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fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

The Lord Bude posted:

The point according to the article is that they are going to explicitly stop providing updates, including most security updates to people with newer CPUs even if the operating system is still within its support period.

There is exactly one Windows version still in its mainstream support period (the period where they do more than just critical patches) by the time the announcement takes effect, and that's 8.1, and 8.1 is already in a weird curtailed place for support. In effect, absolutely nothing will change.

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NihilismNow
Aug 31, 2003

The Lord Bude posted:

The point according to the article is that they are going to explicitly stop providing updates, including most security updates to people with newer CPUs even if the operating system is still within its support period.

According to the article they will still receive critical security updates. Windows 7 is not going to get many new features anyway.

quote:

After July 2017, the most critical Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 security updates will be addressed for these configurations, and will be released if the update does not risk the reliability or compatibility of the Windows 7/8.1 platform on other devices. via Windows Blogs
When a OS is 8 years old critical security updates is about all you can hope for.

dissss
Nov 10, 2007

I'm a terrible forums poster with terrible opinions.

Here's a cat fucking a squid.

fishmech posted:

There is exactly one Windows version still in its mainstream support period (the period where they do more than just critical patches) by the time the announcement takes effect, and that's 8.1, and 8.1 is already in a weird curtailed place for support. In effect, absolutely nothing will change.

They're not committing to continue with critical security patches either - that is the problem.

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

dissss posted:

They're not committing to continue with critical security patches either - that is the problem.

They are though. They explicitly said nothing but critical security patches!

dissss
Nov 10, 2007

I'm a terrible forums poster with terrible opinions.

Here's a cat fucking a squid.
That 'if' qualifier is important.

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

dissss posted:

That 'if' qualifier is important.

I'm not sure what you think you're talking about.

mediaphage
Mar 22, 2007

Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

fishmech posted:

I'm not sure what you think you're talking about.

I assume this:

quote:

After July 2017, the most critical Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 security updates will be addressed for these configurations, and will be released if the update does not risk the reliability or compatibility of the Windows 7/8.1 platform on other devices. via Windows Blogs

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

mediaphage posted:

I assume this:

That's the sort of boilerplate you see a lot. It's hard to imagine a way you could actually patch a security flaw that runs correctly on CPU X and causes problems on CPUs Y, Q and E that were around 10 years ago or whatever. And then to further have it so that you did patch the security flaw on CPUs Y, Q and E and the patch doesn't work on new CPU X.

dissss
Nov 10, 2007

I'm a terrible forums poster with terrible opinions.

Here's a cat fucking a squid.
Regardless Microsoft is giving themselves an out

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

dissss posted:

Regardless Microsoft is giving themselves an out

It's the same out they've had since forever. Nothing's changing.

dissss
Nov 10, 2007

I'm a terrible forums poster with terrible opinions.

Here's a cat fucking a squid.

fishmech posted:

It's the same out they've had since forever. Nothing's changing.

It isn't though - this is the first time they've said something like this.

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

dissss posted:

It isn't though - this is the first time they've said something like this.

They've always had provisions that fixes won't happen if they'll break things on more computers than they fix on - basic cover-your-rear end lawyertalk. They've always dropped everything but critical security patches for older operating systems after a certain point - and incidentally by the time this announcement takes effect, everything but Windows 8.1 will have had all other updates beyond critical security long canceled.


Essentially, what they've done is to revise the time that Windows 8.1 will be fully supported (i.e. Mainstream Support in Microsoft lingo) from the original plan of January 9, 2018 to August 1, 2017. Between August 1, 2017 and January 9, 2018 there might be a really weird bug that won't be fixed in 8.1 on some processors, but it owuldn't have been fixed anyway after January 9, 2018 under the original lifecycle plan.

dissss
Nov 10, 2007

I'm a terrible forums poster with terrible opinions.

Here's a cat fucking a squid.
No one gives a drat about mainstream support (or Windows 8.1 for that matter), the important bit is extended support end for Windows 7 which has essentially been pushed back two years for new hardware.

