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Microsoft Windows 7 or 8.1 users on Intel Kaby Lake or AMD Ryzen CPUs will not be able to download Windows updates.
Microsoft announced some time ago that new silicon as the company called it back then would not be officially supported on Windows 7 or 8.1.
This meant basically that only Windows 10 would support Intel's, AMD's and Qualcomm's new processors, while Windows 7 or 8.1 would not.
This does not mean that Windows 7 or 8.1 won't install on machines running these new processors, but that Microsoft (and the manufacturer) won't offer any form of support for those devices.
A new support page on the Microsoft website suggests that users who run an unsupported processor on an older version of Windows -- read Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 -- won't be able to scan for or download Windows updates anymore.
Users will get the following error message when they run the scan:
Unsupported Hardware
Your PC uses a processor that isn't supported on this version of Windows and you won't receive updates.
It looks like I'll be moving to BSD or Linux sooner than I planned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday March 19 2017, @09:09PM (5 children)
There is a thin line between elitism and masochism, Arik :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday March 20 2017, @09:28AM (4 children)
Automagical systems are masochistic but I don't see them as "elite" in any way.
I've spent a lot more time troubleshooting problems with such systems, than dealing with the 'problem' they are purported to solve.
When you take into account the relative amount of time spent using such systems, this looks REALLY bad. I've probably used Slack or similar systems about 98 hours for every 2 hours I've spent trying to use rpm or deb based systems, conservatively. And I've had one or two very minor issues of that nature with Slack, so easily solved they don't really stick in my head. On the other hand, as little as I've actually wound up using them, I've had occasion to spend many hours trying to repair the messes these things cause 'automagically' when they fail.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday March 20 2017, @04:26PM (3 children)
We've had different experiences then I guess. I've been using various flavors of Linux since 2004, starting with Gentoo (think about that one a moment...) and have had less than half a dozen package manager foulups, all of them within the first 4 or 5 years of that timeframe and most of them my own fault for screwing around with things I shouldn't have been. I like Slack, in that it's a kind of "set it and forget it" system, but I can get the same feeling and then some by using FreeBSD.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by Arik on Monday March 20 2017, @05:23PM (2 children)
The world is broad enough to allow for that I guess. ;)
"I've been using various flavors of Linux since 2004, starting with Gentoo (think about that one a moment...) and have had less than half a dozen package manager foulups, all of them within the first 4 or 5 years of that timeframe and most of them my own fault for screwing around with things I shouldn't have been."
I got into it in '94. I'd been using HP-UX and NeXT but those were expensive systems I could only get a timeshare on, and I wanted something like that on my own machine. I found the local SCO dealer, we got along well and had similar desires on that, and we started experimenting with Linux that would have been in 93, fighting SLS and trying to cobble together the right hardware and software to have a fully supported machine, we were on and off with that for several months. I'm thinking it was like March or April of 94 when we discovered Slackware. Shortly after that he quit selling SCO and started migrating people to Linux.
Anyway I've used all the main families but it's true to say I mostly used them years ago, and hopefully they've matured a bit since then. But I've seen RPM trash installed systems more than once. I've seen Debian go into endless loops installing the same packages over and over until forcibly stopped, and spent hours figuring out how to repair the damage.
I've never once seen Slackware do anything like that. If you install the wrong package you get an error message you can search on to find out what's missing. Install it and try it again. Not that many people will ever see that anyway - you can prevent them at the cost of some disk space (which everyone tells me is cheap) by just doing a full install if you want. But they never bothered me enough to care.
Sure if you do the wrong thing you can cause problems. IIRC one of the times I had an issue with Debian I had actually caused the problem by forcing the wrong thing, but that shouldn't cause such spectacular failure. Forcing the wrong package to install just results in a program that won't run, and it can be easily removed. Not so in a system that presumes to try to track and manage all installed software without needing (or permitting) manual intervention by the owner!
So I honestly think the whole package manager thing, at least when applied to a general purpose distro, is an excellent example of over-engineering, it fixes problems which are so minor and rare as be practically nonexistent, and creates a whole new class of much more serious problems in the process.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday March 21 2017, @12:18AM (1 child)
Heh, interestingly enough I've never used a .rpm distro for personal use. Their reputation for dependency hell preceded them. Most of the time I don't use .deb distros either; it's been a long, continuing love affair with Gentoo, with Arch brought in when my hardware isn't powerful enough, and some dabbling in *BSD. Vanilla Debian never broke on me, but I've also always installed these systems from the minimal .iso and frankly the idea of a Mint or Ubuntu type experience (disk in, say Next a lot, wait, bang full system) still feels really weird. You are correct about Slack insofar as the base system is concerned but heaven help you if you start adding stuff outside the tree.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday March 21 2017, @02:01AM
"You are correct about Slack insofar as the base system is concerned but heaven help you if you start adding stuff outside the tree. "
I really never found that problematic at all. Between the main site and the user supported sites like slackbuilds it's very rare not to be able to get a binary package for anything substantial, but when that happens it's super easy to deal with, since slack is makescript friendly and the package manager works with me instead of against me I just do a standard install. (Another issue I've had when I try other distros is that they really don't seem to want to tolerate programs installed the standard way, which to me is just stupid, and annoying, why would I want to deal with that?)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?