Next-Gen CPUs Will Only Support Windows 10 | Hacker News Reader

Next-Gen CPUs Will Only Support Windows 10

pcmag.com

32 pointsneverminder31 comments

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That article is horribly written. Technical details in MS' blog post under "Our Commitment":

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/01/15/windo...

Click-baity, misleading title discussed previously in response to equally laughable article from Verge.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10917473

Why is something so atrocious voted up, I really don't know.

The title & the article are worded so badly that I would go as far as to say it's just flat out wrong.

This isn't about CPUs supporting anything. This article is based on Microsoft's policy of adding support for fancy new CPU features to their kernel. Microsoft has decided to build the new kernel features into Windows 10 and either delay or even skip adding them to their older kernels.

The new CPUs will still be usable with older Windows versions, and with other OSes.

For Skylake, with the Speed Shift tech, the performance difference is about 2% according to tests made by AnandTech. [1]

[1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/9751/examining-intel-skylake-s...

"CPU does not support Windows XYZ" != "CPU Will not work with Windows XYZ"

True, we will have to see. If Windows 7 really doesn't work we might see some kernel hacks.

I could imagine that being problematic for large corporations that have long software upgrade cycles (for instance, because it takes them two years to certify that everything they need runs on the new OS and then another year and a half to develop an image to use for the new OS on all machines in the organization, and then another year to polish the upgrade process.) What are they supposed to do when old desktops break down and they need to replace the hardware?

I assume that the new hardware will still run old operating systems under virtualization?

this article isn't really about microsoft breaking their policy of 'support everything from all time', but that policy is breaking and it's going to get worse. Drivers (especially printer drivers) are the first straw, followed by lots of old industrial control programs written for XP.

Cross your fingers that businesses who need to plan 10 years out will learn this lesson well and remember that the best way to do long support is shared source application code (even if behind an NDA) on open source platforms.

What about alternative operating systems? Looking at Linux: Will a random Linux distribution work? Will a recent Kernel be required?

The title is somewhat misleading. This is old news and it's only applicable to various Windows versions - MS has traditionally spent efforts ensuring that supported versions of Windows work with latest hardware. They're saying they'll no longer do that - implying that if you buy new hardware (Kaby Lake based system for e.g.) they'll not guarantee that Win7/8.1 will work with it.

Linux will work the same way it has - you might need a newer distribution, support maybe flakey initially, Intel might cut costs and decide some SoCs won't be supported by their open source efforts etc. Or it might all work great - this news doesn't change that.

The title is completely misleading. CPUs aren't being designed to not work on operating systems other than Windows 10. That's flat out wrong. The whole article is just clickbait.

Microsoft simply announced it would not be adding support for the latest and greatest features of new CPUs in older operating systems based on the OS position in the support life cycle Microsoft has established. Microsoft basically said "Windows 7 is about to be EOL, and we're not going to churn the code base by introducing a bunch of new code that might destabilize it." That's it.

For older Linux kernels to support newer CPU features, someone will have to go back and make kernel patches.

Bad wordings, I guess. Should be: "In the case of Windows, all next-generation processors built by Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, or others, will only support Windows 10"

I think...

Or maybe "Microsoft will only support the latest processors in Windows 10 and beyond"

> Running the OS on newer PCs requires "device drivers and firmware...to emulate Windows 7's expectations for interrupt processing, bus support, and power states- which is challenging for Wi-Fi, graphics, security, and more."

This suggests the issue is that MS will only be supporting Win10; the article doesn't mention any attempt being made at being affirmatively in-compatible with other OSes.

I believe the article is implying that alternatives will also no longer work. From the article:

>The company is all but guaranteeing that the future will be bright for Windows 10, since all PC makers will be shipping products that can only work on the platform.

Linux should still work, this is just kernel level support issues for Microsoft, they want to support all the new CPU features and ditch all the legacy code.

Makes sense. Thanks. I suppose the article needs a bit more clarity.

