Windows 7 RTM Support Ending Soon 173
jones_supa writes with this news from Ars Technica: "Windows 7 users will have to install Service Pack 1 if they want to continue to receive security fixes and other support beyond April 9th. With the release of a Service Pack, Microsoft's policy is to support the old version for two years. Windows 7 Service Pack 1 was released on 22nd February, 2011, so the phasing out of support is happening more or less on schedule. In spite of a growing number of post-Service Pack 1 fixes and updates, Microsoft has shown no signs of shipping a second Service Pack. Should Service Pack 1 be the sole major update for Windows 7, it will continue to receive mainstream support — which encompasses both security updates, non-security bugfixes, and free phone support — until 13th January 2015. Extended support — security fixes and paid incidents only — will continue until 14th January 2020."
you are an idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:you are an idiot (Score:5, Informative)
Well just because you're on Windows 7 RTM doen not mean that you're not updated. Windows 7 RTM receives security updates since it is still a supported version of Windows 7, but you should install SP1 in order to keep receiving them after April 9. Windows 7 RTM and Windows 7 SP1 lives side by side in parallel, and the release of SP1 did not mean that RTM stopped receiving updates.
Re:you are an idiot (Score:4, Insightful)
And I always thought "service pack" was just Microsoft slang for "patch roll-up." Apparently I was wrong. In this case, I don't see why Microsoft continues to develop two separate lines of what is basically the exact same OS, patch by patch. Sure, help the businesses that want time to test... fine, but it's still stupid to maintain two bases for so long, when they are essentially the same damn thing. It's more likely that third party programs are going to fuck up on you, and in my experience that does seem to be where the problems often lie.
Re:you are an idiot (Score:5, Informative)
A service pack will often include some new features, and has actually sometimes removed features. For example Windows XP SP2 removed the support for raw sockets. A service pack can introduce braking changes. That's why there is a fairly large overlap between the old and new service release.
Re:you are an idiot (Score:5, Funny)
A service pack can introduce braking changes.
A reason to not run Windows in moving vehicles...
Coding on the bus without Windows (Score:2)
A reason to not run Windows in moving vehicles...
So if I want to write and test code while riding the bus to and from work, what should I be using instead of Windows? Are MacBook Air and System76 the only options?
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Woosh to you -- he was making fun of your homophone error. Brake != break.
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A service pack can introduce braking changes.
Well, this notebook seems slower after every patch tuesday. They all brake. Sometimes it even breaks stuff, once an XP update broke my LAN driver.
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I know they got it wrong on Windows XP early service packs
Service pack 1 caused a lot of controversy blue screening everyone, Microsoft took the service pack down for a few days and removed the offending patch and changed it around to fix the issue.
those that had already got it were told to uninstall the service pack via safe mode or system restore.
then when XP service pack 2 came about, a lot of funky hardware started not working or again causing bluescreens but that was until drivers were updated since ma
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--Back in the day when Win7 SP1 came out, I read up on user experiences - and various people were posting things like SP1 slowed down their system, and did not offer any significant features as a worthwhile reason to update to it.
http://blogs.computerworld.com/17982/windows_7_service_pack_1_dont_install_it_yet [computerworld.com]
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/windows-7-service-pack-1-made-my-computer-slow/0d8d1373-4267-44ef-970d-39b0349748a9 [microsoft.com]
--Even now, I would ONLY install SP1 after maki
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Win 98 to Win 7
WTF. How did you expect that to work at all.
Re:you are an idiot (Score:5, Informative)
I can add some clarity to this.
When Windows reaches RTM, the ownership of support is handed off from the Windows team to the Windows Sustained Engineering (WinSE) team. Two code branches are opened up for creating QFEs, a Limited Distribution Release (LDR) branch, and a General Distribution Release (GDR) branch.
The GDR branch is used for updates that are going wide to all users, which include security updates and high impact updates. Depending on the severity of the QFE, it might be posted to Windows Update as a security update, or alternatively it would be provided to OEMs to preinstall on shipping systems to resolve a specific issue.
The LDR branch is used for updates that aren't going to be distributed to a wide audience. This might be something like a QFE that fixes a bug that some enterprise customer is seeing, but doesn't have much applicabilty to the majority of Winodws users. Microsoft doesn't want to distribute an update like this wide, because there is a risk that it will cause regressions for other users. Every update in the GDR branch is also put into the LDR branch, because ultimately the user is going to be running a single instance of the binary file, and so it better have all of the security updates included if it is going to also fix issues of lesser importance
When you go to Windows Update and install a QFE, the package that you install usually contains at least two versions of the applicable binaries: One from the LDR branch, and one from the GDR branch. The hotfix installer will look at what is currently on system, and if you have the LDR version of the binary already installed, the hotfix installer will update with the corresponding LDR binary. The effect is that once you install an LDR update, you are now on the LDR branch for that binary for all future updates - that is, until the next service pack release.
