Submitted by “Bill Laing, a General Manager in the Microsoft Windows Server Division, has been quoted as saying that Windows Server 2008 will be the last 32-bit operating system. Bill is a server guy and indeed Windows Server 2008 is the last 32-bit server operating system – all future operating systems for server hardware from Microsoft beyond Windows Server 2008 will be 64-bit. A few folks took Bill’s comments on Windows Server and applied them to Windows Client deriving that Windows Vista would be the last 32-bit operating system. That is an incorrect extension. While Windows Vista includes both 32-bit and 64-bit and there is a growing community of drivers for 64-bit Windows Vista we have not decided when Windows Client will follow Windows Server and become 64-bit only.”
I have a hard time believing that in five years when the next Windows client comes out there will be any 32 bit hardware with the specs to run it. Can you imagine trying to run Vista on hardware that was released when XP was, it would be a joke, and running whatever replaces Vista on today’s hardware is just as much a joke and it seems that the future of x86 is AMD64 regardless of whether or not we need it. This also makes sense for their server OS.
“I have a hard time believing that in five years when the next Windows client comes out there will be any 32 bit hardware with the specs to run it.”
You hit the nail on the head, dude. This is the *real* reason. Of course, maintaining only the 64-bit source base is easier too.
There’s no reason Vista can’t run on a 1.6Ghz. You might have to upgrade the ram and the VC, but a system bought in 2001 should run vista, if you up grade 2 components. and Ram is cheap. an AGP video card is cheap. it may not be the fastest thing on the block, but it WILL run Vista
There’s no reason Vista can’t run on a 1.6Ghz. You might have to upgrade the ram and the VC, but a system bought in 2001 should run vista, if you up grade 2 components. and Ram is cheap. an AGP video card is cheap. it may not be the fastest thing on the block, but it WILL run Vista
Well, maybe, but as far as I can see it, there’s no reason to have an AGP video card on a server — you won’t play games or watch movies on it. For that matter, I’m willing to argue on whether a server actually needs *any* video card at all — but I can understand that some people prefer to have a GUI.
I sincerely hope Windows Server will use resources for more useful purposes than Vista does.
Come to think of it, that Canadian firm will pump enough qubits to run Vista by the time Windows Server appears 😛
Well, maybe, but as far as I can see it, there’s no reason to have an AGP video card on a server — you won’t play games or watch movies on it.
He was talking about Vista, not Windows Server.
Even on Vista, you don’t have to use Aero. Windows 2008 Server, for now, does not even support it, I think.
Most of the on-board video cards work just fine with Windows 2008 Server and Vista. You may not get Aero in Vista, but so what?
For that matter, I’m willing to argue on whether a server actually needs *any* video card at all — but I can understand that some people prefer to have a GUI.
It just doesn’t make much sense not to have it, given the price of low-end video cards that are more than enough.
Edited 2007-05-18 17:19
Uhm, Longhorn doesn’t run Aero by default, and that’s the only reason to care about your video card, so, unless you’re a fool and want to waste resources by running Aero on your server, you’re right, you don’t need an AGP card in a server. So it’s a moot point. the original post was about Vista on XP era hardware, and whether the same would hold true for the next version of Windows.
It seemed like now was a good time to switch. Huh.
I wonder why the older article hasn’t been edited to include the update?
(“Windows Client?” I guess that’s a good name for their series of home-targeted OSs, but…)
Edited 2007-05-18 15:58 UTC
The way Window’s system requirements are heading I believe it. Only 64 bit dual or quad core chips will have enough might to handle the bloat of future Windows OSes.
Linux and BSD on the other hand can still be made to work on a modest 486 or Pentium 1 system with X11 and a lightweight desktop environment. Without X and a desktop environment, perhaps even a 386 DX.
No X11 is a popular configuration on *nix servers. So thats a good way of prolonging the life of very old systems before they are shipped to e-dumps in 3rd world countries.
Edited 2007-05-18 16:11
The way Window’s system requirements are going I believe it.
Why don’t they just switch to quantum computers to make sure they got all the processing power they need for an operating system?
Thats right huh?
Some Canadian firm claims to have built a quantum computer.
Only problem is that its less powerful than what we have now. Pop some more qubits into the quantum CPU and we’ll see.
FUD. I have a P200 here and I installed Slackware on it. I can only use it as a home FTP and CVS server. I tried installing X11 on it. Yes WindowMaker and Fvwm ran fine. However, I could’t use any recent GTK/QT apps. Firefox was not usable at all. Same for all gecko-based browsers. Konqueror was really slow too. What can I do with it if I can’t run a recent (and secure) web browser to visit simple html pages?
On the other side, Win98SE runs ok on it. I can even browse the web with Internet Explorer 6 (it still gets patches!)
Linux and old hardware is a big mystery for me. It has never been nice. Even Xubuntu on a Celeron 400 with 256mb of ram is too slow.
