Microsoft to intentionally brick Windows 7/8 Update on Kaby Lake & Ryzen Systems

[bingo600]

I have yet to install Eclipse and GCC on my Android phone or tablets and those programs are about the only reasons I use Linux.  Certainly not for the messed up Unity desktop that ships with Ubuntu.  Unity has the distinction of making Win 8.0 look usable.

You shouly try : linux mint 17.3 mate   , not the cinnamon. 
That's the best desktop/laptop edition i have used ever.  It uses Ubuntu "behind the curtains" , but not the dreadfull Unity.

Afaik even Ubuntu have now made a mate  edition , after linux mint became the most popular desktop/laptop linux.
Afaik due to Ubuntu forcing Unity on people , and their secret $ware agreement, where they delivered your searches to Amazon. to get $$ from them.


I used ubuntu from 2007..12 , but skipped it after 10.4. And after installing mint i have never looked back.

Don't install the mint 18 yet , it's simply not as stable as 17.3

/Bingo

Who started with Ygdrasil in 96' then Slackware , then Redhat , then Centos , then Ubuntu and finally landed on Linux Mint  , for desktops.
And Debian for servers.

I do have a single dualboot - M$ machine       As i need to update my Garmin gps'es.
I boot it 2..3 times a year.

[Yansi]

When there will be enough useful engineering software packages for linux, I might switch to it. Until then, linux remains only a toy for those, who have too much free time to fix stuff until broken even more.

I might consider linux when at least Altium and Keil MDK ARM and many similar tools will support it.

Now staying on Windows 7, far away from anything like Windows 10 or Linux.

[bingo600]

When there will be enough useful engineering software packages for linux, I might switch to it. Until then, linux remains only a toy for those, who have too much free time to fix stuff until broken even more.

I might consider linux when at least Altium and Keil MDK ARM and many similar tools will support it.

Now staying on Windows 7, far away from anything like Windows 10 or Linux.

If you can afford real licensed versions of these packages , i'm sure you could afford an extra pc for running your "Toy OS" if needed.
But i'd have to agree with you here  , there are products where the  supplier have chosen not make their packages for linux.

Not that linux is a Toy OS.   

In fact i'd expect that most standard (non gaming) users would be able to make the switch wo. loosing much (if any) functionality.

And the days where you'd absolutely need the "CLI/shell" on linux is over.

/Bingo

[John Coloccia]

Linux Mint is finally there. I can put this on anyone's computer who's familiar with OSX or Windows, and I'll be confident that it wont give them any trouble. I'm slowly converting ALL of my computers over to Mint. The Windows 10 kernel is actually quite good, but all of the policies make it practically unusable for real work. It took me several hours in Windows 10 Pro to figure out how to keep it from automatically rebooting if it happened to get an update when I was away from my computer, and it required making obscure changes in some Group Policy BS that truthfully, I really just don't understand. I'm not a Windows admin and don't want to be.

Linux Mint is like what OSX used to be...it just works, and is non intrusive. It's about a bazillion times more efficient too. My laptop's fans used to scream just doing a little web browsing. They're completely silent now.

I haven't decided what to do with my Windows programs yet. Some of them run in WINE perfectly (like DipTrace). A couple really just need to run in Windows. I'm going to experiment with running it in a VM and see where I get, but if I have to dual boot I will.

But yeah, buh bye Windows. It's been nice, and I really thought some versions like 2000 and 7 were really quite good and very well thought out, but enough is enough. Life is too short to have a whiny OS that needs constant attention and attending too, like an annoying puppy dog. WTF? I have a real life to live, and f&&king around with this stupid computer constantly is not part of the plan.

[John Coloccia]

Incidentally, I know that there are a lot of people that love Windows 10, and don't even notice all of the OS interaction it requires. Most of them are much younger than I am, and frankly I feel a little bad for them. I'm in my early 40's and I remember what it's like to have an OS that just does OS kinds of things and leaves me the hell alone. I remember what it's like before running an OS gave you the "Windows Experience" and other nonsense. I don't want to experience anything. I just want to get my work done and get on with my life. The idea of an OS being front and center in my daily workflow is just absolutely ludicrous to someone like me.

