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Originally posted by milkylainen
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At least they're started to support KBL early on so we'll see. SKL was released right about during the atomic modesetting mess last year. Anyway since Chris Wilson started contributing more to drm-intel things began to shape up at least when it comes to stability of my dated HSW mobile.
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(Lenovo privately has already booted various OS releases on Skylake/Kaby Lake equipment with no issues, no word on Zen yet)
Per PCWorld:
Microsoft made 'em do it: The latest Kaby Lake, Zen chips will support only Windows 10
Microsoft is slamming the door on PC builders and upgraders who might have hoped to use the new Intel Kaby Lake or AMD Zen chips for Windows 7 or Windows 8 PCs. Sorry: Both chips are officially supported only by Microsoft’s Windows 10.
Microsoft's mandate is discreet rather than secret. In January, the company tried toshorten its support lifecycle for Intel Skylake PCs running Windows 7 and 8, a policy the company subsequently abandoned after much outcry. But Microsoft’s statements have also consistently included a critical caveat: The latest generations of silicon—specifically Intel’s Kaby Lake chip, Qualcomm’s 8996, and AMD’s Bristol Ridge silicon—will all require Windows 10.
“As new silicon generations are introduced, they will require the latest Windows platform at that time for support,” a Microsoft spokeswoman replied, when asked to confirm that that position was still in place. The goal appears to be to move forward with new features, even if it means leaving some users behind. “This enables us to focus on deep integration between Windows and the silicon, while maintaining maximum reliability and compatibility with previous generations of platform and silicon.”
Why this matters: Microsoft's push forward, however rational from a technology standpoint, robs PC enthusiasts of their choice of operating systems—a freedom this particular sector of the community has loudly defended in the past. This could have broader implications for the PC market, too: It could be the deciding factor that finally brings about the abandonment of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. (Linux is an option, too.)
Gordon Mah Ung Intel’s 7th gen Kaby Lake is built on a similar 14nm process as the previous Skylake CPUs. But a change in Microsoft’s support policy means that it will be only be officially supported by Windows 10. What the mandate means for PC users
AMD and Intel, for their part, appear to have had little choice in Microsoft’s decision essentially to limit the customers they can sell to.
“We are committed to working with Microsoft and our ecosystem partners to help ensure a smooth transition given these changes to Microsoft’s Windows support policy,” an Intel spokesman said.
"No, Intel will not be updating Win 7/8 drivers for 7th Gen Intel Core per Microsoft’s support policy change," he added in an email on Tuesday.
An AMD representative was equally neutral. “AMD’s processor roadmap is fully aligned with Microsoft’s software strategy,” AMD chief technical officer Mark Papermaster said, via a company spokeswoman.
AMD’s Bristol Ridge chip, the first to be tied to Windows 10, launched in June as its seventh-generation APU. AMD’s first member of its new Zen microprocessor family, dubbed Summit Ridge, will appear in high-end desktop PCs early next year. Neither will be officially supported by the older operating systems.
Here's the obvious question: What would happen if a naïve or not-so-naïve user attempted to run Windows 7 or Windows 8 on a Kaby Lake or Zen system? Without actual chips to test, the answer is unknown.
One source privately guessed that the processor would boot, though without driver support and security updates the experience would be “a bit glitchy.” Without specific support for a chip’s features—such as the dedicated video processing logic within Kaby Lake, for example—certain apps, if not the OS itself, might crash, another said.
Gordon Mah Ung AMD’s Summit Ridge SoC (left), running at 3GHz, can run a Blender render just as fast as a Core i7-6900K (right) also running at 3GHz. But only the Core i7 can run Windows 7.
However, processor analyst Dean McCarron of Mercury Research didn’t think running Kaby Lake would necessarily generate many problems, as there’s a long history of instruction set compatibility. “My expectation is ...that all the older code will run on it fine,” he said. “Likely...there’d be third party [driver] support that would allow older OSes to run, .inf files, for example. And Intel’s going to make those.” (Editor's Note: Intel said Tuesday that it will not be updating its Windows 7/8 drivers for Kaby Lake, as noted above.)
It’s also conceivable that enthusiasts could craft “black box” or modified drivers to help the latest chips run on the older operating systems. But in reality, the scope of the task would require detailed documentation as well as sophisticated testing resources, both of which seem infeasible.
What might be an acceptable risk for a consumer, however, might not fly for a business where uptime and total cost of ownership are managed carefully. It’s here, McCarron said, that the transition to Windows 10 will have the most impact. “It’ll turn into [a situation where] ‘if it breaks, it’s not our problem,'’’ he said. “Which is why it’s going to be such a problem for large, multi-thousand-seat deployments” who depend on external support contracts, he said.