FUD. I have a P200 here and I installed Slackware on it. I can only use it as a home FTP and CVS server. I tried installing X11 on it. Yes WindowMaker and Fvwm ran fine. However, I could’t use any recent GTK/QT apps. Firefox was not usable at all. Same for all gecko-based browsers. Konqueror was really slow too. What can I do with it if I can’t run a recent (and secure) web browser to visit simple html pages?
Thats not a Linux problem.
Firefox’s minimum system requirements are 233 MHz CPU and 64 MB of RAM on all platforms. Konqueror is part of the heaviest *nix desktop environment: KDE. You cannot expect that to run well either.
You have to use lightweight browser like Dillo or Links for web browsing or an old version of Firefox.
On the other side, Win98SE runs ok on it. I can even browse the web with Internet Explorer 6 (it still gets patches!)
Yes, legacy versions of Windows were much lighter than any Unix-like OS. I wont lie and say they aren’t. I have Windows 95 on my 386 with 8 MB of RAM. Linux can barely barely boot into the command line with those specs.
You can probably get your Pentium 200 to work fine in the Equinox Desktop Environment. It looks much like Windows 98.
Starting with Vista, however, things have changed. My 2.66 GHz Pentium 4, 1 GB RAM, 128 MB ATI Radeon chokes on Vista and Aero but runs just fine with Linux and Beryl/Compiz. On Vista my system fans are running at full RPM at all times and I worry that some component may fail (system is over 4 years old).
Linux and old hardware is a big mystery for me. It has never been nice. Even Xubuntu on a Celeron 400 with 256mb of ram is too slow.
The latest Xfce isn’t much lighter weight than Gnome. 350-400 MHz is probably the least you’d want to run it on.
You can improve performance and reduce virtual memory requirements by disabling unnecessary daemons and services at boot up.
Edited 2007-05-18 19:36
Starting with Vista, however, things have changed. My 2.66 GHz Pentium 4, 1 GB RAM, 128 MB ATI Radeon chokes on Vista and Aero but runs just fine with Linux and Beryl/Compiz. On Vista my system fans are running at full RPM at all times and I worry that some component may fail (system is over 4 years old).
That is rather strange. On my system (AMD X2 4200+ / 2.2GHz, 2GB RAM, Vista), according to CPU-Z, most of the time my CPUs are working at ~1 GHz (AMD’s Cool ‘n Quiet adjusts the clock dynamically). For example, when surfing in Firefox (2-3 tabs open) and playing some mp3 in background, it is almost always at that speed. It jumps to higher clocks (~1.8 or ~2.2 GHz) only every now and then (when opening a new page) and only for a second or two.
Not strange at all.
There is a huge difference betwen an AMD X2 and a old Pentium 4 Northwood. Two being thats its dual core and based on a superior architecture. Only the newer Core architecture serves any justice to AMD’s architecture.
So in this case your 2.2 GHz CPU would wipe my 2.6 GHz CPU off the map. It’s probably pretty close running at 1 GHz. 😛
Twice the memory makes a difference too. 😉
So whats happening here is Vista is running well for you because your system is well equipped and far exceeds the requirements.
Now try Puppy Linux
http://www.puppylinux.org
It is made for old computers basically, and comes with all the software that you will need for basic tasks (Browser, IM, Word processor, Spreadsheet, Media player etc) without any slowdown. In the same vein you can also try DSL.
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
These distros are designed to work with a config as low as 486 with 16 MB RAM. For all the myth bashing just download them (50 to 70 MB), boot them from the CD (if you have 128 MB of RAM else just install), and then come back to post.
Edited 2007-05-18 20:21
DSL is only good has a “usb-key” OS. For exemple, when I went to south-korea last year, I had it loaded on my usb-key to access my mail from hotel’s pcs (unsafe).
At home, I think I would pick Win95 OSR2 over DSL unless I need a web browser (then I would choose Win98 SE). DSL isn’t good. It’s loaded with old GTK+1.x applications. It has poor fonts (old fonts, too small to browse the web).
I think the same of PuppyLinux. Seriously, I can’t use Fluxbox, Icewm, etc for a long period of time. I need something better (at least Win95 level).
Anyway, I wasn’t saying that Linux is no good. I just said it doesn’t work well on old hardware. However, Feisty runs very well on my Centrino laptop. Very very well.
I’m sorry but the “low memory requirement” of Linux is unfortunately a myth. For example, my current Fedora desktop already uses 1.5GB of RAM, and from experience any less than 1GB would trash it. (Well I’m a developer that likes tons of stuff open at the same time).
This is not a new thing: the minimum memory requirement for installation of Fedora Core 2 is 192MB [ http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/fc2/x86/ ], which is much more than the 64MB of Windows XP.
Yes I know Linux can be made to run on lighter systems [ as in http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Minimum_Hardware_Requi… ], yet Windows can be made to on 486 with 20MB of RAM [ http://www.winhistory.de/more/386/xpmini_eng.htm ] too, yet I would not recommend that either.
On the other hand, I accept that Vista is a really resource hungry system. Although any modern Linux desktop is more or less the same.
Edited 2007-05-18 17:41
I agree. It’s a myth.
