The end of Windows XP and my next move.

FAST6191

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Windows XP support is set to end in April, for general use I can not be bothered to try to keep it supported using some ad hoc method like porting fixes from the things based on XP but still in support (certain versions of windows aimed at more embedded systems like point of sale systems and the like will be being supported for another year or two) and I will certainly not be paying for anything.

For reasons unknown I have ended up using multiplatform open source software (between firefox, gimp, libre office, scribus, lyx, thunderbird, putty, audacity and so on all my needs are largely covered, between kdenlive and avxsynth even my video stuff should be sorted). Similarly my machine is not really a games machine any more (it aged out of it) and it looks like improved virtualisation (much like it can speak to my CPU and drives it can speak to my graphics card though it is still a bit beta software unless you are crunching numbers) and the increasingly low specs needed for games will conspire to make a VM an option for windows should games continue to need it (for the few games and sorts of them that I play it is not a certainty).
Likewise I fix so many machines nowadays I do not feel the need to customise everything and will quite happily move between systems without much trauma (if select all, cut, copy and paste is not on ctrl and a, x, c and v respectively or at the very least a right click we will have problems though)

To that end I have some choices. I am not inclined to install anything of note on bare metal any more so http://www.proxmox.com/proxmox-ve looks like a choice for that. Bonus there is I can pump things through RDP and the like quite easily -- my personal future is anything but cloudy but I do not need to sit at a real machine and can happily play with things within my LAN.

Something in the linux/bsd world appeals and the other option is probably windows 7 (I can deal with 8, especially once classic start is installed and the interface formerly known as metro is sidelined at every possible point but why would I really bother).
On linux and BSD I am reasonably familiar with everything on http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major though as far as desktop stuff goes I tend to install Mint for clients and Debian for myself with occasional dalliances with opensuse and Fedora if I have a half nice "dead" machine cross my path/get given to me for "disposal". CrunchBang I played with in a VM but Debian is about as hard as I like to make my life with desktop machines, it is so lightweight though.

If anybody here still has XP or clients on XP what are your plans? For the latter most are hardware stuff (so many car diagnostics and repair programs still want XP) that does not really need internet or can be completely air gapped or practically air gapped.

Have I overlooked anything? Is my plan to avoid a bare metal OS a crazy one, especially on a core2 duo with 4 gigs of RAM?
 
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Mazor

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After many many years of being the undefeated champion, XP remains my primary OS even today. This despite having used Win7 at various points since the first day of the public beta including every day at work for a year now. Win8 has also not compelled me to switch. Through the years Linux and FreeBSD have had their moments for me but in the last couple of years I've delved pretty far into reverse engineering and Windows programming both on my free time and in my job and for those purposes it would be considerably more cumbersome to be running a *nix-like as primary OS (would have to run all the Windows software in VMs).

For a now increasing number of reasons the viability of XP as a primary OS even for us who have found it superior up until now really has to be questioned. Here are some of those reasons:

Security
As Microsoft talked about in their blog post a few months ago, we're permanently entering a period where vulnerabilities found either by standard means or by reverse engineering security updates for Vista+ won't get any official Microsoft patches.

General Software/Hardware Support
Many games have already been requiring DX10+ to run for a while now but besides this it's reasonable to expect a lack of support primarily in drivers for newly released hardware of many kinds but also even in general purpose software applications. Visual Studio 2012 and 2013 would be two examples of already released Microsoft-developed applications that do not run on XP and aside from new Microsoft applications likely following this pattern it can be expected of third party applications too to drop official support for XP due to cost reasons. There are also many new features in the Windows APIs that are not available for XP that could start seeing more widespread use.

x86 vs x86-64
A fundamental issue that has been with us for a long while now is being stuck in 32-bit (let's not even mention XP64). From a pure amount-of-available-ram perspective this has been pretty fine but as the use of x86-64 is getting more widespread there is now a considerable amount of software that we either cannot run optimally or even at all. We're also missing out on the development fun.

For me personally the lack of 64-bit would be the main reason that I probably cannot keep running XP for very long but the new reasons are of course adding a considerable amount of fuel to the fire. I still have not decided on my next move but I'm leaning towards either 8(.1?) x86-64 or running FreeBSD/Linux as a host and doing all my work in Windows VMs despite the cumbersome nature of this.

