New Processors Are Now Blocked From Receiving Updates On Old Windows (arstechnica.com)

halfEvilTech writes: Last year, Microsoft announced they were planning on blocking OS updates on newer Intel CPU's, namely the 7th Generation Kaby Lake processors. Ars Technica reports: "Now, the answer appears to be 'this month.' Users of new processors running old versions of Windows are reporting that their updates are being blocked. The block means that systems using these processors are no longer receiving security updates." While Windows 7 has already ended mainstream support, the same can't be said for Windows 8.1 which is still on mainstream support until January of next year.

Comments

MS pushing more into older OS or Linux/Mac

[p51d007]

Keep it up...and you'll push more and more people to either keep their current PC's, or switch to alternative processors and computers. MS wants ALL PC's running windows 10...once they figure they can't push any further, they will start their subscription service.

Cutting edge new features vs reliability, use case

[raymorris]

"broken and/or generally sucked" isn't nearly specific enough for me to know what you didn't like and what you might like instead. I also have no indication of your use case. Are you primarily doing network and security testing (consider Kali), gaming, music and multimedia production? What I can do is point out three general concepts or guidelines.

Different distributions have a very different balance between cutting edge new features and reliability. For example, nothing goes into Red Hat / CentOS until it has first been proven reliable on Fedora for a couple of years. Fedora has brand new stuff, which may not be as polished and reliable; CentOS has time-tested stuff that works. Fedora has frequent upgrades and doesn't maintain support for old versions. Red Hat / CentOS isn't meant to be upgraded as often, they support old versions much longer. Figure out what you want on that spectrum. That relates to the next guideline.

You said you use Linux servers "all the time". Probably those servers are using a stable distro such as CentOS. If you are very familiar with one distro because it's on all your servers, consider using the distro you already know on your desktop too. Even if you take a couple hours getting all your specific hardware configured just how you like it, avoiding the learning curve of a new distro may be worth it.

Someone who produces music for a living will probably prefer a very different distro or spin than someone who does network penetration testing. Consider looking at spins or distros designed for your specific use-case. Even if your use case isn't that specific, some distros are designed for newbies coming from Windows, and make easy things easy by presenting limited options. Others are designed for more advanced users who want to tinker and set their multiple mouse wheels to trigger different actions depending on context. Android and Chrome OS vs Debian are extreme examples. ChromeOS is super easy and everything just works, correctly. Of course "everything" is basically "the browser". Debian can run my custom-designed PCI-E card much easier than Chrome OS can. Figure out your use case, then research or ask in an appropriate forum.

The corollary to the above is that any answers to "what's the best Linux distribution" are probably wrong, for your needs. Cent OS meets MY needs quite well, but my needs may be totally different from your needs. I don't give a damn about nifty eye candy like translucent windows and window animations. I turn that shit off anyway for better performance and memory usage. Maybe you are an artsy, visual type of person and you love window animations.

Re:argggh!

[Archangel Michael]

What do they have a monopoly on? Windows Operating System Machines??

Most systems running today are running some variant of Linux/Unix/BSD, not Windows. Hell, my primary "machine" is my phone, which is more powerful than my "windows" machine from 15 years ago by a long shot.

Headline is the wrong way round

[wonkey_monkey]

New Processors Are Now Blocked From Receiving Updates On Old Windows

Shouldn't that be:

Old Windows is now blocked from receiving updates [when running] on new processors

?

Re:Cutting edge new features vs reliability, use c

[mrchaotica]

when I install say Mint

Which Mint? Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce, KDE, LDME Cinnamon, or LDME MATE?

Re:Cutting edge new features vs reliability, use c

[mrchaotica]

However, considering the different sub-versions of Mint as somehow a bridge too far to decide upon is the sort of concept that makes a two mouse click an unsufferable crime upon humanity.

Maybe so, but there are plenty of people -- like my baby-boomer parents -- who can barely even handle one button! Should we doom them to Windows spyware and exploitation just because they don't meet your condescending, elitist expectation of tech-savviness?

More to the point, even technical users shouldn't have to deal with every tiny detail, all the time. I'm a goddamn professional software engineer and even I don't want to deal with it! I got most of that shit out of my system running Gentoo in college.

Fundamentally, it's an issue of human interface design and cognitive load. A good user interface helps the user focus on things that he cares about and not waste effort on the things he doesn't. In the vast majority of cases, forcing the user to make a decision without suggesting a default choice means the designer was failing to do his damn job. Take the Linux Mint download page, for instance: would it have killed them to just pick one of the editions -- it doesn't even matter which, despite the desktop environment Holy Wars -- and put it in a larger font or add an arrow or something to denote "if you don't know what the difference is between these, pick this one?" Just one little note on the page would make all the difference.

This article explains the issue better.

I wonder, do you only use all defaults on your Windows machine?

Mostly yes, actually. You know why? Because -- aside from laziness -- having a consistent experience, where I can walk up to any other random Windows machine (at least of the same version) and know that it will work the same as my usual one instead of getting pissed off that my custom keyboard shortcuts don't work, is more important than wringing out that last 0.5% of optimization. Here's a quote from Joel Spolsky (also referenced in the link above) about it:

Most advanced users use several computers regularly; they upgrade their computer every couple of years, they reinstall their operating system every three weeks. It's true that the first time they realized you could completely remap the keyboard in Word, they changed everything around to be more to their liking, but as soon as they upgraded to Windows 95 those settings got lost, and they weren't the same at work, and eventually they just stopped reconfiguring things. I've asked a lot of my "power user" friends about this; hardly any of them do any customization other than the bare minimum necessary to make their system behave reasonably.

(I do change the important settings, of course, such as disabling Microsoft's attempts to shanghai the system with forced "upgrades" and telemetry.)

Re:Cutting edge new features vs reliability, use c

[hairyfeet]

Actually I would say this XKCD fits Linux better as I'd say that is 90% of the distros out there, just reinventing the wheel and making just enough changes to make them incompatible with each other and break shit.

The really sad part? If you could get all those devs to quit wasting their energy making yet another minor variation of the same OS and instead were to pour all their energy into one distro? You'd have an OS that would curbstomp anything out there in just a couple of years...but it will never happen, instead they will just keep cranking out distros until all the OEMs quietly adopt secureboot and all that is left to run Linux on is high priced workstations and cheapo ARM maker boards.