Microsoft has delayed a special slimmed-down version of Windows XP for legacy PCs, which is based on the Windows Embedded code base. The Redmond company had expected to make the operating system available to Software Assurance customers this month, but now says Windows Fundamentals will ship ‘in late 2006.’ Windows Fundamentals can run on older machines that do not support XP while providing the same level of security.
Never heard of this before.
“Windows Fundamentals can run on older machines that do not support XP while providing the same level of security.”
I’ll pass. 🙂
“Windows Fundamentals can run on older machines that do not support XP while providing the same level of security”
ROFL. They make XP’s security (or lack there of) sound like a feature?
I am confused, which version of Windows is more secure?
XP’s security is dramatically better than that of any prior version of Windows (at least since 3.1), and if Fundamentals has Win9x-style requirements, it sounds like a good idea. Not everyone can drop Windows, you know.
Still, their suggested uses could be mostly accomplished by a Linux machine with Mono, though perhaps not as easily.
“XP’s security is dramatically better than that of any prior version of Windows”
Hm, I left my fresh install of Win 95/98 exposed to Internet for weeks and nothing bad happened.
Freshly installed Win XP got infected by some crap in 30 minutes.
I heard that Sp2 is somewhat better, but anyway, you were too brave with your sentence
That’s an interesting comparison. And I bet a whole lot of people could truthfully say the same thing.
But to be fair, let’s mention the obvious. The enemy has become as skillful, aggressive and hateful as the insurgents in Iraq.
Oh oh. I should be more clear. The enemy are the people creating viruses, etc.
Hm, I left my fresh install of Win 95/98 exposed to Internet for weeks and nothing bad happened.
Freshly installed Win XP got infected by some crap in 30 minutes.
That can’t be your only metric for measuring an OSes security. For example, in Win98 all users can read teh entire hard drive – there really is no concept of portected “user data”. That is a poor security implementation that was fixed in XP and yet has no impact on internet exploitability.
Some security issues are more important in corporate LAN situations, while other issues are more important to home users.
If a Win95/98 machine can actually surf the net without getting infected, maybe that does indicate an advantage in using those older Windows versions, at least in some contexts.
Edited 2006-03-14 16:45
BTW yesterday I’ve found out that in Ubuntu Dapper users can read each other home directories, too! Alright, I know how to chmod, but WTF…
Thats pretty much the norm on ANY unix. you can set it up so other people cant see the contents, but by default, anyone can. they just cant write to it.
I didn’t have that on ALTLinux which I used before. And used to be a Mandrake clone, so I believe Mandrake restricted read access to homes by default, too.
They make XP’s security (or lack there of) sound like a feature?
When dealing with legacy systems, it’s quite a BIG feature when you stop and consider Active Directory and other services that require high security.
It’s also a huge money-saver for corporations with thousands of seats. Now there will be less need to upgrade every workstation. They can pace it out and keep the costs manageable over a longer period of time.
The last time we saw massive hardware upgrades was in response to Y2K. No need to go through that all over again.
If Microsoft can lighten the impact of Vista that will be a good thing.
My 2 cents.
you can do this just as easily with things such as nlite.
or might i suggest linux? more secure and just as easy to set up on legacy hardware.
Linux doesn’t run on old hardware. It is a lie.
Yes, your previous statement was indeed a lie.
I’m posting this from a Pentium II running Gentoo Linux.
…or did you mean old as in an Apple II… or a PDP-1? In that case no, it doesn’t.
Honestly, it really depends on what “old hardware” you are talking about. Also what you consider to be “running”
Saying “linux runs on old hardware” is too vague to be correct. Saying “linux has lower min. system requirements so that gives it he oppurtunity to run on older hardware” is more accurate.
If I had a dollar for every time i tried to get a real old sound or video driver working on linux…
Old hardware is probably something near PII 300 with 64MB RAM. The older ones are trash, only useful for home-made routers or as a typewriter.
“Linux doesn’t run on old hardware. It is a lie.”
Presumably written just to provoke, but there is some truth in it. AMD K6 500, with 512 memory and a big drive, and it is impossible to find a usable distro that will run as fast as W98. I’ve tried just about everything. Vector for instance will not do it, in either standard or Soho versions. Whereas W98 gives you the desktop most people can use, even if its not real pretty, very snappy response, and an Office suite that you need OO to compete with.