The service pack is a release that includes all updates from the LDR and GDR branches rolled up into one major release. Pre-release versions of service packs are provided to enterprises for testing, and to see if any of the updates that were put into the LDR branch break anything. This gives the enterprise and Microsoft time to address the issue and fix it for the final service pack release.
Since not all enterprises participate in full testing of the service pack, there may be things that end up in the final version that can break things. This is why Microsoft will continue to support the pre|prior service pack release with security updates for a time, so that these issues can be resolved. At some future time, the pre|prior service pack becomes no longer supported, which is what TFA is all about.
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Windows 7 RTM is NOT unpatched. It receives security updates just like any other supported version of Windows. See above discussion. If you read TFA you see that what it's all about is that RTM will soon no longer receive those updates.
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so what? what purpose do these "extra features" serve for someone already getting all the functionality they need? why not just stick with security patches instead of layering on bloat?
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bloat
Can we please all agree to stop using this lame weasel word. Thanks.
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every script kiddie on the planet uses those patches and SPs to reverse engineer new exploits
>Pictures script kiddies with actual engineering skills *shudder*
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Speaking of idiots (Score:2)
It's pretty clear you don't understand what a Windows Service Pack is and is not, despite you calling other people idiots in your ignorance. So allow me to attempt to correct your misconceptions.
Do you know how many security patches are in the average Windows SP?
Yes, all the ones that had previously been released for the given version of Windows up to the time of release of the Service Pack. Service Packs are not, nor ever have been, a sole source for the installation of security updates. They offer a co
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If you don't have service pack 1 installed you are an idiot anyway to run a non-updated system.
Yeah, because we all know that running Windows in an offline environment or closed network is an impossible scenario.
Seems I've got over a dozen of those impossibilities running right now.
As far as who is the bigger idiot, I'll leave that to the security community as to which one of us is more vulnerable (or gullible); You online with your "updated" system (which has historically protected Windows so well), or me offline with my outdated system.
Good luck out there with your "mighty" Defender shield.
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Re:you are an idiot (Score:4, Informative)
If you don't have service pack 1 installed you are an idiot anyway to run a non-updated system.
There was almost zero benefits in SP1 for the average home user. Users can install all the needed security updates separately; in fact, this is often recommended, to reduce the size of the service pack download. Win7 received SP1 because Server 2008R2 needed the contents of the service pack.Here's what's in it for Win7:
Additional support for communication with third-party federation services (those supporting the WS-Federation passive profile protocol)
Improved HDMI audio device performance
Corrected behavior when printing mixed-orientation XPS documents
Change to behavior of “Restore previous folders at logon” functionality
Enhanced support for additional identities in RRAS and IPsec
Support for Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX)
Improved Support for Advanced Format (512e) Storage Devices (devices with 4kb physical sectors)
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If you don't have service pack 1 installed you are an idiot anyway to run a non-updated system.
I don't have Win 7 SP 1 because my company still uses XP, you insensitive clod!
looks like (Score:5, Funny)
2015 - year of the linux desktop
Re:looks like (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, no one is going to notice, since everyone will be using cloud computing accounts.
Re:looks like (Score:5, Insightful)
lucky for them much of the cloud is powered by linux
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Big deal. Policy, not method, is the problem.
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"year of the linux desktop" has been an inside joke for years, but a decent chunk of the modern world depends on linux already (often without even realising it), which is why i would argue that "year of the linux desktop" doesn't even really matter because linux has already made its mark and is increasing its domination
microsoft and apple may win their little battles, but linux has the war beat with one hand tied behind its back
policy of cloud usage is a problem, but i think the problems can be solved. i al
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By 2015, I'm hoping to have my Cloud 2.0 business off the ground.
It'll be much like now, only with more Flash.
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when i read "windows rtm" the first thing that came to mind was "read the manual"
maybe linux ideology is already infiltrating... by stealth :)
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The manual? They'll be expecting us to RTFA next! ; )
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only if the rear belongs to steve jobs... no wonder the whole world mourned his death... whose ass to chew out now?