Probably lots of folks here are too young, but I remember Windows. That was the one I used to run until they integrated spyware... Some of my co-workers are stuck on it until legacy programs get ported, but I only run Ubuntu now.

I know they were trying to integrate Ubuntu into Windows, but it's a hack and now that they're introducing CPU restrictions, why would I go back?

Misleading title -- the CPUs will not support Windows pre-10. They will still support Linux as well as they did before. It's not like they're blocking non-Windows operating systems.

I would argue that CPUs don't support operating systems at all. The operating system runs on the CPU therefore it's the operating system's responsibility to support the CPU architecture.

The title is flat out wrong and nothing more than clickbait.

So as long as the user is not a programmer or a geek who messes around with different OSes, this shouldn't be a problem for anyone I think!

99% of Windows users

yes exactly. They are users not builders

I think this is a good spot for this rant I've had brewing awhile...

<rant>

I get so tired of Microsoft's continual half assing of literally everything, but especially when it comes to things like this, where they're trying to move forward across multiple avenues to keep everyone happy. They do this constantly, it compromises their software quality, compromises driver stacks, because they are simultaneously trying to have new features AND legacy support, and they do this for EVERYTHING.

Apple does things all the time that I don't like (especially as an iOS developer) but my experience has taught me that though whatever they've done may suck in the short term, that there's a larger plan at work and it will probably benefit me in the long run. I have NO such trust in Microsoft, because every time they have a moment where they need to say "hey, this is fucked, we need to move on to something better" it's ALWAYS followed by "but don't worry we'll still be supporting all the old garbage to the detriment of our OS as a whole."

I have little love for Windows 10, I don't like the phoning home every ten minutes, I think the UI is ugly as sin, etc. but that is the future and I accept that. At some point I will need to make that leap in all likelihood, and this continued "well you really should upgrade but it's ok if you don't want to" crap just makes me terrified as to what kind of pandora's box is awaiting me when I decide to make said leap. Exactly how much stuff is going to be broken because they had to make DOS applications from 95 work on their NEW operating system?

Microsoft: Shit or leave the toilet. If you're going to bank hard on Windows 10 then make sure it's something WORTH BANKING ON.

</rant>

I would argue that Microsoft's greatest weakness is also their greatest strength.

My 13 year old scanner works just fine in Windows 10 with it's XP drivers, the same can't be said of my Wife's 5 year old scanner on her Mac. I didn't dare tell her it worked fine on Windows too for fear she might throw her Air through a window.

To be fair, printers and scanners in OS X are much like they are in linux: They either work perfectly immediately, or they'll never work no matter how much you try. There is no middle ground in my experience.

I don't know enough about how print services/drivers work to make any meaningful statements, I'm just happy I got a printer/mac combination that works well.

That's generally been my experience as well with Macs but I've never had much trouble getting a printer or scanner to work on Linux. That might just be a function of when I tried however because I remember around 2008-2009 when it was pretty futile to get WiFi working reliably on Linux, that is no longer the case.

If you're trying to run an old scanner on a Mac, look into Vuescan scanning software. My wife is still running a very old Canoscan scanner on her iMac with it. Vuescan supports almost everything that's not a drum scanner.

This is what really irks me about Apple and OSX. Things work fine until they don't at which point you need to pay a third party $40-90 so that your hardware will work again.

If I were sitting on some professional multi-thousand dollar hardware this might be acceptable, but I'm not pay that much for a cheap USB scanner I spent less than $100.

Is it Apple's fault if the manufacturers discontinue the drivers?

The problem isn't manufacturers discontinuing drivers, it's that Apple changes the requirements for a driver to operate with each release of it's OS making it necessary for driver manufacturers to produce new or updated drivers.

For a company like HP or Canon with 10s of thousands of products in it's portfolio that's untenable, and with OSX only being a minuscule portion of their user base it becomes a huge waste of time and money.

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