 8.1 will be the last Windows OS I ever use.
I refuse to become one of their NSA/GCHQ spy victims.
Yaaayyyy!
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
Why must they collect anything at all? Why must my uptime be reported? Why must my use count of apps be reported? Why must my system have a unique advertisement identifier that is reported. Why must I jump through hoops to "disable this reporting" only to have them turn it back on behind my back? Why must I endure a near two minute delay with "we've updated your system", "see the exciting new features", we're getting it ready for you", it won't be much longer", for a login after this month's "security" updates?
Why must I be tricked and forced into unwanted "upgrades" to my current OS that result is an unusable system that must be restored from a system image, only to have to fight the process over and over again?
But, most importantly of all, why after all this, should I trust their OS or ANYTHING that they say about it. Fuck these pricks and fuck Windows 10.
If it's simply that - yeah - newer OS's won't take advantage of any new tech embedded in the chip (video/crypto accel, etc), then whatever
If that starts to include recent GPU's and APU's not working on the older OS because MS in some way breaks it, not cool.
Or it could just be a patch like
if ( $CPU == "intel" && version >= "19" )
{
die("Sorry, that chip isn't supported on this OS. Please upgrade to windows 11");
}
How many of those features require that the OS specifically support it, I wonder. I mean, yeah it's nice, but quite often one of the things that comes with a new motherboard is chipset drivers etc. So why couldn't Intel provide a driver which also handles power management, and cut out MS entirely?
Brand new MSI GS70 shipped with 8.1
Loaded 7 Pro on it instead...definitely an improvement over 8.1.
Loaded Linux mint 17.2 - no wifi driver yet, and installing the atheros package didn't help. Everything else worked fine.
Waited 2 months, loaded Linux mint 17.3. Wifi works, it knew all my other hardware and chipsets, bluetooth etc, and it loaded the NVIDIA GT970m driver, and I haven't looked back.
Mint may not work on every platform right away, but then again, neither does windows. Just give Mint some time - they're doing considerably more with considerably less than Microsoft had in terms of compatability....
Thing is, businesses are slow to upgrade. We're running 7 right now, although we'll have to upgrade to something by 2020. If we find that we can't run the latest systems with W7, we're not going to be happy and we will express this unhappiness. It will turn out that it is worthwhile for Intel to make their CPUs compatible with W7.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Honestly it's slavish backward compatibility that has caused MOST of Microsofts security, crap ui and other problems over the last 30 years. Basically they've "grown a pair" by deciding this is and it will greatly improve their product by doing so.
Re: "... if Microsoft were to go out of their way to add an "update" to test for the new processor and refuse to boot"
Why would MS do that? If the announcement was an effort to freeze the old code base, that involves modifying the old code base. Not a huge stretch to be sure, but it's still some work. If they did this as a pressure tactic for (reasons), well maybe. But I think it's unlikely just based upon the amount of ill-will it would generate for MS.
I think this is a tempest in a teapot. Microsoft is very likely saying they won't support new processor features, on the older OS code base. Even though those older OSs are still supported. In fact read the announcement, that's almost exactly what they say. And it's not even a sharp dividing line, they say they'll back-port new instructions to the older OSs so long as doing so is non-disruptive. Well most new proc features are non-disruptive so that's not exactly a high bar to clear.
Anti-Microsoft advocates are getting all riled up here but what else is new? This seems like a relatively minor change in policy for Microsoft.
"Re: "... if Microsoft were to go out of their way to add an "update" to test for the new processor and refuse to boot"
Why would MS do that?"
In order to avoid the "XP issue" on corporate environments, of course. By "XP issue" I mean corporations (Microsoft's cash cow, you know) not willing to upgrade to new OS versions. This way, once the new processors are prevalent and their OS not booting up in them, corps will have to upgrade.
"it's unlikely just based upon the amount of ill-will it would generate for MS."
Microsoft traditionally hasn't basically given a damn as long as they can profit.
Again, I'm not saying Microsoft will do this, but that I wouldn't be surprised if they would.
If you want ME to use your product, then you better make it work in MY environment. And I mean WORK correctly. It seems this may open more opportunities for OSes like Linux. Which have always run better than Windows. Just lacking in aftermarket support.
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.