You can install DSL, and it work, and will be fast, but try persuading anyone you love to use Siag Office….
No, don’t.
“AMD K6 500, with 512 memory and a big drive, and it is impossible to find a usable distro that will run as fast as W98. I’ve tried just about everything. Vector for instance will not do it, in either standard or Soho versions.”
I am pretty sure that if you used the optional XFCE WM in Vector (or use IceWM for a real “98” experience), you would get equivalent performance.
Unfortunately, I see too many people compare the speed of an old Win98 (designed for harware requirements of its release in 1998) with a current Ubuntu/other Linux with a full KDE or Gnome desktop. Different hardware expectations there with it being 2006 and all.
The test could use Red Hat 5.1 (released May 1998, one month before Win98) and compare ‘peppiness’, but that would be pointless, as it is out of date and not as easy or pleasing to use as anything current.
With Windows 98, you also have to deal with an outdated unsupported operating system and the potential functional/security issues.
>>”Linux doesn’t run on old hardware.
>>It is a lie.”
>Presumably written just to provoke, but there is some
>truth in it. AMD K6 500, with 512 memory and a big
>drive, and it is impossible to find a usable distro
>that will run as fast as W98.
I’ll vouch for that too. In my limited experience, nothing in the sub-1GHz range will give a snappy (and pleasant) desktop with Linux.
HOWEVER, if you have access to the needed media (and licenses, of course… ;-), Windows 2000 and Office 2000 will give you a pretty responsive system with much less hardware than that. I am just now (March 2006) phasing out 20 office desktop systems that have been running for 6 years on just that combination (though they started with Win98 in 64M). Most machines were PIIs (Pentium 2) at 400MHz, and of the lot, those that had been upgraded to 256M of RAM and 20G or 30G disks were still fairly snappy (for their main office purposes), while those that were stuck with 128M and 6G disks were only recently beginning to feel sluggish. That may have been due in part to the unavoidable cruft that accumulates on systems that have been installed over 3 years ago, and have been running 40 hours a week since then…
Normally I would agree with you but there are some cases where that doesn’t work.
For example I take care of the family’s computers and one of the machines that’s a legacy piece of hardware is an old AST Pentium 100 Mhz laptop. Even this version of Windows might not run on it, but then neither will Linux any more because the only working X11 drivers for it were dumped years ago. It’s too bad really, but you can’t make family upgrade, the machine runs Windows 98 fine and I’m happy with those circumstances. Even if it isn’t running Linux the person using the laptop is responsible enough that it doesn’t need much maintenance beyond working around the odd few reoccuring Win98 Bugs.
“security”
If I want such a thing, I’d opt in on OpenBSD, or perhaps running SELinux reference policy configuration in “strict mode” on some Linux distro of choice.
Yet again, comment predictability is at an all-time high.
“Hahah, they said ‘XP’ and ‘security’ in the same sentence! Let’s group masturbate while burning Linux CDs! Hehehehehe!”
Come on kids. You’re better than this.
On the one hand, I would really like to see Windows XP (Windows 2000 would be nicer..) running on my AMD K6 400 MHz. I am sure most of the OSNews readers could imagine using this OS on some of their computers.
On the other hand, however, my life experience and my experience with Microsoft tells me, this is going to be a severeli crippled and for one reason or the other, unpleasant to use version of Windows.
I don’t know about Windows XP, but I have Windows 2000 SP4 running on a family computer with the very same specs you mention. Throw in a newer 20gb hard drive and any leftover RAM I find, and it’s perfectly good for all the day to day email needs. As long as you turn most of the useless services off, Windows 2000 can actually be fairly light.
Although I’m primarily a Linux guy, I must admit Microsoft did something right with Windows 2000. I suggest you give it a shot on your old AMD 400mhz sometime.
As long as you turn most of the useless services off,…
Yes, I also have enjoyed improvements in performance with both Win2K and WinXP by turning off services, most of which I found that I don’t use. I found this site helpful in figuring out which ones to turn off:
http://www.theeldergeek.com/services_guide.htm
how much ram do you have? xp runs fine on 400mhz if you have enough ram. 192/256mb and itll run perfectly fine on a pentium 75mhz ( i know, ive tried it).