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You know, it could have been... Windows 8 is slow out the gates, it's still stuck in the "other" category on StatCounter which last week was 4.48%, I'm guessing 4% Win8 as there's always been half a percent other while at the same time after release Win7 had 10% uptake. If Linux had been ready this is probably as good a time as the Vista launch. Macs have slowly been chipping away at Windows' market share and will probably take another upswing as Microsoft is busy pushing touch-laptops/tablets/hybrids, whil
(groan) (Score:3)
Re:(groan) (Score:5, Informative)
Windows 7 SP1 has been out for nearly three years now. That's a very reasonable time to update, especially since the update is free to Windows 7 RTM users and in general should not break any software compatibility. So I don't get what the problem of dropping support for RTM would be.
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Windows 7 SP1 has been out for nearly three years now... So I don't get what the problem of dropping support for RTM would be.
Let me explain loud and clear... whoOOOoosh!
You got it now?
(besides, the OS I pointed to has a stellar [slashdot.org] level of support by comparison)
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But you and everyone else is ignoring the elephant in the room, the same one that causes me to this very day to have infected system cross my desk that are still running XP SP2, and that is piracy.
Au contraire, mon ami, au contraire, I'm not ignoring piracy. In fact, I'm so convinced that copyright should protect honest work that I decided it's better for me to use products not made by MS.
But considering the only systems I don't see patched after SP1 was released nearly 3 years ago is pirate systems I just can't blame MSFT for dropping support as pretty much all that is left without SP1 is the pirates it seems.
(friendly kidding now) Well, has been quite a while since I used a MS OS... but somehow I still can't believe that the pirated systems using MS OSes IS actually a single one - if true, either MS is doing great financially or is totally busted.
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If you're running pirated software you're probably pre-rooted anyway.
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A virus scanner will only detect known viruses. The hack you mentioned could do anything it wants and no scanner will detect it, because it isn't a virus, it's built in. The only way I could trust it is with a third party checksum like Linux distros use, and the hack came as source code you compiled yourself.
I agree with you about pricing and piracy, I felt really ripped off paying $125 for XP that was a must-install because I lost my driver disks and no W98 drivers were available after my daughter installe
I think I can make it (Score:4, Insightful)
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In the meantime, there are always tools like http://www.wsusoffline.net/ [wsusoffline.net] to roll one's own Service Pack 2 in case a new install becomes necessary (English introduction is below the German one).
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won't be long... microsoft knew long ago that w8 was a looming disaster so they'll be frantically trying to make up some new icons for w7 so they can rebrand it as w9.
maybe it'll have some kind of new bastardized desktop icons resulting from a traditional icon having sex with a desktop widget to spawn something like those rediculous tiles in w8... maybe to at least attempt to avoid appearing like a complete backflip
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There's no way I'm every going to buy the mobile operating system they've released for my desktop.
so you honestly believe that the Metro UI, the app market and the other desktop->mobile OS changes from W7 to W8 will all be temporary and removed in W9? I'd suggest to anyone avoiding Metro to try the Skype and eBay apps in Windows 8 before deciding that W8 and "mobile-ification" is a dead end.
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It's not application availability, it's the interface itself that sucks for desktop work. skype and ebay are hardly the bread and butter of someone using a desktop machine...and since when does a website really 'need' an 'app' in the first place? It's redundant and done more for marketing than anything else. They want to see their icon on your 'mobile desktop.'.. woohoo..
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There's no way I'm every going to buy the mobile operating system they've released for my desktop.
The bad news for you is the desktop is dead. The writing has been on the wall for years.
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This is nonsense. Netbooks and tablets are useless for serious work. You're not going to get cubicle dwellers to tolerate tiny screens and tiny and/or missing keyboards. There has been a slight decrease in the number of desktops shipped, but I could argue that's as much because we've reached a plateau on CPU speed and businesses have realized you don't need to replace them every two years.
As for home users, well, mos
Where is goddamned service pack 2 (Score:5, Informative)
I'm one of those "sympathisers" here who doesn't loathe Microsoft.
Hot damn though, anyone here who does install Win7 SP1 regularly (as I do) there's about 2 to 300mb of patches and at least..70 or so of the bastards, they take forever to install as well (disk thrash)
For goodness sakes, just release SP2 already you bastards.
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Mentioned it above, but just use http://www.wsusoffline.net/ [wsusoffline.net] to roll your own WP2.
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Is this one of those tools which downloads each individual required MSI / EXE to make an install directory, to install from?
If so - it's still going to thrash the disk, more so than the offiical updater which downloads all, then installs one at a time.
