back to article Microsoft herds biz users to Windows 10 by denying support for Win 7 and 8 on new CPUs

In a stunning example of consensus-building, Microsoft has somehow persuaded the big names of silicon that it would be better for all concerned if they quietly euthanize Windows 7 and 8.1. Accordingly, Redmond, Intel, Qualcomm and AMD have occupied the same room without injury long enough to promise that future products like …

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  1. Steven Roper

    The more they push

    the more people they will push onto Linux or Apple.

    1. msknight

      Re: The more they push

      It's happening here. Steadily, more friends are coming to me to install/learn Mint. They don't like what Microsoft are doing, and where they're heading.

      They've seen the headlines of M$ hiking prices at their whim, lowering entitlements and changing the rules after the dotted line has been signed, and they don't like it.

      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        Re: The more they push

        "...coming to me to install/learn Mint."

        Still a modest barrier to exit then, at least in the minds of the would-be apostates.

        Microsoft are presumably betting that most people won't have a Linux-y friend that they can go to. Based on today's market share, they might be right, but the internet can help you find friends so what we're (they're) really dealing with here is the growth of an invasive species in an ecosystem (non-business users with little or no legacy software to worry about) that has no natural defences against it, and that can undermine such cosy assumptions at exponential speed.

        1. BobChip
          Linux

          Re: The more they push - the harder they will fall

          The real obstacle to going Linux is not learning how to install or use it. It is having the courage to take the decision in the first place.

          I have several desktops running Mint 17. Windows users who have never even heard of Linux will sit down in front of them and just use them. Some don't even notice that Libre Office and Calc are not M$ Office. Eventually, someone will ask me "Why have you set it up that way..." and then I explain.

          1. Michael Habel

            Re: The more they push - the harder they will fall

            Thats whats so laughable the Linux's of yesteryear were a bit of a pain, where you had to setup your own partitions up just to install the damned thing. Thankfully now installing Linux is as easy if not even easier to install then Windows 7. That almost every Distro that matter also has Open Office, and GIMP as standard. Means I don't have to waste my time installing M$ Office, or Photoshop Elements. Whoever thinks that a simple copy of Mint can NOT stand against Windows 7 is likely either a Gamer or a heavy professional so locked in to that ecosystem to care.

            For everyone else, who'd just need a simple browser, email (as

            Iikely Yahoo, Hotmail or, Gmail), along with a decent Word Processor. Mint has you well, and truly coverd. Moreas the shame that Valve aren't pushing Linux as hard as they should be doing.

            1. Chemist

              Re: The more they push - the harder they will fall

              "For everyone else, who'd just need a simple browser, email "

              I think we can be a little more ambitious than that.

              Darktable or RawTherapee for RAW photo development/manipulation

              Hugin for panorama creation

              Kdenlive for NL video editing

              Thunderbird for e-mail

              Google Earth

              VLC or MPlayer for media

              Inkscape for vector drawing

              More language compilers/interpreters than you could possibly want

              etc.

            2. NotBob

              Re: The more they push - the harder they will fall

              Thats whats so laughable the Linux's of yesteryear were a bit of a pain

              Just got a low-end W10 laptop for the better half, changed over to Linux on this (formerly W7) system.

              Turned off the spy crap on hers, it works like a dream. Mine? OpenSUSE failed to boot post-install, UBUNTU keeps crashing.

              Linux of this year is still quite capable of being a pain.

              1. keithpeter Silver badge
                Windows

                Symproms - Re: The more they push - the harder they will fall

                "OpenSUSE failed to boot post-install, UBUNTU keeps crashing."

                What is the make/model of your laptop?

                When you say crashing, is that a kernel panic (black screen with a dump of some registers and all controls frozen, you have to press power switch to reboot) or is it just that daft popup window that says something about internal error? If latter, it isn't serious but I agree not what you want with an unfamiliar system.

                PS: At work I have a small PC with an atom processor and 2Gb of RAM. Windows 10 for Education actually runs rather well on that low end hardware. Pity about all the data swiping/corporate politics around what appears to be an actual improvement.

                1. Chemist

                  Re: Symproms - The more they push - the harder they will fall

                  "What is the make/model of your laptop?"

                  Plenty of other questions - What version of OpenSUSE/Ubuntu? Did a live-CD work ? does the memory check show any problems ?

              2. Roland6 Silver badge

                Re: The more they push - the harder they will fall

                OpenSUSE failed to boot post-install, UBUNTU keeps crashing.

                You did first use a LiveCD to confirm whichever Linux distribution you wished to install would actually run and recognise your hardware?