In my case it was either 256mb or 3xx (forget the exact amount). It was basically anything I had lying around that had similar speeds to it.
Didn’t want to put XP on it as it was a family computer, so I didn’t want to bother with updates, plus 2000 does everything they need (and then some). They had Win98 on there before, so anything is an upgrade, hehe.
quite true, almsot anything is an upgrade from 98
XP runs remarkably well on older hardware if you disable uneeded services and kill all the GUI glitz crap.
I still consider 98SE is faster than XP for playing game.
“xp runs fine on 400mhz if you have enough ram. 192/256mb and itll run perfectly fine on a pentium 75mhz ( i know, ive tried it).”
“Runs fine” is very subjective, I find Windows XP reaches the absolute lower limit of tolerable speed (or lack thereof) on a Celeron 466 with 128 MB of ram. I don’t suppose you tweaked yours? In which case would you care to tell me how so I can try it?
On 75 Mhz, now at that point you cannot tell me it’s usefull for anything. It might be able to handle text browsing and running some of the built in Windows apps as well as some other light applications, but no more than one application at a time and probably so slow it hurts to watch. Every possible PDA on the market today, heck even cell phones, have faster processors than 75 Mhz just to run minimal operating systems of their own.
“”””Runs fine” is very subjective, I find Windows XP reaches the absolute lower limit of tolerable speed (or lack thereof) on a Celeron 466 with 128 MB of ram.”””
WinXP is ram bounded other than cpu bounded. Base OS as in fresh install used up ~100MB of ram on fresh boot. With 128MB ram 1-2 instance of IE will suck up the remaining ram, opening any more application will starts heavy paging and slows the machine to a halt. 256MB is the realistic ram requirement for a usable unmodified winxp.
win2000 requires 60-80MB for base services. It probably runs much better on you scenario.
I have 64 MB on that computer. Plenty for Win98 or BeOS.
Really? How did you get windows XP to run on old P1 75mhz? Just a year ago, I tried installing windows XP on a 133mhz computer, but it would proceed with the installation, it told me that it required a minimum of 200 mhz to commence installation.
Micosoft.com also states that 233 mhz (maybe with SP2 reuiqrements increased from 200 mhz to 233mhz?) is the minimum, although the footnote does suggets that it is possible to install XP on something weaker.
In general, I can’t really imagine a useable windowx XP installation on a P1 with 7h mhz, even with the 256 RAM.
I’ve never had the windows installer tell me XP can’t install on a system because of cpu speed.
ok, first off. You can install XP on pretty much any speed cpu, it WILL throw up an error if you have to little ram or are trying a 486.
To get XP to run acceptably on a p75 does require a LOT of tweaking and patience
I won’t claim it’ll run right out of box.
You can run XP with these services :
dhcp client — if you set up a connection manual
with static IPs you don’t need this either.
dns client — dont have to have this one
wndows audio — have to have this if you want any audio
event log
RPC — kill it and LOTS of stuff gets messed up
plug and play — windows messes up sometiems if this is disabled
server service – if you want file sharing and what not.
other things you can do are :
My Computer -> properties -> advanced -> performance settings -> put it on custom, select ‘drag full windows’ (do this if you don’t like windows outlining when you move them) and ‘drop shadows on icons’.
Now under the performance window select the advanced tab and chance the processor scheduling and memory usuage both to “programs”.
Now back to system properties. at the bottom of the advanced tab click on ‘error reporting’ and turn it off.
Now, you can do a LOT more by exploring the registry. I suggest people here use FreshUI for changing more settings and you can strip out all the uneccesary cruft using XPLite…
And yes, XP can be very usuable on a slow system. My grandmothers PC crapped out (it was a 2.4p4/512mb pc2100…) and all I had on hand was that p75/128mb… After heavy tweaking, it ran opera 7.5, office 2k3, and various other programs perfectly fine. Would even play her internet radio stations using an older version of winamp.
so anyways, I probably look like a massive XP fanboy, but trust me, I only know this from being curious and out of necessity
eh’, I really should proof read…
This has come up here before, but many people haven’t seen it, and it’s just too funny. In the interest of science, some German guys have set out to discover the absolute minimum requirements of XP.
http://winhistory.de/more/386/xpmini_eng.htm
The record was an installation on a 83mhz Pentium Overdrive (486 upgrade) downclocked to 16mhz and 64mb RAM. After installation, they downclocked it further to 8mhz and reduced RAM to 20MB. The system took 30 minutes to boot
can this baby power games? more specificaly, old dos games? if so, it would be interesting
I doubt it. If you want old dos games install dos, not windows.
heh, or maybe dosbox. alltho then i may as well go linux
still, its a interesting idea. but i wonder what the outcome will be…
The fact that MS is starting to offer this is a testament to Linux. Do you think they would do this if Linux did not exist?