What’s more likely, McCarron suggested, is that PC makers and customers will commit to buying and stockpiling Skylake components and systems as a hedge against Microsoft’s support gambit. In this way, end customers will know their devices will be supported, he said.
Mark Hachman The dialog box that Microsoft presented to users during the upgrade to Windows 10, before its Anniversary Update. Microsoft’s history of pushing users to Windows 10
Microsoft has laid out its rationale for encouraging users to adopt Windows 10: In short, it’s a more manageable, secure operating system with better collaboration across users and devices, the company claims. Nevertheless, a substantial chunk of users can’t see past Microsoft’s attempts to force Windows 10 upon them.
Of late, the carrots Microsoft has used to entice Windows 10 adoption—the Insider program, free upgrades from older operating systems, and synergy with Windows phones, the Xbox One, and even iOS and Android phones—have been largely ignored. Instead, Microsoft has come under fire for its ongoing program of forced upgrades,locking down Cortanato exclusively use Bing,and what some users see as a concerted attempt to mine personal data for advertising purposes.
We don't know whether terminating support for older operating systems on Kaby Lake and Zen actually means they won’t work. What seems more certain is that Microsoft’s latest strategy will be seen as just another “stick” wielded to force customers to upgrade to Windows 10.
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"productivity performance" ... "web performance" ... lol ...Comment
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I'm glad I wasn't the only one who thought those terms were a little hokey. Why not compare IPC or FLOPS? Or if they were trying to describe real world use cases it wouldOriginally posted by quaz0r View Post
help if they told what they used to make these claims instead of using vague terms. 19% faster with "web performance"? Performance of what? Running Firefox's , Chrome's or Edge's HTML Parsers? Their Javascript engines? Video decoding? WebGL? It could mean anything!Comment
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Basically i see no huge reason why Skylake/Kaby Lake should not be able to work with Windows 7. The main problem is during install there is that there is only an USB 3 controller onboard, that means you have to
A) Modify install media to include XHCI driver (and new network driver)
B) Use an USB 2.0 controller
C) Use a board with 2 PS/2 connectors for mouse and keyboard
It should be no huge deal to build boards with B/C for corporate users. More experienced users will just choose A. Windows 8(.1) has basically an XHCI driver included but I don't know if it works with Skylake/Kaby Lake. Usually a network driver could be installed from cd drive and the rest via online updates.Comment
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Buy a 7th Gen i7 + New MainBoard | 400€ | 19% gain in Web Performance
Install FireFox+NoScript | Free | 500% gain in overall performance and web X-Perience, even with potato computers.
And what da fuq is Web Performance for duck snake!Comment
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edwaleni Good thing we're linux enthusiasts then huh?
MS tried something similar when they made it so dx10 could run only on Vista and since then they kept the same tactic for newer dx releases. This kinda takes it to a new scale though. I really hope it backfires on them hard. I wanna see an explosion happen right in MS's face.
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The forced upgrades, the obsession with user telemetry and now the CPU thing. The issues with legacy USB device drivers not working were minor, the early retirement of graphics chipsets due to inability to support some minor DX shader function (when Intel produces DX11 GMA drivers that "don't support all shader functions") were irritants but not the end of the world for me.Originally posted by duby229 View Postedwaleni Good thing we're linux enthusiasts then huh?
MS tried something similar when they made it so dx10 could run only on Vista and since then they kept the same tactic for newer dx releases. This kinda takes it to a new scale though. I really hope it backfires on them hard. I wanna see an explosion happen right in MS's face.
Windows is my primary currently, Linux was my tinker OS. Now I will be flipping them. I don't play games so Linux will be my primary soon and when I finish testing my preferred apps in Wine and I can buy a Zen, then I will make the flip for day to day. I have been testing 8 distros for the past 6 months in prep for the change over. And no I don't have anything against Intel, as I own a healthy quantity of their product as well, I just want to kick off the change with a Zen, nothing more.
When Vista shed a lot of legacy SMP hardware, I didn't gripe. When Win 7 shed a great deal of hardware (mostly legacy peripherals that were still very much usable) , I was sour for awhile. But the Win10 thing pretty much sealed it. I will keep Win 7 around until support falls off in 2020. By that time most MSFT products will be somewhat irrelevant.Comment
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Cool. I'm sure you are already aware of this fact, but the thing is, most linux distributions are community oriented. Which essentially just means that as a user you're going to get more out of the experience by trying to incorporate with that community. The forum, irc, bugtracker, whatever else. Don't become a "sideline" user, they tend to drop off when they don't get what they want. But usually the reason they don't get what they want is because they didn't even try.Originally posted by edwaleni View Post
Anyway, good luck with the transition. Don't rely on wine too much it'll only piss you off to an unstable state.Comment
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