That's a lot of double clicking to install each file sequentially,...... we shouldn't have to do this.
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It grabs all the available updates and creates an up-to-date image that can be written to an external media for automated updates.
In the end, it's just like an offline Service Pack, only that you don't need to wait for the guys in Redmond to finally get their asses moving.
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If it's so easy to make your own service pack, why does MS release service packs so infrequently? There has to be a catch.
Then again, given how extensively XP is used, there really should have been a SP4, and it would really be nice if there would be an EOL Service Pack when support is finally dumped. I still maintain a few XP systems, and starting with SP3 (or even an nLite slipstream) can be a pain.
Just use dism.exe (Score:5, Informative)
Use dism.exe. It will let you capture freshly installed machine - even with installed applications - back into an install image, i.e. slipstreaming. From the install image it will work exectly like the original image, only it will have all of the installed service packs, updates and patches already installed.
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For goodness sakes, just release SP2 already you bastards.
It's called Windows 8, with the damned awful metro UI removed.
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Why would I help promote bad software?
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Actually, after Service Pack 1, most of the updates are what I call cumulative updates--the additional patch files are probably going to be less than you think, especially for Internet Explorer and the .NET Framework files.
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I'm one of those "sympathisers" here who doesn't loathe Microsoft... For goodness sakes, just release SP2 already you bastards.
My head just asploded.
Read the manual? (Score:1)
Are they going to start telling us to RTFM?
In 2015 will Win7be like WinXP? (Score:1)
5 hours (Score:5, Funny)
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I recently installed Windows 7 on two machines. It took 5 hours on both machines to download, setup all patches. It restarted itself about 15 times.
I recently reinstalled kubuntu 10.04 because 12 sucked. It took half an hour, only one reboot. Strange that a free OS is so superior to an expensive one.
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Kubuntu 10.04 was the buggiest Linux distro I have ever run. KDE4 has come a long way since then.
I'd recommend running the KDE version of the latest Linux Mint instead of that old crap.
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I actually plan to do just that. I backgraded to kubuntu 10 because I had an install CD handy, but have been planning to migrate to Mint for a while. Everyone seems to love it and I haven't heard anything bad at all about it.
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If you're going with KDE, I'm not really sure what the point of going with Mint is, other than to avoid Kubuntu. FWIW, I use switched from Kubuntu to Debian with KDE and have no regrets.
Dropping support for Windows 8 (Score:2)
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Not Surprising (Score:2, Interesting)
I dropped my RFTM support for Windows after XP (and went with Linux), after MS decided to rename things and provide a near useless search function, since it does not include the old names in the search with links to newly re-named things.
Linux might not be much better with the different init and configuration systems, but I am NOT going to paying in order to put up with that. It's especially not worth dropping a few thousand dollars to install Microsoft's OSs on all my systems if they're going to speed
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"Did you mean: RTFM?"
Why, yes, thank you Belated Auto Correct v0.1 (alpha).
Easy win for Homeland Cybersecurity (Score:3)
The easiest thing Homeland Security can do is to force longer, deeper penetration of the latest security fixes for all consumer operating systems.
It's amazing to me how anybody could feel comfortable applying 300mb of fixes. What the hell is in there that fixes security?
1) Mandate absolute transparency and allow user to select downloading and installation only of security-critical code.
2) Force manufacturers not to add in anything else to those portions that are really security-critical.
3) Create a list of vulnerabilities that is updated daily, and grade operating systems against whether they have fixes for them. If they believe in obscurity they must still give a code-name for the vulnerability and security researchers must be told what they mean, show the code and allow them to vet how well the vulnerability was fixed. An automated scoreboard and forum could be developed that aggregates the results of this distributed attack on peevishness by companies like microsoft and oracle who leave huge numbers of fixes unpatched until a good PR moment.
4) Force manufacturers to continue providing fixes (security patches only) to all users. It is not reasonable to allow the majority of the market to become a time-bomb and individual businesses, private users are held hostage.
5) In the case of an open source / community developed distribution, provide the same guidelines and services as is done by Homeland Cybersecurity for commercial vendors, however forcing a community is impossible. Instead a community or a manufacturer (like RedHat) can at least be graded on its response and the availability in an open repository of the required fixes.
6) Do all this for applications, libraries and drivers, not just operating systems.
7) Do this for routers
8) Do this for websites.
9) Define security and the maintenance of security as a process requiring transparency by manufacturers in order to encourage users to adopt patches and make them easier to download.