                I've had problems with some installs determining that because the system contains a x64 capable cpu, the entire system is 64-bit compatible... In these circumstances, I have had to force a 32-bit install.

            3. Ahab Returns

              Re: The more they push - the harder they will fall

              I just built a fresh desktop box for a non-techie relative and Ubuntu was the obvious choice for a peaceful tech support life.

              A couple of years back it would have been Windows 7 for me, but now, Ubuntu just works. No half life, no licence fees, no admin user installing nasties and everything they need is Web based.

          2. Roland6 Silver badge

            Re: The more they push - the harder they will fall

            The real obstacle to going Linux is not learning how to install or use it. It is having the courage to take the decision in the first place.

            Actually, the real obstacle is going to be Linux support of the new chipsets (ie.Intel's Skylake and “Kaby Lake” silicon, Qualcomm’s "8996” silicon, and AMD’s “Bristol Ridge” silicon) and the integrated peripherals.

            But once this is solved, I agree the second hurdle is finding courage...

            Does anyone know if the Linux community has started development work on these chipsets?

            1. Chemist

              Re: The more they push - the harder they will fall

              "Does anyone know if the Linux community has started development work on these chipsets?"

              AFAIK the latest kernels support Skylake e.g http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel-xeon-skylake&num=1

            2. Richard Plinston

              Re: The more they push - the harder they will fall

              > Does anyone know if the Linux community has started development work on these chipsets?

              With the first x86-64 CPUs, Linux was the first implementation.

              """Linux was the first operating system kernel to run the x86-64 architecture in long mode, starting with the 2.4 version in 2001 (preceding the hardware's availability)."""

              The initial Windows x86-64 implementation worked on AMD but failed on Intel CPUs.

        2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: The more they push

          "Still a modest barrier to exit then, at least in the minds of the would-be apostates."

          Is the barrier more or less modest in comparison with migrating to a new version of Windows?

          Even for business users the barrier to migrating to non-legacy Windows has proved substantial if it won't run business-critical legacy Windows applications.

        3. td97402

          Re: The more they push

          NEWS FLASH:

          Sales are down for all PC makers except APPLE. Wonder why that might be?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: The more they push

            "Sales are down for all PC makers except APPLE. Wonder why that might be?"

            There are several hundred PC makers perhaps? PC sales in 2015 Q4 ~75m. Mac sales in 2015 Q4 ~6m.

        4. a_yank_lurker

          Re: The more they push

          @Ken - Slurp is delusional if they think someone can not get Linux installed. Linux geeks have friends and the friends know others. It may be indirect, geek referred by a friend to help the friend's family or other friends.

          Also, as more geeks and semi-geeks install Linux and get familiar with the bigger the pool of Linux geeks gets. If this scenario happens, it will be a slow drip, that is slowly accelerating as geeks and semi-geeks abandon Slurp. Then, apparently very suddenly, the Linux adoption rate accelerates as the masses jump on board. The best advertisement for Linux is people using daily.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The more they push

        "to install/learn Mint"

        An interesting but not surprising choice. Not so long ago Ubuntu was the default choice for Linux newbies. That this seems to have changed to Mint is possibly due to the hopeless Unity desktop that Canonical foisted upon us.

        I hope this trend continues, with PC users increasingly only accepting what they want i.e. an efficient, secure and unintrusive OS with a classic desktop GUI which is clearly not what Microsoft and Canonical are offering.

        1. msknight

          Re: The more they push

          @EastFinchleyite

          To a degree, I make that choice for them. Coming form Windows, if I presented them with a choice of different desktops, it would confuse them. Just give them something which works and looks familiar, and away they go. LibreOffice, GIMP, VLC, Firefox, a few other bits and pieces, show them where the icons are, and away they rock. Minimal training needed, really. Although I'm having to revisit the Firefox choice with the certificate rejections, but so far it hasn't been too dire.

          One is on Unity, but given the multiple monitors, the side pop-out gets so annoying. I said that when it came time to rebuilt the workstation, that I'd, "mint," it like I did his other half's laptop... but, er, that was a while ago and I still haven't had to rebuilt it yet.

          Unity was great at, "netbook remix," but when they killed the remix and brought out Unity, that's when I left ubuntu. I was also using the music store they had and the cloud storage, but instead of charging for the storage (and I for one, would have been happy to pay a few quid a month for the cross-platform cloud) - they binned it anyway and didn't give anyone a choice. Cannonical have made some very, very bad decisions these last few years... and feeding all desktop searches to Amazon (initially, without an off switch until people complained loudly) was another bad judgement call, IMHO.