This is not the usual 'basic cover-your-rear end lawyertalk' at all - it is an attempt to get more corporate customers onto 10

Anime Schoolgirl
Nov 28, 2002

you'd think there would be a nonzero amount of money in up-porting software drivers for scientific equipment that requires the use of operating systems whose extended support period has passed 10 years ago

do the people that designed those things all commit ritual suicide or something? :psyduck:

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

dissss posted:

No one gives a drat about mainstream support (or Windows 8.1 for that matter), the important bit is extended support end for Windows 7 which has essentially been pushed back two years for new hardware.

This is not the usual 'basic cover-your-rear end lawyertalk' at all - it is an attempt to get more corporate customers onto 10

It has not been pushed back, what don't you get here? Microsoft is sticking to the same schedule for Windows 7 updates they always have!

Mainstream support is already over, it's already on critical security patches only, and they already avoid releasing patches that only work on certain CPUs and not others.

The only OS that actually has a change is 8.1,which very few corporate customers or any customers in general are on. And it really only scoots up the end of mainstream support by 6 months or so.

Anime Schoolgirl posted:

you'd think there would be a nonzero amount of money in up-porting software drivers for scientific equipment that requires the use of operating systems whose extended support period has passed 10 years ago

do the people that designed those things all commit ritual suicide or something? :psyduck:

With scientific hardware, the problem is usually lack of drivers for some ancient but important piece of hardware, rather than the regular software.

dont be mean to me
May 2, 2007

I'm interplanetary, bitch
Let's go to Mars


Anime Schoolgirl posted:

you'd think there would be a nonzero amount of money in up-porting software drivers for scientific equipment that requires the use of operating systems whose extended support period has passed 10 years ago

do the people that designed those things all commit ritual suicide or something? :psyduck:

They'd rather get even more money for selling you a new million-dollar piece of hardware with drivers that OS authors time-bomb for them.

Paul MaudDib
May 3, 2006

TEAM NVIDIA:
FORUM POLICE

Anime Schoolgirl posted:

you'd think there would be a nonzero amount of money in up-porting software drivers for scientific equipment that requires the use of operating systems whose extended support period has passed 10 years ago

do the people that designed those things all commit ritual suicide or something? :psyduck:

No one ever updates EOL mission-critical systems. You just come up with ghetto ways to interface them with modern systems and then firewall the gently caress out of them to make sure their 500 known vulnerabilities are never exposed to the world at large.

It's cheaper that way, you see :eng101:

You can literally buy LGA1150 motherboards with ISA slots (introduced 1981) on them, and that's the entire reason why. Sometimes people don't even go as far as updating the socket/processor, because they're illogically afraid of processor incompatibility. They just buy ancient hardware on eBay and run it until it dies.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Jan 20, 2016

dissss
Nov 10, 2007

I'm a terrible forums poster with terrible opinions.

Here's a cat fucking a squid.

fishmech posted:

Mainstream support is already over, it's already on critical security patches only, and they already avoid releasing patches that only work on certain CPUs and not others.

They haven't explicitly said this before.

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

dissss posted:

They haven't explicitly said this before.

They've also never explicitly said "oh yeah we'll support any CPU that comes out for any OS we have". And as things turns out, they haven't done so, even without saying so. So I have no idea why you think they ever did, which is what would be required for this to change anything besides the one thing it does change: moving up the timeline that Windows 8.1 becomes minimally supported by about 6 months.

dissss
Nov 10, 2007

I'm a terrible forums poster with terrible opinions.

Here's a cat fucking a squid.
If nothing has changed then what exactly does the last bullet point mean?

quote:

  • Windows 7 will continue to be supported for security, reliability, and compatibility through January 14, 2020 on previous generation silicon. Windows 8.1 will receive the same support through January 10, 2023. This includes most of the devices available for purchase today by consumers or enterprises.
  • Going forward, 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. 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.
  • 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. After July 2017, the most critical Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 security updates will be addressed for these configurations, and will be released if the update does not risk the reliability or compatibility of the Windows 7/8.1 platform on other devices.