It is based on XP embedded and is only available to members of MS Software Assurance, so it doesn’t appear to be game focused.
But what is it for? When a computer gets so old that it won’t push a modern gui, I usually put freeBSD on it and call it a firewall, or make a linux file/print server out of it. What benefit does Eiger have over these?
The fact that MS is starting to offer this is a testament to Linux. Do you think they would do this if Linux did not exist?
It is based on XP embedded and is only available to members of MS Software Assurance, so it doesn’t appear to be game focused.
But what is it for? When a computer gets so old that it won’t push a modern gui, I usually put freeBSD on it and call it a firewall, or make a linux file/print server out of it. What benefit does Eiger have over these?
It’s absolutely a response to linux. This is basically a thin-client solution for customers with legacy hardware that are wondering why they need to purchase new systems and licenses to use Citrix or remote desktop. To me it looks like this solution addresses the thin-client things you could cost-effectively substitute linux for Windows, but won’t allow any of the things you would need Windows exclusively for (namely Office).
It’s also a bit of a paradigm shift for Microsoft, who has always emphasized the vale of rich client solutions. This really flies in the face of previous strategies, where customers are basically expected to forklift or be left out in the cold. What else could have possibly brought about this revenue-reducing change of heart?
(Although I will admit that think it’s pretty smart strategic move on Microsoft’s part.)
I think it’s ironic that the MS apologists bash OSS and linux as being ineffective, without realizing that the mere competitive threat has forced MS to become a little more creative and innovative, or simply realistic. Whether you’re talking about something as simple of Firefox pushing MS to release IE7, or something larger scale like the threat of linux desktops forcing MS to release an option like this for corporate customers.
Regardless of whether you use OSS, you’re still benefiting from it.
It appears from the lame Microsoft home page that you have to download the benefits docment, then when you do so you disappear into Microsoft’s corporate licensing labyrinth. Bottom line is that you need to use Citrix or equivalent — i.e. a client / server “solution”.
I rate the suckage on this OS as orange to red.
Floyd
http://www.just-think-it.com
“Bottom line is that you need to use Citrix or equivalent — i.e. a client / server “solution”. “
I suspected that might be the case as it was mentioned once before. I believe Microsoft admitted this up front when they announced the product.
I’m still hoping for a dirt cheap version of Windows stripped down to the point where it’s little more than the kernel, drivers, direct X and a shell just usefull enough to serve as a launcher for my favourite Windows games. All in a neat ~250 MB package. It would be great for those who only use Windows as a gaming platform, or who build systems specifically for gaming, that way no other parts of the OS would be using up the processor and people would be able to get it for 25 to 50 bucks. The cheapo 3rd world version of Windows would almost do, but the resolution is locked too low and it doesn’t support high end processors which gamers would use.
This is just silly and this is why gamers play games and not design operating systems. If you had a properly designed OS then “stripping it down” wouldn’t be necessary.
While it may sound stupid at first, your game get’s 100% of the cpu if it’s the only thing contending for the cpu. Unless something is processing in the background(anti virus, defrag, whatever), every single app on the desktop should be on the wait queue waiting for input(mouse over, mouse click, etc) before it ever even gets an oportunity to use any CPU time ever again.
The other thing that happens is any memory other apps are using is swapped out to the disk and into the swap file where it waits until the program requests that memory again, hence your game should get as much memory as is available to the system. This is of course assumes that haven’t done something brilliant like disable the swap file. Unfortunately Windows does a crappy job of managing memory and it’s vm system seems(I have no scientific proof) a bit slower than the linux vm system. You could in theory have 80 thousand firefox windows open using 99.9% of all your memory in windows and the only affect it would have on a game is it would take some extra time to copy the memory firefox is using onto the disk and back when the game is done.