And I'm not one of these guys that's been banging the Linux/GNU drum for 20 years. My feeling on it is that it's a disorganized mess with a lot of projects that simply don't have a clue what they're doing (Unity, Inkscape and KiCAD come to mind as perfect examples of completely unfocused, random garbage).  That said, a growing handful of projects, like Mint, have finally gotten over the hump and become very usable, and Windows has become such a pile of crap that it's just not worth it anymore. This isn't really how I had anticipated things going, but 'tis what it is.

I'm going to predict that the time is right for some investor to start a new PC company, and the only OS offered will be Linux. It will be very low cost and he will sweep in and completely change the dynamic. He'll do it by going to every grammar school, high school and University in the country and offering essentially at-cost computers to the staff, and killer deals for the students. One generation of this and you can kiss Microsoft's dominance goodbye. It's not like it's a big secret that Microsoft is, and has been, terrified of this kind of scenario, and it's in part what drives their hyper-aggressive marketing and business tactics.

[technix]

I'm going to predict that the time is right for some investor to start a new PC company, and the only OS offered will be Linux. It will be very low cost and he will sweep in and completely change the dynamic. He'll do it by going to every grammar school, high school and University in the country and offering essentially at-cost computers to the staff, and killer deals for the students. One generation of this and you can kiss Microsoft's dominance goodbye. It's not like it's a big secret that Microsoft is, and has been, terrified of this kind of scenario, and it's in part what drives their hyper-aggressive marketing and business tactics.

Raspberry Pi. By getting rid of the Windows expectancy they built such a cheap computer that you can buy for the cost of a dinner, and push it into so many classrooms and workbenches. The latest Raspberry Pi 3 can be used comfortably for some simple daily computation tasks.

[wraper]

I'm going to predict that the time is right for some investor to start a new PC company, and the only OS offered will be Linux. It will be very low cost and he will sweep in and completely change the dynamic. He'll do it by going to every grammar school, high school and University in the country and offering essentially at-cost computers to the staff, and killer deals for the students. One generation of this and you can kiss Microsoft's dominance goodbye. It's not like it's a big secret that Microsoft is, and has been, terrified of this kind of scenario, and it's in part what drives their hyper-aggressive marketing and business tactics.

Raspberry Pi. By getting rid of the Windows expectancy they built such a cheap computer that you can buy for the cost of a dinner, and push it into so many classrooms and workbenches. The latest Raspberry Pi 3 can be used comfortably for some simple daily computation tasks.

I don't see any causation between rpi price and windows. Not that cheap, considering hardware on the PCB. And you still need a memory card, PSU, case (for some protection), monitor, keyboard, mouse. And you can buy a cheap tablet with Atom CPU running windows for less than that in total.

[bitwelder]

I haven't decided what to do with my Windows programs yet. Some of them run in WINE perfectly (like DipTrace). A couple really just need to run in Windows. I'm going to experiment with running it in a VM and see where I get, but if I have to dual boot I will.

If you have only a couple of applications that require Windows, I doubt that you will need to keep a dual boot configuration (i.e. keep the possibility to run Windows 'on the metal').
It is instead quite convenient to have Windows in a VM. With the 'snapshot' capabilities you can easily mark some points in time where you have a stable configuration, and quickly rollback to one of them if needed.
And with Windows 'boxed' in a VM, it's also easier to keep control of where it's trying to connect to 

[John Coloccia]

I haven't decided what to do with my Windows programs yet. Some of them run in WINE perfectly (like DipTrace). A couple really just need to run in Windows. I'm going to experiment with running it in a VM and see where I get, but if I have to dual boot I will.

If you have only a couple of applications that require Windows, I doubt that you will need to keep a dual boot configuration (i.e. keep the possibility to run Windows 'on the metal').
It is instead quite convenient to have Windows in a VM. With the 'snapshot' capabilities you can easily mark some points in time where you have a stable configuration, and quickly rollback to one of them if needed.
And with Windows 'boxed' in a VM, it's also easier to keep control of where it's trying to connect to 

The only issues with this are:

1) I haven't tried it yet, but I've heard that Windows 10 run likes a dog in VMs for some reason.
2) In particular, the one program I have that must run in Windows is a CAD package. I'll have to see how that runs. My models tend to be simple, relatively anyhow, so it may be acceptable and I don't use it very much anymore, but it does need to be good enough and I don't know that I'll get there.

I also do some software development work in Windows, but nothing that wouldn't be OK in a VM.