If it means nothing (as you say) then why include it?

dont be mean to me
May 2, 2007

I'm interplanetary, bitch
Let's go to Mars


dissss posted:

If nothing has changed then what exactly does the last bullet point mean?


If it means nothing (as you say) then why include it?

It means that even if a security patch is desperately needed, if making it work on Skylake/HBM makes it not work on older chips, it's going to be made for the older chips and in Microsoft's collective mind you deserve what you get for not pushing your Skylake/HBM box to 10 already.

dissss
Nov 10, 2007

I'm a terrible forums poster with terrible opinions.

Here's a cat fucking a squid.

Sir Unimaginative posted:

It means that even if a security patch is desperately needed, if making it work on Skylake/HBM makes it not work on older chips, it's going to be made for the older chips and in Microsoft's collective mind you deserve what you get for not pushing your Skylake/HBM box to 10 already.

Exactly, this is a new thing not business as usual as fishmech suggested

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER


What most companies need is just a swift kick, then they might be draggable into the future.

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

dissss posted:

Exactly, this is a new thing not business as usual as fishmech suggested

This is not a new thing. They've never ever guaranteed patches will work on all generations of CPUs! Why aren't you getting this? All they've done is made explicit a policy they already had.

The only time they guarantee such things are for companies who sign massively expensive support contracts, where Microsoft will set aside workers just to backport relevant patches from supported operating systems and work on unique patches for problems only in old and otherwise unsupported OSes. And that's not taken away by this announcement either.

Sir Unimaginative posted:

It means that even if a security patch is desperately needed, if making it work on Skylake/HBM makes it not work on older chips, it's going to be made for the older chips and in Microsoft's collective mind you deserve what you get for not pushing your Skylake/HBM box to 10 already.

And I'll note that it seems extremely unlikely that any such patch would ever exist, because the processors simply haven't changed that much.

dissss
Nov 10, 2007

I'm a terrible forums poster with terrible opinions.

Here's a cat fucking a squid.

fishmech posted:

This is not a new thing. They've never ever guaranteed patches will work on all generations of CPUs! Why aren't you getting this? All they've done is made explicit a policy they already had.


It's you that isn't getting it.

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

dissss posted:

It's you that isn't getting it.

Show where they ever in the past declared they would support all CPUs released until the extended support period ends then. This should be easy if they were making a real change besides moving up the end of mainstream support for 8.1.

dissss
Nov 10, 2007

I'm a terrible forums poster with terrible opinions.

Here's a cat fucking a squid.

fishmech posted:

Show where they ever in the past declared they would support all CPUs released until the extended support period ends then.

Show me where they've ever said otherwise

Fact is Microsoft said you should move off 7 early if you're on a Skylake system

GrizzlyCow
May 30, 2011

dissss posted:

Show me where they've ever said otherwise

Fact is Microsoft said you should move off 7 early if you're on a Skylake system

Neither XP nor Vista got AVX and XOP support despite XP being in extended support and Vista being in mainstream support.

mayodreams
Jul 4, 2003


Hello darkness,
my old friend

dissss posted:

Fact is Microsoft said you should move off 7 early if you're on a Skylake system

This is true regardless of your CPU and chipset, especially for consumers.

I started at my last job at the first of year in 2014. They were STILL an XP / Novell shop and planning a desktop migration for 2015 to WIndows 7. I was adamant going to Windows 8.1 Update 1 instead because 7 went out of mainstream support in 1/13/2015 so they'd be moving from one dead system to a dying one. Since I had just migrated the company to Office 365, we already had challenges with the versions of Outlook working properly on XP (2010 barely worked and was the last supported version), and through a lot of convincing, I finally got my wish because MS only supports the 2 most recent versions of desktop office for O365. Other things like SSL/TLS security features won't be updated outside of mainstream support, and will cause serious issues down the road. I work for a web service company and we are on the threshold of cutting off XP support simply for the reason that it won't support the certificate levels necessary to be PCI compliant anymore, and there is nothing we can do about that other than encourage our customers to upgrade their computers, or use the mobile app because the risk of keeping the old certificates is too great.

