AMD/ATI Drops Windows XP Support 251
Billly Gates writes "The latest beta drivers for the Catalyst drivers control suite only list Vista as the lowest version they will support. We still have almost a year before Windows XP support finally ends. Will NVidia follow? So if you own a AMD system you will not receive audio, chipset, video, or any other drivers for your XP system and must upgrade or use an outdated legacy version. Looks like another death knell for this very long lasting platform."
Dropping AMD/ATI support (Score:0, Interesting)
Is getting more attractive by the day...
not entirely.. (Score:5, Interesting)
..just because the system is an amd system doesn't get any new/bugfixed drivers, the summary makes it sound like you can't get new network controller drivers for your intel nic if you are running it an amd system..("or any other drivers").
I'm more surprised that they were still producing new drivers for xp, actually, than them dropping the support. it's not like they, or nvidia, are known to bringing on package mentioned features to older cards by driver updates even.
as always, you're only certain to get what you get when you buy the thing.. trusting them to bring newer features to older cards newer worked out.
Non-story (Score:5, Interesting)
So if you own a AMD system you will not receive audio, chipset, video, or any other drivers for your XP system and must upgrade or use an outdated legacy version.
Ummm, yeah. Microsoft is going to stop releasing security patches for the OS. If you're still running XP, using older video drivers should be the least of your concerns.
Except that is not hapening yet (Score:2, Interesting)
Ummm, yeah. Microsoft is going to stop releasing security patches for the OS. If you're still running XP, using older video drivers should be the least of your concerns.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/endofsupport.aspx [microsoft.com] except that is not happening for another year. The initial date (although I suspect it will be pushed back) April 8 2014.
Its also the date of the end of support for Office 2003. Most of the i915 and above machines (with 1GB of Memory) should simply be moved to Ubuntu and Libreoffice.
But the reality is as the summery states AMD are jumping the gun on this.
Re:Meh. (Score:4, Interesting)
After slashdoters wrote posts like WIndows 7 == Vista SP 2 they had an effect. Many assume WIndows 7 must suck too because that lie was repeated so many times everywhere by XP loyalists. Many are hesitant to change thinking it is just as slow and bloated and that somehow XP will run faster 100% of the time (not understanding algorithm changes and extra optimizations from the compiler added to the kernel for newer cpus).
I seriously doubt that Joe Sixpack goes running to Slashdot for advice on which OS to purchase. Joe Sixpack just uses whatever comes with his new computer. If the latest shiniest Windows sales are down it's because desktop computer sales in general are down. Making Windows go faster is no longer the prime reason to buy a new machine like it was when we referred to it as Wintel.
I did briefly try Win 7 because it came with a then-new laptop I purchased. I was impressed, actually. For Windows, it was great. For Windows, anyway. Sadly, copyright issues alone would prevent MS from ever offering a comprehensive centralized package manager comparable to what Linux distros offer. Having to track down hardware drivers (at all, ever) is a nuisance. Being treated like a dumb user at every turn is definitely a nuisance. The fact that good relatively common-sense security practices are not enough to prevent malware is a showstopper for me. Not being able to poke around under the hood and configure damned near everything, well that sucks. So little choice in desktop environments sucks too. Needing additional software to do what are nowadays basic things (like GOOD remote access, a compiler, etc) that are standard features on *nix is a nuisance. PowerShell is too little, too late compared to what Bash and its predecessors have done for decades (!) now. A binary registry is simply a bad design decision. And while you may find some sense of community among other Windows users, you will not share that with the people who actually put it together.
Slashdot users are more likely to care about some, or all of these things, or something along the lines, than the mass market that drives Windows sales. Here, you may have a point. But every last Slashdotter could boycott Windows forever and it would be a rounding error in terms of MS sales figures. That doesn't explain why Win 7 hasn't skyrocketed the way XP did. It's either ignorant or dishonest for you to pretend that it does.
Re:Probably wanted to drop pre-WDDM (Score:0, Interesting)
" Although there are various characteristics of WDDM, the really defining one is that only a tiny shim that basically wraps the direct hardware access lives in kernel mode. Everything else - the actual program logic of the video driver - lives in user mode."
Isn't this what we had in the pre-KMS days of xorg?
Re:Probably wanted to drop pre-WDDM (Score:4, Interesting)
Um... no. That's ridiculous, in fact. As a MSDN subscriber, I can still download, from Microsoft, MS-DOS 6.0. That doesn't mean I have to call it a "0 year old" operating system!
If you want to get picky over the "12 years" claim, you could argue that I should count from the last time a major upgrade was released, which would be 5 years (and SP3, unlike SP1 and SP2, was hardly major).
Re:Buying AMD (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree that XP x64 is a decent OS. That is what I am running now. Along with Arch Linux and Windows 7 Standard Embedded. I don't like regular Windows 7 because it is so bloated. 12- 50 GB for an operating system? Seriously? My dog could write a more efficient OS. I don't see why an environment for running other programs has to be so big. My Arch Linux install is around 3 GB and that's with lots of stuff installed. My XP x64 install is bloated enough at around 6.6 GB, having grown from around 4 GB at install time. Doubling the bloat as a best case scenario without any significant benefit is not what I consider progress.
Is Win7 more secure? Yup. Is it a relief to be able to run as non-admin? Yup. I dislike the default GUI but that's mostly fixable. I don't feel that the OSX dock is anything worth emulating, but again that can be turned off. There is no search without indexing but I just use Agent Ransack instead and other third party apps to replace the missing functionality from XP. Still, running an embedded OS as a desktop OS is not without its problems. So I require XP as well at least until Microsoft gets its head out of its ass and starts showing some respect for my hard drive space and memory as well as for actually improving the OS and not just trying to make more money. But I don't think that has any chance of happening with Ballmer in charge. They have made progress in faster boot times as well as better security (from XP to Vista/7 only), but the bloat and sloppy programming overall is inexcusable.
Genuine improvements to an OS are basically what you see with Linux: small, incremental changes and bugfixes. There's no need for the kind of vast overhauls that MS feels they have to do to sell more copies. They accomplish nothing, at least nothing good, and they introduce lots of bugs. The embedded version of 7 is not too bad. I do end up with the most compatibility problems with the embedded system though. More even than XP x64. I probably just need to refine which components to add on my next install. Nevertheless some apps just won't install or run and then I'm left with either Linux or XP.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)