Next-Gen CPUs Will Only Support Windows 10

[unrealdave]

Now that was unexpected

http://uk.pcmag.com/windows-10/74560/new...windows-10

[ppppenguin]

Will these new CPUs be able to run Linux or are Microsoft trying to kill that off at the same time.

Will Apple be using the same CPUs for their Linux based OS?

If they will run Linux will you be able to run W7 etc in a virtual machine?

[Nick]

What something will run on or not has not a lot to do with the hardware and a lot to do with the compilers & environment in use.

When building, Linux uses the GNU toolchain by default, specifically the gcc and g++ compilers - these target so many platforms already I see absolutely no reason why they won't target this chipset too, even before the physical hardware is available - you can write a pretty good stab at a compiler back-end from just a manual - you don't need the physical tin for a first cut - its a standard way of "bootstrapping" new hardware.

Linux & the GNU toolchain are moving away from gcc & g++ towards the Clang suite of "C"-based front-ends for the LLVM compiler infrastructure due to maintenance of the the gcc/g++ compilers being very fraught. I worked on these once (writing a new code-generation suite for g++) - it was a grim experience.

The long & short of all this is that Linux and everything else will be fine. Almost certainly you'll be able to run Windows 7 in a VM by using a targeted HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) that will convert any incompatible instructions in the Windows 7 instance into appropriate instructions for the underlying tin.

HTH

[Radio Fixer]

I have never found those VMs much good. Bought W7 Pro to run old XP programs which It shakily did. But never found how I could print from it even asking Magazine experts who said they would look into it. None came back.

Gary

[ppppenguin]

If you're using a VM then why not instal genuine XP* in a VM. I've successfully used VirtualBox to run XP under W7pro. Haven't tried printing from the XP VM yet but don't anticipate any problems. VirtualBox is dead easy to set up with its defaults. Beyond that there's a huge amount of stuff you can tweak to get the right appearance, use of resources etc.

Were you using W7 pro's own rather limited VM capabilities? Or a decent VM system such as VirtualBox or VMware?

VirtualBox and VMware are hosted hypervisors, where you have (say) W7 as host and (say) XP as guest. I've not tried using a bare metal hypervisor where there is no host OS. These look rather more complicated, more appropriate to enterprise solutions.

*To be strictly legal you need an XP licence to do this.

[Radio Fixer]

Thanks Jeffrey but I gave up on it long ago. It was W7 Pro's own virtual machine and I couldn't be bothered to try one of your probably much better types. Be interesting if you print with no trouble ... I never got that.

Waste of time and money !

Gary

[pwdrive]

I must be computer dumb....All the computers I've had since 1995 have run using the Windows operating system that came with it, I've never run this under that or that under this except changing Windows Internet Exploder to Firefox, sometimes I think folks make life too complicated by messing about with stuff they now zilch about.

Lawrence.

[Radio Fixer]

Well in principle it should be straight forward.

You have progs that only run on XP so you pay extra for a Win upgrade, the Pro version 7 in my case. This has software that creates an XP environment so that the progs run in it. This is a so called Virtual Machine (an XP operating system with all it s features, running inside the W7 operating system). And it worked, sort of, it was slow but manageable but as said I never got to be able to print anything out so no use really.

Since then I gave up on it and dumped all the legacy stuff, fortunately I had paper copy that I could scan. Amazingly the drawbacks of a MS feature create a market for someone to come up with better software; a better VM, as Jeffery has found.

" sometimes I think folks make life too complicated by messing about with stuff they now zilch about". Its was not about making life more complicated, in my case it was supposed to be a simplification. I should have been able to run the old Application, Edit it and then print it out. Easy peasy and not having to know that much about computers although I aint bad on them (used to be a programmer, teaches you lots, and quite big stuff 20K bytes in C equivalent). Now I have to take the scanned copy, modify it by 'whiting' bits out in a drawing package, creating replica symbols and selecting a near font and get something that will do...

Gary

[ppppenguin]

I've got a new PC running W7pro which I must get round to commissioning properly as my main PC. I have important (to me!) software which won't run under W7 but will run under XP. Some of this software dates back to the days of DOS but is OK under XP. I could keep it on an old PC but that's less convenient.

AFAIK the XP VM in W7pro is a bit half-a***d. In particular I really need 32 bit XP which I don't think is done at all well in 64 bit W7 pro. Hence using VirtualBox was a no brainer. It's free, easy enough to get running and does what's needed. It can get a bit complicated exploring all the options for connectivity, memory etc and you take a slight performance hit. That performance hit is more than offset by running it on a newer and faster PC. For example I need to use an older Xilinx package for some older devices. It runs happily in the XP VM but I reckon I'm taking a 20% to 30% hit on performance compared to running on a host OS. But since the nwere PC is abut 3x faster than the one I used to run it on who cares. One area that might not work so well is if you have something that's very graphics intensive (photoshop, video editing, games) running on a VM but I don't have that problem.

If printing is really a problem from the VM then print to PDF from your application using a free PDF writer package. Then print the PDF from the host OS. I appreciate this might not work for DOS software which has its own printer drivers. TBH, this can easily give grief with a modern printer anyway.