Even after its end as the champion of primary OSes, XP will remain my OS of choice in a couple of other areas, namely as the OS of choice on older hardware and for VMs for the majority of testing purposes (it's pretty ridiculous how much more boring testing stuff on Vista+ is with slow boots, UAC, signed driver enforcement, silly ASLR and so on. Really the list never ends.).

Thinking I was the only one, I was pleasantly surprised upon finding this topic and by an old respected individual nonetheless. Please do share the solution you come up with for yourself in time.

rip this if u xp 5evr
 

Celice

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I was on XP until 2011, when I got into the Stalker games series and Clear Sky demanded DX11 support. Made the jump and didn't regret it.
 

ShadowSoldier

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Ugh, my parents want to go back to XP from Windows 7. I refuse to do it for them because support ends in April. My dad says he doesn't care because all they do is watch a few videos on YouTube, browse facebook and email. But they also do their banking and shit on it too. I told him flat out I refuse to put XP on it.
 

Wanderman_Trigge

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i've been running xp from the start and have always loved it for the ease of it (compared to...EVERYTHING ELSE!)
but like all of you , i'm stuck at a crossroads between ubuntu and ... NOTHING 'CUZ DELL HATES ME and there dimention 4500S (nothing haves WORKING drivers for a sh##y integrated intel GPU BESIDES windows and even there "SIGHND" drivers (official drivers still won't work right) are if-y. 7 & 8 don't have drivers for it ET-AL. so im skrewed.
if any1 has suggestions, by all means, be a good temper and share your oppinions/findings AND BUG the S#(T out of Microsoft to release XP as opensorse so the world can keep it up to date/fix/upgrade/TURN into OS-GOD!!!
 

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One piece of advice from me, Don't upgrade to Windows 8. It's a complete pain in the ass. It becomes really slow after a few days and the only thing it's good at is helping you develop patience. And the UEFI boot system could cause problems if you have plans to dual boot Linux with it.
 

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One piece of advice from me, Don't upgrade to Windows 8. It's a complete pain in the ass. It becomes really slow after a few days and the only thing it's good at is helping you develop patience. And the UEFI boot system could cause problems if you have plans to dual boot Linux with it.
My friend's Windows 8 laptop came with a broken Windows 8 installation, and even then, it still runs at a fine speed (there are just, well, a couple other impossible to resolve issues at present). Honestly, Windows 8 is pretty decent, especially since the release of 8.1. I'm personally still on 7, but once I pick up this Vista laptop my sister has (don't ask, a guy really messed it up), I'm tossing Windows 8 on there as a total replacement. Though, honestly, I'm torn between that and just installing Mint for awhile.

Anyways, you may want to investigate as to why your specific installation is moving slow. Try running CCleaner or something.
 
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FAST6191

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i've been running xp from the start and have always loved it for the ease of it (compared to...EVERYTHING ELSE!)
but like all of you , i'm stuck at a crossroads between ubuntu and ... NOTHING 'CUZ DELL HATES ME and there dimention 4500S (nothing haves WORKING drivers for a sh##y integrated intel GPU BESIDES windows and even there "SIGHND" drivers (official drivers still won't work right) are if-y. 7 & 8 don't have drivers for it ET-AL. so im skrewed.
if any1 has suggestions, by all means, be a good temper and share your oppinions/findings AND BUG the S#(T out of Microsoft to release XP as opensorse so the world can keep it up to date/fix/upgrade/TURN into OS-GOD!!!
4500S... so DDR1 (and only up to a gig) and AGP graphics if a quick search is anything to go by. Time for a better machine I think, I do not have a good US based supplier for this sort of thing but the machines they junk from businesses now seem to be well into the later core2 duo and quad range.

For the record though intel desktop graphics are provided for by Intel themselves, their laptop stuff tends to be vendor specific though you can even get some stuff done there. https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Se...ductProduct=Intel®+82845G+Graphics+Controller should have more.

but I'm leaning towards either 8(.1?) x86-64 or running FreeBSD/Linux as a host and doing all my work in Windows VMs despite the cumbersome nature of this.