The point to all of this is that we will NEVER see an OS have a viable life like XP ever again because it was a victim of circumstance. The world has moved to annual and rolling updates, so you need to get with the program or be left behind.

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER


mayodreams posted:

The point to all of this is that we will NEVER see an OS have a viable life like XP ever again because it was a victim of circumstance. The world has moved to annual and rolling updates, so you need to get with the program or be left behind.

What do you mean by this?

Stanley Pain
Jun 16, 2001

by Fluffdaddy

Boiled Water posted:

What do you mean by this?

Microsoft dun hosed up.

BOOTY-ADE
Aug 30, 2006

Boiled Water posted:

What do you mean by this?

Basically MS made it clear that (I think) starting with Vista/7, they were going to be more aggressive about rolling updates and releasing new OS versions. We won't see anything like in the 95/98/XP days where an OS is supported for a decade or more and can handle whatever hardware or software happens to be new and exciting at the time. I mean if you think about it, MS has released 3 major OS revisions since July 2009 when Windows 7 first came out, versus when XP came out in 2001 and the next OS was Vista in 2007.

I'm still in the same boat as others wondering what exactly has changed so much that MS made this decision? Is it a hardware thing? Stuff like XP came out and worked through several processor, chipset and memory configurations, is it just too difficult for them to code patches for newer tech or something?

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

dissss posted:

Show me where they've ever said otherwise

Fact is Microsoft said you should move off 7 early if you're on a Skylake system

Uh, dude, you need to show where they said otherwise, to show that what they're doing is changing things.

Windows 7 is already in extended support and has been since January 2015. That means it already only gets critical security patches, so the announcement changed nothing for Windows 7. And it's hardly "early" to move off Windows 7, 8 years after it came out, when the new directive takes effect!


Ozz81 posted:

Basically MS made it clear that (I think) starting with Vista/7, they were going to be more aggressive about rolling updates and releasing new OS versions. We won't see anything like in the 95/98/XP days where an OS is supported for a decade or more and can handle whatever hardware or software happens to be new and exciting at the time. I mean if you think about it, MS has released 3 major OS revisions since July 2009 when Windows 7 first came out, versus when XP came out in 2001 and the next OS was Vista in 2007.

I'm still in the same boat as others wondering what exactly has changed so much that MS made this decision? Is it a hardware thing? Stuff like XP came out and worked through several processor, chipset and memory configurations, is it just too difficult for them to code patches for newer tech or something?

Do keep in mind that XP was never meant to last that long. Microsoft originally wanted Vista to come out in 2004, when XP SP2 came out in actuality. But they kinda hosed up their process for Vista and had to pull a bunch of people off of Vista to work on all the changes needed to patch XP SP0/SP1's many security issues.

Also XP didn't exactly handle new hardware that well. 32 bit XP obviously couldn't handle 64 bit processors or a lot of RAM. And 64 bit x86-64 XP was a rushjob based off of the Windows Server 2003 SP1 64 bit release, and limited compatibility with many things. Remember that Microsoft's original plan for 64 bit XP for the non-server market was Itanium processors :v:

Microsoft had a fairly steady 2 to 3 year release cycle before XP for consumer-facing OSes:
1985 Windows 1.0
1987 Windows 2.0
1990 Windows 3.0
1992 Windows 3.1
1995 Windows 95
1998 Windows 98
2000 Windows ME (though that was a stop-gap)
2001 Windows XP

And then:
2006 Windows Vista
2009 Windows 7
2012 Windows 8
2015 Windows 10

Also for what changed? Nothing changed. They have never promised full support for every CPU that happens to be released before they cut off all updates to an OS, unless you had a hefty millions of dollars contract with them to explicitly support it! Really the only OS that's meaningfully affected by this is 8.1 due to having its period of mainstream support shortened by 6 months, effectively. But even that would rely on the weird circumstance of a routine patch for earlier processors for some reason not running on newer ones, which would be pretty unprecedented.