No Modern linux distro with modern requirements(web browser with css,javascript,ssl support, office suite with .doc support etc.) will run very well on anything less than a pentium II with 128MB ram with out sacrificing usability.
Why dident they release vista as 64bit only? Or why is 64bit boxes sold with 32bit oem vista and that only? I bought a 64bit laptop. It came with vista 32bit only. Stupid. The desktop market is certainly ready for 64bit. Now we got tons of 64bit boxes running 32bit vista.
Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.1; U; en-us) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413
Of course it’s not. Most people I know are running 32 bit processors. That’s why they didn’t release Vista 64 bit only.
Simple answer: backward compatibility. The Win32 API has been updated to support 64bit cpu. Moreover, they only made their latest compiler 64bit ready (of course).
Unfortunately, there are some APIs that dont behave like before. It means that some program won’t run correctly on a 64bit copy of Windows (like the ones with a right-click menu entry). Moreover, tons of programs made some years ago wont compile with the new compiler because it’s way more strict now. Latest microsoft compilers are WAY better then previous ones (vc++5, vc++6) that were largely used.
Anyway, that’s why it takes people alot of time to port their applications to 64bit Windows. It’s a reality.
All computers will be 64 bits in 2008. In fact, all the new processors today are already 64 bits.
Nothing new here …
I find it funny we are concearned about having enough hardware to run an OS. I use my computer for applications, not the OS…
Funny how XP is less demanding than Ubuntu. Vista without Aero shouldn’t need much more than XP.
That’s pretty much bull-crap. Sure, maybe the minimum specs are less for XP, but that’s because they lie. Their idea of minimum specs is what is required to actually INSTALL XP, not to run it decently.
Here’s a perfect real-life example. A friend of mine had an eMachine (don’t ask, her mother bought it as a gift. Though I think even if I was given an eMachine I’d try to sell it or give it away myself). Well, it did the inevitable thing and the on-board video died. Well, it didn’t have an AGP slot, and PCI video cards aren’t very common anymore (well now even AGP card are getting pretty rare.) So I ended up ordering her a new motherboard along with a video card. Well, unfortunately I wasn’t exactly aware of any pentium 4 motherboards that actually supported PC133 Ram!! The new one I bought did. Fortunately I happened to have a 128mb stick laying around. I popped that in, had to re-install XP on her computer, and it ran slower than snot. First XP itself took about 10 minutes to get to a semi-usable desktop. And of course being a computer illiterate person, she needed an anti-virus, so I installed avast home edition…. well, long story short, it’d take another 10 minutes to load up OO.o and pretty much anything else. Even Solitaire would take upwards of 2 minutes to start!
So I also installed Ubuntu on her PC. Since she didn’t use the built in modem (she has DSL) and was using OpenOffice for her school work, it was ideal. It also loaded much faster, though admittedly not exactly speedy. But it was far more usable than XP was. Mind you this was a 2.6ghz Celeron with 128mb of PC133 Memory. XP in my experience requires a MINIMUM of 256mb of ram. I know, I ran it on a Pentium2 @ 266mhz with 256mb of ram and it was usable (though I wouldn’t multi-task on it all that much.
XP’s memory management (along with Vista’s) is simply crap. I’m sorry, but when I have 3gb of Ram, I want applications to actually USE IT, instead of leaving almost 2gb of it free, and using about 1.5gb of page file. I know you can stop it from using the page file all together, or shrink it, but come on, this is supposed to be the easy operating system. Most users aren’t going to know how to change that. Most users will at least know that 3gb of ram is a lot, though they may not know why anyone would need / want it.
Linux on the other hand is far better. Unless I’m loading up large videos that need to be decompressed, then it never hits the swap. In fact I don’t think I’ve seen it hit my swap since I’ve upgraded past 1gb.
For future servers it makes sense to only develop 64-Bit systems. Linux and the open software gives you all the power you need/can get out of an 32 bit system. If Microsoft is going to find new sales for servers it make sense to move to the new level playing field where the users have such large needs (64bit memory/hard drive addressing) that costs of hardware will over-shadow the software costs.
Umm…that assumes you *care* about 32 bit systems.
At work we deployed production and extreme heavy use internet server systems with whatever first fedora core did 64bit. That was a few months after the opteron was released. Since then I haven’t built a linux system that wasn’t 64bit.
Currently 64bit, esp on teh server side is totally owned by unix and unix variants. That’s a market microsoft will have to penetrate. Also their willingness to run on anything but one platform shows how utterly monstrous their system is.
Edited 2007-05-19 15:32 UTC
The issue as far as I see is this; I have no problems with system requirements increasing, if the increase can be justified through real improvements and features which benefit me.
The problem as far as I see it, I’ve got a laptop that came with Windows Vista Business, I’ve removed it, tried Ubuntu 7.04 and it is lightening fast, I’m now running my OS of choice, OpenSolaris B65, and like Ubuntu is it fast, reliable and stable.
What I find confusing is this, how come I can go from an operating system developed by a multibillion organisation like Microsoft to something like OpenSolaris (Sun is significantly smaller than Microsoft) or Ubuntu, and it it beats Windows.