Since I need to get to it so infrequently and I want the performance, dual boot is almost ideal other than Windows is so frickin' needy that I know if I don't boot into Windows for a month or two, it'll spend hours with all it's damn updates and other garbage. Have I mentioned just how much I've come to hate Windows 10, and this is coming from someone who never got on the Microsoft-is-evil bandwagon? Lord, what a piece of crap.

[rstofer]

I'm going to predict that the time is right for some investor to start a new PC company, and the only OS offered will be Linux. It will be very low cost and he will sweep in and completely change the dynamic. He'll do it by going to every grammar school, high school and University in the country and offering essentially at-cost computers to the staff, and killer deals for the students. One generation of this and you can kiss Microsoft's dominance goodbye. It's not like it's a big secret that Microsoft is, and has been, terrified of this kind of scenario, and it's in part what drives their hyper-aggressive marketing and business tactics.

Investors usually have money and the way they keep their money is to not make mistakes.  There is a problem with Linux; it's open source!  Pouring money into it would be a mistake!

The problem is that Linux wants to push that open source mentality down to the application layer and NOBODY writes commercial software for Linux.  They MIGHT port a Windows application, after it is up and selling, but they won't develop one from scratch.  The 'open source' is half of the problem and the users wanting something for nothing is the other half.  If companies can't make money writing software, they won't write it!

On the desktop, Linux is going nowhere.  After 20+ years it still accounts for less than 2% of desktops and it won't be improving any time soon.

Linux, at the command line, brings a Unix time-share flavor and I rather like doing software development from the command line.  I still use gedit for the editor but I am perfectly comfortable using Makefiles.

Yes, Unity is a piece of crap.  The sheer arrogance of putting the system buttons on the wrong side is inexcusable!  I haven't tried Mint but I have heard good things about it.  Next time I set up a Linux box I'll give it a shot.  And, yes, I realize that I can search the Internet and find the solution to the buttons problem.  But I shouldn't have to!

[Mr. Scram]

I'm going to predict that the time is right for some investor to start a new PC company, and the only OS offered will be Linux. It will be very low cost and he will sweep in and completely change the dynamic. He'll do it by going to every grammar school, high school and University in the country and offering essentially at-cost computers to the staff, and killer deals for the students. One generation of this and you can kiss Microsoft's dominance goodbye. It's not like it's a big secret that Microsoft is, and has been, terrified of this kind of scenario, and it's in part what drives their hyper-aggressive marketing and business tactics.

My experience is, frankly, that a lot of people in education have a hard time with computers as it is. Change things in a significant way, and things start going sour. Apple had aggressively pushed iPads into school and that seemed to work for a while, but slowly and surely you see them being ditched again at pretty much the same speed.

Teachers are not IT savvy, and that is probably being friendly.

[gildasd]

... The Windows 10 kernel is actually quite good, but all of the policies make it practically unusable for real work. It took me several hours in Windows 10 Pro to figure out how to keep it from automatically rebooting if it happened to get an update when I was away from my computer, and it required making obscure changes in some Group Policy BS that truthfully, I really just don't understand. I'm not a Windows admin and don't want to be...

Darn, had not thought of that...
How the hell am I supposed to do 24 or 36 hour CFD runs if the system reboots when the freak it wants?
And I'm like you, I don't want to go beyond variables to get stuff working.

This sucks.

Are there rumours of a Win10.2 that does away with the worst of the crowd spying and automatic bull crap?

[NiHaoMike]

This also grants Widows an advantage: if a design paradigm works for Linux and is really brilliant, MS can simply clone that. Cloning ideas from an open source software to a closed source one is easy, not the other way around.

Still waiting for Windows to get the simple but so useful always on top button, a feature Linux had for like 2 decades...

[John Coloccia]

I'm going to predict that the time is right for some investor to start a new PC company, and the only OS offered will be Linux. It will be very low cost and he will sweep in and completely change the dynamic. He'll do it by going to every grammar school, high school and University in the country and offering essentially at-cost computers to the staff, and killer deals for the students. One generation of this and you can kiss Microsoft's dominance goodbye. It's not like it's a big secret that Microsoft is, and has been, terrified of this kind of scenario, and it's in part what drives their hyper-aggressive marketing and business tactics.

Investors usually have money and the way they keep their money is to not make mistakes.  There is a problem with Linux; it's open source!  Pouring money into it would be a mistake!