Virtualbox has a very nice seamless mode and its savestates cure the boot time issue thing. Bonus is some of the debug options afforded to you by playing in a VM are great ( http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch12.html#ts_debugger -- a bit less reliable sure but some of the things there were previously big boy expensive hardware or serious custom stuff), this is assuming you are not doing RE work on viruses as most of the creation kits seem to have VM detection as standard.

On the development stuff no argument that MS do some fine tools, for most of what I need though it seems some more multiplatform stuff (read python, database stuff and whatever other scripting language I am compelled to play with this week and GCC/codeblocks) has taken over. That said unless I am playing ROM hacker then speed as long as it is not outrageously slow is not such an issue as much as making it happen and making it happen in a way that others can decode/update later.

On games I suppose as the PS360 has come to an end then focus might just begin to shift away from DX9 and similar opengl vintages. That said the lower end of the market (where a lot of the interesting stuff is happening) has seen the light of allowing things to work on slightly lesser systems. I really should finish off the stalker series too.
 

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I personally prefer to use Windows XP, but anything above that runs a bit slow (even though it was optimised to run Vista, when my parent's first brought my computer back in '08).

Also, it all depends on what you use it for and based on compatibility, as well with regards to support for certain drivers and software applications.
 

Magnus87

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Ugh, my parents want to go back to XP from Windows 7. I refuse to do it for them because support ends in April. My dad says he doesn't care because all they do is watch a few videos on YouTube, browse facebook and email. But they also do their banking and shit on it too. I told him flat out I refuse to put XP on it.


LOL.... Parents....:lol:
 

DinohScene

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I haven't had XP installed since the launch of Win 7.
Last time I worked with XP was 7 months ago (clean up of me mates his PC) and last time I installed it was 2 years ago.

Me UMPC runs pretty decent on Win 7 (800 Mhz Intel A110, 1 GB DDR2, intergrated GFX card) so I'm not really that tempted to install XP on it.
Prolly make the switch to Linux on that thing once I have 2GB of RAM + an SSD for it.
Me lappy is powerful enough to run Win7 without a hitch.

I won't really miss XP
Main reason why I stuck with XP was that Vista was complete shite and Linux was bad for games back in the day.
 

Magsor

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I am a big fan of windows 8(was one of XP). I have been on it since the developpers preview. But you have to learn how it works and most people don't want to. Also the license for it is expensive for a recycled OS by all means if you have 7 or vista you don't have to upgrade.

Whatever people might say, the future is ANDROID. I really don't know where it's going in 2014 but if my android laptop was as powerful as my PC I would not need anything else and I would spend less time 'playing the IT'.
 

PityOnU

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If anybody here still has XP or clients on XP what are your plans? For the latter most are hardware stuff (so many car diagnostics and repair programs still want XP) that does not really need internet or can be completely air gapped or practically air gapped.

I know a few people who are still on XP, and it's going to be a simple case of upgrading their hardware. Everyone who is still clinging to XP at this point is doing so mostly because the new OS's are "slow" - i.e. their machine is ancient. You have to upgrade sometime, unfortunately.

As for the program incompatibility you are mentioning, sound like those are mostly embedded platforms anyway, so it'll probably just be a case of leaving them as is.

Have I overlooked anything? Is my plan to avoid a bare metal OS a crazy one, especially on a core2 duo with 4 gigs of RAM?

Yes.

Although VM's can be quite handy in that you can easily make backups of an entire machine, or just switch back and forth between OS's by loading a different file, you are sacrificing a lot of hardware efficiency to do so.

In your case where it's just a single person using a machine where probably only a single OS will be loaded at any given time (because of processing and memory constraints), you're much better off just having multiple dedicated HDD's connected to the motherboard with each one having a different OS on it. IMHO, anyway.

One piece of advice from me, Don't upgrade to Windows 8. It's a complete pain in the ass. It becomes really slow after a few days and the only thing it's good at is helping you develop patience.

This sounds like an isolated issue. Did you have disk indexing enabled, by chance? Over the first few days, it really does bring a system to its knees... especially if you have an overly-active antivirus program installed.

And the UEFI boot system could cause problems if you have plans to dual boot Linux with it.