Anime Schoolgirl
Nov 28, 2002

Ozz81 posted:

Basically MS made it clear that (I think) starting with Vista/7, they were going to be more aggressive about rolling updates and releasing new OS versions. We won't see anything like in the 95/98/XP days where an OS is supported for a decade or more and can handle whatever hardware or software happens to be new and exciting at the time. I mean if you think about it, MS has released 3 major OS revisions since July 2009 when Windows 7 first came out, versus when XP came out in 2001 and the next OS was Vista in 2007.

I'm still in the same boat as others wondering what exactly has changed so much that MS made this decision? Is it a hardware thing? Stuff like XP came out and worked through several processor, chipset and memory configurations, is it just too difficult for them to code patches for newer tech or something?
it seems so long for XP because there were several huge jumps in performance in the first half of the 00s and things have more or less leveled at an incline in all areas except efficiency since 2010

mayodreams
Jul 4, 2003


Hello darkness,
my old friend

Boiled Water posted:

What do you mean by this?

The road to Vista was long and hard.

With Vista SP1 though, it was a really good OS on good hardware. Problem was that Intel kinda forced Microsoft to lower the minimum requirements for Vista which gave a lovely experience to practically everyone who bought a lower end computer.

Couple that with the majority of BSOD's in the first year or so of Vista release was due to graphics drivers as AMD and Nvidia were getting their poo poo together with the new graphics and driver layers. Printer and sound drivers were also an issue, and a lot of printers never got updated drivers.

Windows 7 is for all intents and purposes Vista SP2 with a different name because it was so toxic that people thought it was suck without ever using the OS. MS even ran ads about the "Mojave Experiment" proving that people were predisposed to hate Vista on name alone

Anime Schoolgirl
Nov 28, 2002

also the unfolding shell menu from windows 95 is iconic to Windows at this point despite how marketing insisted it's solely for "power users" and the several attempts made to try to kill/neuter it and imitate osx (very poorly) are nothing short of hilarious

Malcolm XML
Aug 8, 2009

I always knew it would end like this.
So about amd...


Looks like if they can get Polaris out and have a combined push with zen for say a cheaper but competitive platform they can regain market and profit share


A combo zen Polaris apu with hbm2 onboard could make for an excellent mini itx box or even smaller with a m2 ssd and outboard psu

Anime Schoolgirl
Nov 28, 2002

bonus if you can get the HBM2 recognized and used as system ram in any OS at all then we're cooking with live ammunition

dont be mean to me
May 2, 2007

I'm interplanetary, bitch
Let's go to Mars


fishmech posted:

Uh, dude, you need to show where they said otherwise, to show that what they're doing is changing things.

Windows 7 is already in extended support and has been since January 2015. That means it already only gets critical security patches, so the announcement changed nothing for Windows 7. And it's hardly "early" to move off Windows 7, 8 years after it came out, when the new directive takes effect!

They're abandoning their commitment to even that where new architectures are concerned. Doesn't mean they're directly spiting environments involving new architectures and old versions of Windows, but if it's just a new architecture issue, or if fixing the new architecture issue means compromising the OS for old architectures, upgrade or deal with it.

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fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

Sir Unimaginative posted:

They're abandoning their commitment to even that where new architectures are concerned. Doesn't mean they're directly spiting environments involving new architectures and old versions of Windows, but if it's just a new architecture issue, or if fixing the new architecture issue means compromising the OS for old architectures, upgrade or deal with it.

The thing is, again, they've never explicitly supported all future CPUs during the period updates are available in Windows in the past. All they're doing is making their existing policy clearer.

Like again, there's all sorts of stuff that's barely supported in XP when it got up to around 2009/2010, which would be a similar time period for Windows 7 when this stuff goes into place in 2017.

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