10) Provide help, guidance and code to community distros and programming teams who can choose to use it, which will make it easier to more frequently issue security patches. It should be a lot easier for users (even on linux) to maintain an up to date system without worry of something breaking or being unable to back up settings, data, etc.
The responses of Microsoft and Oracle to the security realities confronting their customers is pathetic, medieval and takes advantage of general apathy and cluelessness. The result is a never-ending pool of machines vulnerable to every attack to appear in the wild.
This would remove a huge amount
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Wrong. I have developed plenty on several OSs and have a clue. All I am saying is, security fixes should be 1) not bundled with 300 MB of crap, and 2) monopolist-scale os vendors like MS should be required to provide these light but critical security fixes to their software without quitting when they think it is time to push people to buy the next version. A way to pay for security fixes after end of life is another possibility but it would push the updates to more people if Homeland paid for it.
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Relax. I am a developer and have no interest in destroying the software industry, even if I could.
All I am saying is that critical vulnerabilities can be patched without sliding 100s of mb of crap in with them, and without creating artificial barriers to adoption.
Your suggestion "I would be able to sue" is both incorrect and misunderstands my point (or I was unclear, if so sorry). I didn't mean "force a website to do x". I meant "provide guidelines" and if you want to stretch it, you can grade a site on whe
Re:What exactly is a Service Pack? (Score:5, Informative)
A service pack is a roll up of all the important and critical updates into one big package. You can apply a service pack to any install to bring it up to that patch level without going through the intermediate stages.
The service packs are often slipstreamed into install media to produce a (fairly) up to date install right off the disk.
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Service packs also typically include hotfixes that may not be rolled out to the community at large, especially hardware-specific hotfixes. Of course, there are also the few Service Packs that actually roll out new features (e.g. Windows XP Service Pack 2)
Re:What exactly is a Service Pack? (Score:4, Insightful)
A service pack is a form of configuration management. Think of every binary in the Windows operating system as a program with a version. Microsoft wants to encourage developers to support the latest version of their patched OS. That is, of course, feasibly impossible, especially when some developers are confronted with major behavioral change in one OS program update that their application is dependent upon. So having a "blessed" minimal collection of binary versions makes Microsoft only responsible for those versions. It then becomes incumbent for the developers to make sure their application works to SP1 versions of all those OS programs, and the developers cease to be responsible for making their app work with the original OS binary/daemon that was released with the Windows 7 rollout. (And yes, this is a descriptive simplification of the issue.)
There is more going on with a service pack than just throwing together the latest version of each OS binary. Yes, I wish Microsoft would put out an SP2 already, even if they want to commit corporate suicide by abandoning Windows 7 to get customers to move to Windows 8.
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Just like a recent Linux kernel might be at say 3.7.8, ie... so Windows 7 SP1 is 7.1 and the concept of is unused by Microsoft?
No, The Windows kernel does have the concept of <major>.<minor>.<increment>, but it is not the same as the OS version. The version of Windows kernel on the netbook I am using now is 6.1.7601. To the general public, this is Windows 7 (Service Pack 1). It is like how Linux Mint 14 does not use Linux kernel version 14
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You mean they where releasing security updates for people running SP0 ?!?
Absolutely. Since a service pack could break userland applications you want to maintain them side by side for a while so that there is sufficient time for userland to adapt.
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Or blindly buy the next version.
Or wait for a newer, better version to be hyped.
Or keep up with service packs to extend the life of the product.
Like they do for Windows XP, which still hasn't properly reached "end of life" in the world yet. If you think nobody bought Vista, 7 or 8, then I'm sorry but you're mistaken. Doesn't mean that that's SENSIBLE, but that's what happens on all scales and in all markets.
ReactOS (Score:2)
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nonsense, look at the support lifecycle web page, win 7 has 11 years planned, vista 10 years.....more or less the lifespan is the same
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haha. since windows xp will die april 2014 you'd better buy win 7 and transition over. that's what I've done for the machines in my household that need to run windows, no way I'm supporting that windows 8 crap at home.
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I'm not going to go to win7 or the disgusting win 8.
Thanx to Steam, I am now posting this in Ubuntu and downloading a new game.
I'm looking forward to learning all about Ubuntu :)
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RTM just means "Release to Manufacturing" and has been around since the Windows 95 days (and probably even earlier internally, but I first encountered the terminology referencing the retail version of Win95 as opposed to any OSRs).
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You're lucky that WU even still works on XP. Few years down the road, XP will be where 98/ME have been for some time now, unable to download any updates at all. Then, you're practically stuck with the base RTM install, and all of the vulns that comes with.