I think Linux has supported UEFI boot for a while now? If not, you can just install Windows 8 using the probably available emulated BIOS option on your motherboard.

Whatever people might say, the future is ANDROID. I really don't know where it's going in 2014 but if my android laptop was as powerful as my PC I would not need anything else and I would spend less time 'playing the IT'.

As a recent convert to an Android phone user, I would have to disagree with this. Nothing works right with Android out of the box unless it's a Nexus device. Even then, you'll have your fair share of problems. About 3 weeks in and I've finally gotten my phone to the point where I can do what I want with it. There are still some things that are broken, though (Moto X 4.4 stock ROM).
 

Wanderman_Trigge

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4500S... so DDR1 (and only up to a gig) and AGP graphics if a quick search is anything to go by. Time for a better machine I think, I do not have a good US based supplier for this sort of thing but the machines they junk from businesses now seem to be well into the later core2 duo and quad range.

For the record though intel desktop graphics are provided for by Intel themselves, their laptop stuff tends to be vendor specific though you can even get some stuff done there. https://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&ProductFamily=Graphics&ProductLine=Desktop graphics drivers&ProductProduct=Intel® 82845G Graphics Controller should have more.
THX FAST6191 i'm running the dll from intel for this computer and i found that like a month ago(it's ok and it's the slim, note the "S" at the endAND NO AGP slot ,only 2 pci slots )better than dell's but they bolth have a video curruption problem and OPENgl is lost to me, D8> and btw 2gb ram at ddr3 is the limit for my lovely P.O.S. (i still love u , and the only computer to last from 2001- now on stock parts and still got great speed) your all probably thinking "just put linux on it " and i agree, BUT all linux distros crash or hang on a EPIC error cased by THIS DAMN INTEL GPU AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHKFYTFLUIYIOR^YRDYFG. and so we've come around full "O"
 

FAST6191

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I know a few people who are still on XP, and it's going to be a simple case of upgrading their hardware. Everyone who is still clinging to XP at this point is doing so mostly because the new OS's are "slow" - i.e. their machine is ancient. You have to upgrade sometime, unfortunately.

As for the program incompatibility you are mentioning, sound like those are mostly embedded platforms anyway, so it'll probably just be a case of leaving them as is.



Yes.

Although VM's can be quite handy in that you can easily make backups of an entire machine, or just switch back and forth between OS's by loading a different file, you are sacrificing a lot of hardware efficiency to do so.

In your case where it's just a single person using a machine where probably only a single OS will be loaded at any given time (because of processing and memory constraints), you're much better off just having multiple dedicated HDD's connected to the motherboard with each one having a different OS on it. IMHO, anyway.

I do often use small servers/"appliances" for various things and similar machines and will tend to have a VM or two around rather than boot up a laptop.


The incompatibility thing is mainly for car programs. Car electronics are antiquated and the programs that the car companies make to allow you to speak to the electronics and install new parts. Occasionally they have to phone home, download updates for new models or updates to work around issues with the car coding.... Naturally they are sometimes fans of old and very specific versions of java, all need full admin rights to a machine, will fight the other programs on the machine (though this is more when you have serial ports or virtual serial ports... oh yeah they often want serial ports) and you may have to go into the more general internet for diagrams and whatever else.
 

DinohScene

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Whatever people might say, the future is ANDROID. I really don't know where it's going in 2014 but if my android laptop was as powerful as my PC I would not need anything else and I would spend less time 'playing the IT'.

To people with phones that is yes.
Desktops and laptops however.
Sorry but you need multi tasking these days.
You can just constantly switch apps.

Besides, most of not all android apps are made on a linux/windows machine.
 

Magsor

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VMs are inefficient. VHD's booting on full hardware FTW .
Also there's no perfect OS and XP shined by it simplicity.
 

PityOnU

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Also there's no perfect OS and XP shined by it simplicity.

Yup.

-No GPT support
-PAE limited to 4GB RAM
-Unable to actually remove WMP or Messenger from the system using built-in tools
-No support for installing from USB stick
-Add missing drivers during installation by "Insert floppy now..."
-Single-handedly ruined web developers lives because of IE7

Its defrag tool was much nicer than the latest ones, though, so it had that going for it.
 

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