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Windows 10 Compatibility Issues Forcing US Air Force To Scrap a Significant Number of Computers (betanews.com)
The US Department of Defense has decreed that the Air Force must complete its migration to Windows 10 by March 31 2018. From a report: Failure to do so will result in any systems not running Microsoft's latest operating system being denied access to the Air Force Network. However, because Windows 10 is not compatible with many of the Air Force's existing systems, a significant number of computers will need to be replaced in order to hit the deadline.
Cause that's about the only thing why it wouldn't be compatible with Windows 10. Hardware so old, only XP runs with it.
At most, slap in a SSD and it will run fine usually.
Wouldn't that be nice? Windows 7 with bug fixes, driver updates, and security fixes. That's it!
the DoD use Windows 10 Pro! Just my 2 cents ;)
Many of the systems I see around are identical to the models I was putting in place in 2009. They need to upgrade, and anything to pressure them to do so is a good idea IMO.
I worked for the USAF for 8 years as an Airman and 30 as a civilian. I went from an HP85 for line monitoring at a comm site in 1983 to workstations in an aircraft hangar in 2017. I remember going from win95 to win98 and it was good. We went to win2000 and it was good. XP Pro upgrade was good. Then Vista came.....over 50% of our workstations were down at any one time for over a year. After a few years we got Win7 and it was so wonderful. I use Linux at home but Win7 was as stable as I could wish and a million times better than Vista. They avoided 8 and when I retired last year the big dread was Win10. Nobody likes it at home, I know a bunch of people that bought Macs just because of Win10. I'm glad I'm going to miss that adventure.
Consumers, and business owners in particular, love to drag their feet on upgrading their hardware. Kick the can down the street again and again, until finally they hit a wall and are forced to upgrade. It's interesting to see the government pulling the same derp maneuver.
A better plan is to do gradual upgrades on a schedule. When you suddenly find you have to upgrade a bunch of computers, AND peripherals AND os AND proprietary software all at once, it's not only financially painful but causes major pains for the people that have to learn all this new stuff at once. But they're blind, they just can't see the train until it hits them.
Can't say it surprises me to see the govt join the party.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Many of the systems are incompatible with Windows 10, not the other way around. One piece of govt software I work with uses a version of Crystal Reports that's about 15 years old, and hasn't been supported for ages. The reports do not function on newer drivers, and there's no compatible driver for W10, so users of that software have held off, but they're being forced off this year. And don't get me started on COM+
I'm small potatoes compared to the military - I manage about 800 desktops and laptops. But if the computer won't run Windows 10 (usually due to driver issues), there's not much choice. Even if the user loves their computer, doesn't want anything newer, and thinks Win10 sucks, I have to upgrade them. I'm a cheapskate by nature, and I hate recycling perfectly good equipment, but that's the cost of doing business.
Support microSD: in a post 9/11 world, it is unwise to carry your data on media that you cannot comfortably swallow.
I suspect its old hardware or software not compatible with Windows 10. Our most important systems should be upgraded much faster then this. Lot of this depends on contractors designing these computer systems and their inability to keep up with the times. But private business isn't much better at upgrading PC systems.
Phones getting replaced every two years or less due to planned obsolesce, high end GPUs and ASICs due to cryptocurrencies, and now Windows 10. Join the resistance. Stick with 7 for two more years until end of life, then switch to Linux, using that time to port your apps.
captcha: reinvent
You know ... pesky things like custom military applications essential to security and operations?
Because they can't be more important than the latest Windows update and that Facebook app that suddenly appeared to show notifications, can they?
The US military is the biggest in the world, by a huge margin ... yet if they continue that way, something as silly as this will eventually be its downfall.
Boy won't the Air Force be embarrassed when the The US Department of Defense calls up to say
APRIL FOOLS
the next day?
Hahaha!
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I'm pretty sure that the government is forcing the Air Force to upgrade to Windows 10 so they can install spyware and find out what the Air Force is up to.
Anyone who loves freedom will fight the government's efforts to control the military. Obama took away our guns and now he's trying to take away our F-22 Raptors, too.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If they had used Mainframe "green screen" applications, they wouldn't have this problem.