If your system is fast enough to run XP at an acceptable pace your system will not benefit a lick from being “slimmed down”
um, not quite. It’s a little thing called “premptive multitasking”. Unless you set a games thread priority in NT to “realtime” it will NOT get 100% of the cpu at all times.
“This is just silly and this is why gamers play games and not design operating systems.”
I’m also very much into programming, you never know what I’ll be doing in a few years 🙂 .
Oh, and I’m hardly a gamer. I suck at games but I still play them for fun on occasion. I also get good grades in school and I’m doing a fine job of learning how to program independently with nothing more than books. The reason I want a stripped down version of Windows for gaming only is because I can use Linux for everything else, I could get Cadega but that takes a while to become compatible with games and doesn’t always get there with some.
“your game get’s 100% of the cpu if it’s the only thing contending for the cpu”
The other guy replying mentioned the pre-emptive multi-tasking taking away processor time, and I doubt many people use Windows without a firewall and Anti-virus software. I for one don’t trust it that much.
“If your system is fast enough to run XP at an acceptable pace your system will not benefit a lick from being “slimmed down””
That only deals with one point, the others being that it would be much more affordable, it would need much fewer Windows updates, it would take a few minutes to install and it would take a fraction of the maintenance. It would also be advantageous to Microsoft since I’ve met my share of real gamers (or at least far more into gaming than I) who did pirate Windows because they thought the 200$+ CAD price tag for something they only see when starting up or shutting down their computer was too much to pay. If those people could get Windows stripped down to being no more than a game launcher for 25 to 50$ CAD they’d be much more likely to pay for it, and if they still pirated it at least it would only be a stripped down Windows XP that’s useless beyond the scope of gaming.
Not to long ago Microsoft where saying Windows XP ran well on older hardware, now there throwing out a cut down version. Seems Linux really is having a impact after all.
Microsoft’s official XP requirements are:
* PC with 300mhz or higher recommended; 233 MHz minimum;
* 128MB RAM, 64 MB minimum
• 1.5GB HD
More realistic is 192MB RAM, and 10GB HD if you want to install anything besides XP (which takes about 1.5GB for itself on a clean install).
Just use Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Performance -> Adjust for best performance, and XP runs fine on 300mhz+. If you follow Black Viper’s advice on turning off auto-starting services, XP takes about 60MB RAM after a fresh boot (Win2K around 50MB in my experience). How much more RAM you need depends on the applications you want to run.
There is a tendency (expecially from Linux and Mac users) to exaggerate the requirements of XP, but they should remember that XP came out in 2001 and Win2K in 1999 and ran fine on the typical PC back then. SP2 may have added a little to XP, but if you turn off autostarting services like Themes, Security Center, Wireless Zero Configuration, the requirements are almost the same as they were in 2001, and not much higher than in 1999.
“Linux doesn’t run on old hardware. It is a lie.”
That was my statement. Sorry to have provoked some of you, I’m just disappointed.
My lab consists of 6 Pentium I machines with each 20 MB RAM running at 100-120 MHz (all Compaq). The network is 10 MBps. The graphics is Cirrus 1MB. They run as terminal clients.
The terminal server is Lorma Linux (because Fedora is way to slow on the terminals), updated to Slackware 10.2, KDE 3.5, Dropline gnome 2.12.2. The server is a Celeron-2.13GHz, 256MB RAM, hdparm -tT 680MB/s — 58MB/s.
As such, it is a setup to which Windows Fundamentals is very simular.
The results: Well, it works. It is slow. The graphic cards are too slow, and therefore Linux is slow. The machines are simply much faster running Windows 95 with Office 2000.
I always believed the statements: Linux runs on old hardware. In my experience that is not true. And to you all, sorry, next time I will choose my words more carefully and complete my post.
Best regards,
Peter
He’s trying to slip you windows CE instead.
From microsoft’s web page:
“Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs is not a general-purpose operating system. It is designed to work with the Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection client or third-party clients such as the Citrix ICA client. In addition, it allows for a limited number of workloads to be executed locally, including security software, management software, terminal emulation software, document viewers, and the .NET Framework.”
So, this is not your holy grail micro windows xp for slower machines with only 32 or so ram and pentium 100’s, it’s a kind of shell windows for using with a limited subset of apps and as a terminal. If you are going to use it as a terminal, well, you might as well keep your current windows or use linux.