The problem is that Linux wants to push that open source mentality down to the application layer and NOBODY writes commercial software for Linux.  They MIGHT port a Windows application, after it is up and selling, but they won't develop one from scratch.  The 'open source' is half of the problem and the users wanting something for nothing is the other half.  If companies can't make money writing software, they won't write it!

On the desktop, Linux is going nowhere.  After 20+ years it still accounts for less than 2% of desktops and it won't be improving any time soon.

Linux, at the command line, brings a Unix time-share flavor and I rather like doing software development from the command line.  I still use gedit for the editor but I am perfectly comfortable using Makefiles.

Yes, Unity is a piece of crap.  The sheer arrogance of putting the system buttons on the wrong side is inexcusable!  I haven't tried Mint but I have heard good things about it.  Next time I set up a Linux box I'll give it a shot.  And, yes, I realize that I can search the Internet and find the solution to the buttons problem.  But I shouldn't have to!

Actually, people have been writing commercial software for Linux for a LONG time, and it's growing, not shrinking. The only thing really missing that most people might use everyday is Microsoft Office. Of course, there is a lot of specialty software that simply doesn't exist in Linux. Some CAD suites, PCB suites, Adobe's software, and things like that.

But consider that a huge amount of internet infrastructure is built on Linux and Android is also built on Linux.

The only thing Linux is really missing is a decent desktop. Cinnamon is more than decent. There's really very little reason to ever go a shell if you don't want to, though there are still some rough edges and it kind of annoys me that instead of polishing them, they keep concentrating on adding crap. For example, I needed to edit my rc.local file to change my touchpad hysteresis settings in order to make it usable. That's COMPLETELY inexcusable, and if anything it's brain damaged thinking like this, and brain damaged thinking going on at places like Canonical, that is keeping people away.

Which is why the smart investor will NOT use some random distribution for his hardware. They will take the Apple approach and will assemble a distribution which is tailored to their hardware, and it will truly just work and work well. Not just well but far better than Windows, and at least as well as OSX.

Millions of people use Linux everyday and have no clue it's Linux. The only problem with getting Linux on desktops is guys like GNU, which by and large encourages an unfocused, random, dumpster-like approach to software, and guys like Canonical who I can only guess are being bribed by Microsoft and Apple. Not only can Linux take over the desktop market (and I do believe that it can, and will, in my lifetime), but with the right front end it can be so good that it can actually be used to sell the hardware, just as OSX and Android sell the hardware.

Anyway, follow the games. IMHO, it's always been gaming that has held back both Apple and Linux. I see signs already that gaming can, and will, come to Linux in a significant way, and that'll be that.

[rstofer]

Millions of people use Linux everyday and have no clue it's Linux. The only problem with getting Linux on desktops is guys like GNU, which by and large encourages an unfocused, random, dumpster-like approach to software, and guys like Canonical who I can only guess are being bribed by Microsoft and Apple. Not only can Linux take over the desktop market (and I do believe that it can, and will, in my lifetime), but with the right front end it can be so good that it can actually be used to sell the hardware, just as OSX and Android sell the hardware.

You mixing cell phones with desktops.  The Linux portion of the desktop is less than 2% after 20 years.
I know it is used in the server market and, clearly, it is used for cell phones (and other appliances).

Canonical makes their money by supporting Linux in enterprise environments.

Anyway, follow the games. IMHO, it's always been gaming that has held back both Apple and Linux. I see signs already that gaming can, and will, come to Linux in a significant way, and that'll be that.

Not if the game program is forced to be open source.  NOBODY is going to give away millions of dollars of IP.

[John Coloccia]

Millions of people use Linux everyday and have no clue it's Linux. The only problem with getting Linux on desktops is guys like GNU, which by and large encourages an unfocused, random, dumpster-like approach to software, and guys like Canonical who I can only guess are being bribed by Microsoft and Apple. Not only can Linux take over the desktop market (and I do believe that it can, and will, in my lifetime), but with the right front end it can be so good that it can actually be used to sell the hardware, just as OSX and Android sell the hardware.

You mixing cell phones with desktops.  The Linux portion of the desktop is less than 2% after 20 years.
I know it is used in the server market and, clearly, it is used for cell phones (and other appliances).

Canonical makes their money by supporting Linux in enterprise environments.

Anyway, follow the games. IMHO, it's always been gaming that has held back both Apple and Linux. I see signs already that gaming can, and will, come to Linux in a significant way, and that'll be that.