Table-ized A.I.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-air-forces-secure-linux-distribution/ The Air Force has their own secure Linux distro and Trump is treating his job like it's a business "getting a good deal" because he is ignorant of any other way and intelligence agencies know this, so they coerce him into putting everyone on W10. How do you beat free and open source? Is it possible that all of this just because of M$ Office? What other layman excuse could they give him? Better security? Ha! Definitely not. I doubt he's even heard of Linux and Microsoft is also taking complete advantage of his ignorance. An F-22 being powered by W10...NASA works with the Air Force on many aeronautics projects. Shuttles and ISS running on W10...https://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/aug/HQ_06289_air_force.html. For the love of God, I can't be the only one that sees how fucking stupid and obvious this is -_-
Check out gsaauctions.gov. When government property isn't needed any more, it usually goes to some type of surplus room for a while. If no one claims the item from surplus then after a while it will be auctioned off to the public. Hence the site. They have all sorts of stuff on that auction site. From old FBI police cars to former DoD computers. Note that most of the computers have had their hard drives removed though.
Whatdafuck to do? Kim Dot Un gonna get us while Missiliers sit waiting for never-to-come Windows update? This IS Trumpverse.
Seriously, between Russia cracking it, and dod forcing USAF to run win 10, ms has to love it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
..you have old computer controlled machines. The device drivers may not be available, either because the product is obsolete, the company is dead, or they decided to not update the drivers, or the updates are prohibitively expensive
It's not just hardware. Some old (very expensive) software only runs on the old OS.. same problems as device drivers
If all you use is common, recent software... no problem
Why not install some version of Linux and run whatever windows is necessary as a virtual machine? Sure would make windows upgrades easier to deploy, as one could merely distribute an updated image, and machines would be less likely to crash all the way down, and instead would only crash the emulator. For devices that depend on old versions of windows, the VM image might be read only in order to halt any malicious writes.
Is what this is all about. If you've had to work with the various DISA stigs, then you know just how much software can't really easily be deployed. You can't just "run linux and a VM for Windows", because there are only SPECIFIC versions of Red Hat that have STIGs that allow it to be "properly audited". Getting a "Certificate to field" is a complicated, torturous route that must be re-done for each different enclave the CtF is for. Software like MySQL doesn't even have a STIG, so all of that is out the window.
And it then there is Trusted Platform compatibility, Fedramp certified cloud, etc. My current job is working towards 800-171 certification, which is a watered-down version of 800-53. It's still a huge PITA, but these standards are needed because of APTs and stupid end-users. IMHO, your "electronic election system" should at least be at 800-171, but "STATES RIGHTS" means easily hackable machines.
They should require a complete set of source code for every piece of technology utilized. There should never be a piece of third party technology that has a dependency like this that puts a third party in control of critical technology.
It's utter bull shit that a government entity of any kind anywhere is putting themselves in such a situation where they do not have full control over the technology they're adopting. Talk about a security failure.
I know there is at least one major government which is not Russia, China, or the United States that has recognized this issue and is taking steps to correct it. The country has figured out that having access to a complete set of source code for everything is critically important to there national security. It's not Iran or North Korea either. I'm not at liberty to state the country at this time although there is talk of funding a completely open SoC for national security reasons.
Linux desktop 10 yrs of support and the ability to take the source and compile it forward, unlike proprietary software with vendor lock-in.
All US Govt SW and HW contracts should mandate support for Current and Current-1 OSes for 5 yrs. Mandate Windows and Debian Linux support to be safe. Even if your specific team doesn't use it, someone else will.
For a fraction of the cost of the shitty F22 Program, the air force could...
-Deploy brand new, state of the art computers across the entire Air Force.
-Pay to have any legacy programs rewritten or migrated to their OS of choice.
-Pay to have all of those certified.
-Pay Microsoft to develop a DoD-grade OS compatible with those programs.
-Give every Air Force employee a huge Christmas bonus.
-Solve world hunger.
-Fix the national debt.
-Find extra-terrestrial life.
I was about to say that with Linux this wouldn't happen. But then I remebered that X.org had deleted dozens of video drivers when they decided on an irrational whim to delete all of the XAA code which turned a huge number of older computers into boat anchors. Linux systems developers seem to think you should need the latest Intel GPU made within the last 3 years. Whoops.
Lots of people having multiple prompts for smart card PINs. Has anyone solved that one? And no, Google search doesn't return useful results.
Use Linux
aaaaaaa
Rather than simply scrapping the "obsolete" computers, why not simply treat them as a peripheral and attach them to a new computer?
My guess is a lot of them are quite old - 10+ years.
Even in Linux, at some point the hardware is just too outdated.
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Seems theyve pushed us all to 64bit os, but still have older 32 microsoft office suite and other apps, plus pushing improperly matched 32 vs 64 bit updates. Outsour e the whole kit n kaboodle