          There are some concerns that Mint doesn't keep its packages up to date... but that's a double edged sword. Stability is a great bonus, and they love how they're not forced to update until they're ready to do so, and aren't nagged anywhere near as much as Windows used to.

    2. WonkoTheSane
      Headmaster

      Re: The more they push

      Obligatory Star Wars quote:-

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wntX-a3jSY

      1. MacroRodent

        Re: The more they push

        Or:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd8hy032uLc

        "I'm altering the deal. Pray that I don't alter it any further"

        1. MysteryGuy

          Re: The more they push

          "I'm altering the deal. Pray that I don't alter it any further"

          And then there's the 'Robot Chicken' version :-)

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpE_xMRiCLE

    3. chivo243 Silver badge

      Re: The more they push

      I was pushed to Apple a long time ago... OS X 10.0.. I can't say I'm so happy with Apple many years on. I think they lost the love around 10.5 or 10.6.

    4. SundogUK Silver badge

      Re: The more they push

      I'm certainly not going to Win 10, so I'm putting a plan together for Mint with a Win 7 VM for gaming...

      1. mythicalduck

        Re: The more they push

        I tried both WINE and a Win7 VM (in VirtualBox), I couldn't get either to work sufficiently well. So at the minute I've got a Win7 partition that has Battle.Net/Starcraft 2 and Steam and that's it...

        Should I get to a point where most of my steam games are playable on Linux (or I don't actually care about not playing them), then I'll probably erase the partition, but for now it'll have to do.

        1. Lee D Silver badge

          Re: The more they push

          I have to say that if you're going to VM, you want the base hypervisor to be something decent. VirtualBox has never really cut it for me.

          VMWare is a good base option and will happily offer 3D acceleration to Linux and Windows guests, from a Linux or Windows host.

          The money I spent on a copy of VMWare Workstation has paid for itself 10 times over. And I primarily work on HyperV servers at work.

          Hell, if you tweak, you can even run MacOS on it. (I didn't say that).

          If they force my hand, it'll be a Linux install at the base, a VMWare VM for everything else, and probably even a Linux VM for actual everyday work (because isolating the hardware is good for future compatibility and moving that VM to other machines, and because snapshots/rollback are worth their weight in gold).

        2. steamnut

          Re: The more they push

          I've a number of XP and Win7 systems running on Virtualbox under SUSE and I never have any real problems with the set-up. I also have a Win 2003 server (that's reall legacy for you) under Virtualbox.

          The 2003 server hardware was going fast and we virtualised it using a VMWare tool and my customer says it runs better than ever.

          Micro$oft are sounding more desperate by the day to get us all on Win10, Azure and Office 365. The real reason has nothing to do with our "immersive experience" (yuk) but more to do with regular direct debit payments.....

          1. td97402

            Re: The more they push

            I have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. For Microsoft to reveal why they are pushing so hard on Windows 10 adoption. Changing Windows over to a subscription service is one possibility to expect. Perhaps they are in a "survival mode" believing they lose everything if Windows 10 fails as the last two releases have done.

        3. Kruzman

          Re: The more they push

          Install PlayOnLinux to manage your WINE games, ive had no issues with steam or starcraft

        4. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          "I tried both WINE and a Win7 VM (in VirtualBox)" ....

          "I tried both WINE and a Win7 VM (in VirtualBox)" ....

          or perhaps you can ask the vendors if they have any plans to make a linux version availible now that Microsoft is making things difficult.

          Steam I know are already pushing vendors to make linux versions of existing games and as most linux distributions are not optimised by default for gaming maybe you might try steamOS which is.

          Game developers are going to make games for operating systems that their customers use, if you do not make your game devs aware that you would like their game to run as well or better under linux as it did under windows then you are again tying yourself to windows.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: "I tried both WINE and a Win7 VM (in VirtualBox)" ....

            I think it's great that Valve has (kinda, sorta) encouraged game devs to develop for their flavor of Linux. The only problem is that they need to convince the hardware folks at NVIDIA and AMD to create advanced drivers for that operating system, which they are failing to do. Drivers exist for Linux, but performance is significantly worse than on a Windows machine.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The more they push

        "with a Win 7 VM for gaming..."

        Use Linux as the VM if you want Windows for gaming (Hyper-V is more efficient than Linux based hypervisors).

        Also you miss out on the significant performance improvements of Direct-X 12 if you stick with Win 7. If you are only using it for games, why cut off your nose to spite your face?

        1. Steven Raith

          Re: The more they push

          Unless you use KVM and IOMMU to get full GPU support in the VM.

          Something that really doesn't work properly in HyperV.

          Works in KVM though. Hell, LinusTechTips ran seven gaming VMs off one (admittedly chunky) workstation recently.