Not if the game program is forced to be open source.  NOBODY is going to give away millions of dollars of IP.

I think you have some misconceptions how the various licenses work. In fact, the inclusion of non-free software (free in Stallman's sense of the word) is partly what sets Mint apart from the other distributions and causes the guys over at GNU and Canonical to get their panties in a bunch and have a good cry. To give you an idea of how brain dead some of these guys are, they're still working on HURD. It started 27 years, for heaven's sake, and it's still not there. Give it up already, but that'll never happen because Linux lets proprietary binaries into it's precious kernel. Well yeah, of course, because people who use Linux want hardware drivers written by the hardware companies that will work the best they can.

GNU is GNU's worst enemy, IMHO.

[MK14]

Are there rumours of a Win10.2 that does away with the worst of the crowd spying and automatic bull crap?

Sounds like you should start one. It doesn't have to be true to get peoples attention. In fact that would help.

Maybe there is at least a little/some truth to the rumor...
It would seem that Microsoft have officially announced stuff about some kind of version updates, in a news conference a week or so ago
http://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/windows-10-creators-update-arrives-10039586
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/22/microsoft_postcreators_update_plans/

Microsoft has confirmed it is planning a second major update for Windows 10, which is to be piloted this year, and is seriously considering releasing it before 2018.

[rdl]

Secondly, the new version of Windows 10 comes with a new feature called Beam - a direct rival to the Amazon-owned Twitch platform - designed to make it easier for gamers to broadcast their their gameplay in real time.

Same old Microsoft. Have they ever tried to compete with anyone and actually done better? Seems like they usually just end up buying the rivals.

[NiHaoMike]

Still waiting for Windows to get the simple but so useful always on top button, a feature Linux had for like 2 decades...

You can get the function with a third party software. Should be less done in than 100 lines of code to do in plain C and Win32 SDK API.

Is there one you can recommend? Nview has it but that requires a Nvidia GPU to work.

[BradC]

Sometimes MS will not implement simple standard features such as USB audio 2.0, just to allow specialty companies like Thesycon to survive. This is a strategy to maintain good developer ecosystem.

Mostly they let those companies develop the technology and work most of the bugs out, then clone their tech in the OS to cut off their revenue stream and drive them into the ground, but maybe they do it your way too. I've just seen little evidence of it over the years.

[Paul Moir]

Sometimes MS will not implement simple standard features such as USB audio 2.0, just to allow specialty companies like Thesycon to survive. This is a strategy to maintain good developer ecosystem.

Mostly they let those companies develop the technology and work most of the bugs out, then clone their tech in the OS to cut off their revenue stream and drive them into the ground, but maybe they do it your way too. I've just seen little evidence of it over the years.

While the goodness of their heart's I'm sure is a factor, I think one of the big reasons they can't do things like this is because it making something that's free and better than this little company produces smacks of monopolistic behaviour.  While the heat is off now, I bet the ghost of Stac Electronics still haunts the halls of the Redmond campus.  Live by the sword and all that.

[Faith]

Well, Microsoft patches are in today. And it is confirmed; my notebook with a Kaby Lake CPU (i7-7700HK) and Windows 7 installed now receives an "Unsupported Hardware" error and Windows Update no longer runs.

My desktop with a Kaby Lake PCH (Z270) and a Skylake CPU (i7-6700K) continues to work fine, however. It's also running Windows 7.

For those who are curious; the actual April 2017 security update installed fine.

Only after its installation was Windows Update bricked.

This does mean however that we have a month to find a workaround against this frankly idiotic limitation.

[Jeroen3]

I've heard this block isn't all intentional. It's the effect of removing legacy x86 32 bit support from the chip.
To keep Windows 7 running on that would require extra work.

[Faith]

Eh? Where did you read that from? Doesn't make a whole lot of sense either; I'm running Windows 7 x64, other x86 32-bit binaries continue to run perfectly fine, and the Windows Update service is x64.

[wraper]

I've heard this block isn't all intentional. It's the effect of removing legacy x86 32 bit support from the chip.
To keep Windows 7 running on that would require extra work.

Win 7 / 8 runs fine on Ryzen and kaby lake, which legacy x86 support? There are win 7 drivers. It only intentionally refuses to install updates. They might claim such config not officially supported, no support for such systems on our side, but intentionally bricking the updates is ridiculous.