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New Intel and AMD Chips Will Only Support Windows 10 (pcworld.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Buried in the announcement of the new Kaby Lake (seventh-generation) processors and a rash of incoming notebooks set to use them is the confirmation that they will have a Windows 10 future. Microsoft has been warning people for ages that Kaby Lake will not run on anything older than Windows 10, and it looks like AMD's upcoming Zen chip will be going the same way. Microsoft said, "As new silicon generations are introduced, they will require the latest Windows platform at that time for support. This enables us to focus on deep integration between Windows and the silicon, while maintaining maximum reliability and compatibility with previous generations of platform and silicon." "We are committed to working with Microsoft and our ecosystem partners to help ensure a smooth transition given these changes to Microsoft's Windows support policy," an Intel spokesperson said. "No, Intel will not be updating Win 7/8 drivers for 7th Gen Intel Core [Kaby Lake] per Microsoft's support policy change." An AMD representative was equally neutral. "AMD's processor roadmap is fully aligned with Microsoft's software strategy," AMD chief technical officer Mark Papermaster said, via a company spokeswoman. Slashdot reader MojoKid via HotHardware has some more details on Intel's Kaby Lake 7th Gen Core Series Processors for those yearning to learn more.
Hello Linux
Microsoft is shooting themselves in the foot, and it will bleed out.
ok.. so... im fine in principle if intel and microsoft aren't interested in porting chipset drivers backwards for old windows versions.
I presume that this isn't creating windows 10 lock in though; and that linux / bsd / etc will be fully supported?? Or am I mistaken?
And also, is if things are that different, does it mean only a next-generation kernel version will run on them?
I'm also curious about virtualization? Can old windows versions run in virtualization on these new chips?
I wonder if they are tracking this. I think they need to be reminded of this - all three of them.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
This is unexpectedly insightful. This is the way the corporations want it to be: only "approved" devices connected to the Internet will be legal.
It will be illegal to run any other version than Windows 10.
In time it will be illegal to possess a general-purpose computer.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
If it weren't for dirty tricks like this, users would treat Windows 7 like XP... M$ would need to pry it from their cold, dead hands.
Soon all our machines will be totally infected with spyware sponsored by our own tax dollars.
...and a wired connection of any type.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
The headline is crystal clear. Linux, Mac, Win 7-- fuggedaboudit.
Or is this another Slashdot clickbait? Ah, they are off the hook because they copied the clickbait at PCWorld. At least PCWorld had the decency to add this statement "But a change in Microsoftâ(TM)s support policy means that it will be only be officially supported by Windows 10." which seems to soften the misleading headline.
As most here agree, ways will be found to deploy these chips in a useful direction despite the monopolistic desires of Microsoft.
...omphaloskepsis often...
People are misunderstanding this announcement.
They are not saying no other Os will work at all, just that Intel and AMD themselves will only supply and support Windows drivers for version 10. So you can install Windows 7 (not easy but possible due to some other tricks they did), but USB 3.1 will probably not work unless you can find an older driver that happens to work and graphics will default to a generic Windows display driver, things like that. In other words, it can work, it just won't be supported/optimal. As for Linux, Linux doesn't rely on Intel or AMD to make drivers for anything, the community makes working drivers for almost everything, it may take a bit and not work as well as the Windows counterpart due to proprietary functions, but they work. it's pretty rare that you absolutely cannot gets something to function in Linux, it's just a matter of finding the info necessary, which I admit is not always easy, but easier and less likely if you use corporate laptops.
For your laptop, you can have Mint split the drive and dual boot (make a backup first!), or better yet, buy an ssd for it and put Mint on that. This leaves you a good drive to fall back on if needed and gives you a nice SSD upgrade. If you decide to forget Windows entirely, stick the old drive in an external bay for backups, if you want to go back, put the drive back in or image it onto the ssd. Honestly, you will never really "get" Linux until you cut the Windows cord because it's too easy to fall back on Windows when you get stuck and by doing so, you may miss out on some fantastic software that not only fixes the problem, but does it better than Windows ever did. I'm not saying it's easy to do, you may feel like a complete noob for a bit, but the end results are worth it.
Some laptops are better than others, corporate laptops tend to do better, but no matter what, expect a 10-20% loss in battery runtime (be sure to install TLP and P-state). No need to run out and buy a bunch of laptops, there is enough Lenovo, HP and Dell corporate lease models on Ebay to keep us supplied for years to come with more still arriving. The Lenovo X and T series in particular have good Linux support. As mentioned by others, should Intel and AMD deny functionality to other systems entirely it would be shooting themselves in the foot as many corporations use Linux as does the server industry. Besides, we would find a way, the more they lock it down and force us onto fewer and fewer options, the more likely it is that someone will find a way around it. Necessity is the mother of invention.
Intel chips still support Windows XP. Funny how all of a sudden Windows 7 will be such a pain to support for future architecture.
Intel and AMD are so committed to a good and trustworthy experience for their customers that they are only accommodating installation of the perpetual beta, that data mining sensation, Windows 10? This constitutes a big bet that nearly all of their customers are completely ignorant or utter fools, with the remainder being an insignificant minority that can safely be ignored.
After 20 years of Windows, I'm finally in the process of switching to Linux. I can clearly tolerate a somewhat rubbish OS for a long time but when it's essentially a sinister joke and a toy rather than a serious tool, even a procrastinator like me is motivated to make a change. Of course much of the Win 10 evil has been back ported to Win 7 and 8 but could in theory be avoided. After a while though, one tires of the cat and mouse game of choosing which updates to avoid and now how to get around the update rollups. This business with chip support is just the most recent slap in the face from an increasingly cynical and adversarial Microsoft who is apparently the driving force in this present fiasco.
KDE Neon, for example, is way faster on an old laptop than Windows on a recent Xeon workstation, so this no painful switch. Thus ends the promise of Longhorn, at least for me.
Right. It's high school debating tactics and not a reasoned analysis when you simply ignore or gloss over any inconvenient truths and push your conclusion or more precisely, belief or claim, with everything you've got. So tiresome. If anyone can be bothered to refute any of your claims point by point, I'll leave it to them.
Only until Microsoft changes its signing certificate.
Then they won't work anymore. Just like it didn't work for Windows RT devices.
> Find an open source equiv app
Some times there isn't one. Games are the biggest deal for this.
Just add these to the growing list of hardware that is Linux only.
It's usually older gear such as PCI cards or scanners that makes the list, so it's nice to have some newer CPUs on our side too.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Which spun up a shitstorm that died down, then TPM modules were introduced and today both Microsoft and Google, and in parallel Arm manufacturers use the technology to restrict what the 'consumers' (since they may physically own it, but don't digitally own it) can install, modify, and run on their PCs and/or ARM based computers, whether single board computer (SBC), tablet, tv box, or cellular phone. And they just keep lapping it up, while those of us concerned about these ownership and privacy issues are too impotent to get ACTUAL open source, user accessable, securable, and modifiable processors and systems designed, funding, and produced. The failure isn't with the consumers enslaving themselves to this liberty failing technology, but rather to us the tech, security, and privacy nerds/hackers/engineers/programmers/professionals for not retaking control of our own systems by building actual hardware and systems outside the control of thse companies, and by extension the societies, governments, and 'leadership' types who benefit from the slow boiling of the waters of privacy and self control.
Ponder on what I have said and see what YOU can do to start making a difference. You might not be able to save the masses, but if you save your fellow nerds the opportunities for the future won't cease.