          Come back to us when HyperV can do that. And no, RemoteFX doesn't count.

          Steven R

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: The more they push

            "Something that really doesn't work properly in HyperV."

            It's worked properly in Hyper-V since Server 2012 / Windows 8. Yes Remote FX does count as it does a similar thing. However Hyper-V also supports SR-IOV, which is IOMMU on steroids....

            1. Steven Raith

              Re: The more they push

              "It's worked properly in Hyper-V since Server 2012 / Windows 8. Yes Remote FX does count as it does a similar thing. However Hyper-V also supports SR-IOV, which is IOMMU on steroids...."

              With off the shelf software like Windows 7/8/10 Home edition and a basic HyperV server install, yeah?

              No, didn't think so. Software Assurance and Enterprise Edition required, yeah?

        2. Piro Silver badge

          Please

          I'm hoping on Vulkan, for one. DX12 is just another lock-in.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: The more they push

          "(Hyper-V is more efficient than Linux based hypervisors)."

          Based on what? And running what?

          Marketing level statements here.

      3. David 138

        Re: The more they push

        Windows 10 is far from a great OS but its fine to use at the moment. Another year or so of updates and it should be one of the better OS MS have shat out. Either way its still better than Linux and OSX for most task. Especially if you game.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: The more they push

          "it should be one of the better OS MS have shat out."

          Is that damning with faint praise or praising with a faint damn?

          1. werdsmith Silver badge

            Re: The more they push

            Thankfully now installing Linux is as easy if not even easier to install then Windows 7.

            How many people actually install any OS?

            Bet you that 99% of Win 7 users acquired their PC with it already on, they might have had to supply some information on first boot but no installing.

        2. BobChip
          Linux

          Re: The more they push etc..

          Surely the objective of promoting your latest and greatest OS should not be to find that even it's fans regard it as "far from a great OS", and that after "Another year or so of updates it should be one of the better OS MS have shat out." - though I must agree with your description of the manner in which Microsoft have "pushed it out".

          Fact (1) is that Linux - my choice is Mint - is already an excellent OS for work-related tasks, and fact (2) is that the world does not consist entirely of gamers; though to be fair the gaming community are still not well supported. That is already changing, and will probably take place in less time than the "year or so" it may take to get Win 10 half way sorted.

        3. jelabarre59

          Re: The more they push

          > Another year or so of updates and it should be one of the better OS MS have shat out...

          If you don't mind that the interface/desktop is severely F-U-G-L-Y....

          There is simply NO way to make the W10 interface look other than something designed by a 6-month-old with crayons and a full diaper...

      4. JEDIDIAH
        Linux

        Re: The more they push

        I appreciate your enthusiasm but a VM is no place for gaming.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: The more they push

          Windows runs everything in a VM already and has done so for years, a VM under linux tends to have a lower overhead than under windows as less useless rubbish like office and IE components is loaded when you boot.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The more they push

      "the more people they will push onto Linux or Apple"

      The value will still be so near zero so as to make no difference. Even with the success of Android on low end devices, and of Linux in the server world (almost entirely at the expense of other UNIX based systems), pretty much no one uses Linux on a PC desktop or laptop.

      1. Unicornpiss
        Flame

        Re: The more they push

        Beg to differ, as I write this on my Linux desktop. I only boot Windows for gaming or when I need to use an app that won't work on my current Linux distro, like my company VPN or my EPROM burner.

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: The more they push

        "pretty much no one uses Linux on a PC desktop or laptop."

        What you're missing out on here is that the more Windows breaks with its past the less the differentiation between a legacy Windows -> W10 and legacy Windows -> non-Windows migration.

        The less the differentiation the more readily people will choose the non-Windows option.

        The more people choose the non-Windows option the easier it becomes to choose it.

      3. Chemist

        Re: The more they push

        "The value will still be so near zero so as to make no difference."

        And if you really believe that my anonymous 'friend' ( and you almost always are anonymous) why do you spend so much time trying (desperately it seems) to convince everyone else about this ?

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The more they push

        "... pretty much no one uses Linux on a PC desktop or laptop."

        Yea, just millions and millions of users.

        But of course, if you don't ever read anything else than IDC numbers of "market share", you might think so, as Linux on desktop is rarely sold, thus 'market share' is almost 0.

        Amount of downloads would be a similar number but those aren't easy to get because distributed delivery and IDC doesn't collect them, so they don't exist, right?

        Also 'market share' shows any laptop as MS-laptop because you can't buy laptops without windows- licences, MS-tax. Regardless of actual OS used.

        So no, you have no idea and you rely on bad, mostly made-up statistics.

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