Bink.nu has more information and screenshots on Windows Fundamentals. “Microsoft Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs is a Windows-based operating system designed for enterprise customers with legacy PCs who are not in a position to purchase new hardware. WinFLP provides the same security and manageability as Microsoft Windows XP SP2 while providing a smooth migration path to the latest hardware and operating system.”
provides the same security and manageability as Microsoft Windows XP SP2
It’s hard to believe that Microsoft have such a grip on some people that they are not aware of alternatives and buy into this total crap.
Windows Fundamentals has only one goal – keep you stuck on Windows even when Windows is not the right choice for the hardware.
Are you telling me that a business wants to retain its customers? What a concept! I’m sure any business would try to do the same.
Retain, no; syphon more money, yes.
There is nothing wrong with Windows 2000, nor 2003; in fact both of these are MS’s best ever OSes and businesses love them.
If I were MS, and I wanted to retain customers, I would provide regular, planned service packs for the 2000 base, announced far in advance, focusing on business features, and banishing any consumer-isms completely and saving those for a consumer-orientated release branch.
If MS kept building off of the reliable 2K base for the next 8 years, providing businesses with highly reliable and continual improvements and updates then businesses would be able to keep up to date with the OS, and with gradual hardware phasing.
MS instead want to cater for everybody at the same time. Rather than provide what businesses want – low hardware requirements, reliability and a well planned and reliable roadmap, MS want to go after the home user with the whizz-bang Vista, forcing it onto businesses too.
Businesses don’t want Vista. It’s been a complete mystery for several years as to when it’ll come out, what features it’ll even have and what rediculous hardware requirements it’ll have. It’s a new kernal, core, everything, so many business apps are likely to break; it’s a whole new UI so people will have to re-train, they’ll be much more IT-support calls (Hello UAP!)
Microsoft don’t give a shit about their business customers frankly. They have their own agenda, and if you run Windows, you’re coming for the ride if you like it or not.
[quote]There is nothing wrong with Windows 2000, nor 2003; in fact both of these are MS’s best ever OSes and businesses love them.[/quote]
Are you Sarcastic or something? They love them? Simply, they don’t have knowledge to run *nix and they just need to stick with Windows because they don’t have to time to learn them. In nowadays’ linux, they have GUI interface to configure your server very nicely. With Windows, you do the same thing but they just get used to it. Blue screen death due to hardware failure and things like those is unacceptable in business environments, I see problems coming from windows all the time and my manager is so frustrated but he still says he would go for Microsoft windows just because there is no in-house linux support, that’s all. Yes, they love it because of tons of easy-to-use wizards and no they hate it since most of these wizards don’t work well after all!
I think XP is much better than 2000. And I think XP 64 bit is even better…and since XP 64 bit is based off of Windows 2003 code, I think that is MS’s finest OS ever.
A friend of mine tried XP x64 for a while and said it was the worst OS he’d ever used in his life because so much stuff is not compatible with it.
Windows Fundamentals has only one goal – keep you stuck on Windows even when Windows is not the right choice for the hardware.
And can you blame them? For years, people have been saying that Microsoft leaves legacy hardware users in the dust, while only paying attention to the latest hardware. Now, Microsoft actually addresses that need — and they get pilloried.
It’s not clear what you mean by “Windows is not the right choice for the hardware”. In my view, you can’t make that kind of determination for potentially millions of legacy users. They each have their own needs — and those needs have nothing to do with whether their choice satisfies a bunch of geeks on OSNews. Why not run Windows software if they have an investment in Windows software? Why not use Windows to access data that they accumulated over the years and don’t want to throw away for some incompatible OSS app?
It’s all about customer requirements, not geek fetishes.
LOL MS re-imvents the wheel.first they drop support for their legacy OS’s then sell you the same crap in a new wrapper ROFLoL
http://winhistory.de/more/386/xpmini_eng.htm
Te public voted for Bush twice(well sorta) so theres no bounds to the stupidity of the general public,and they will probably get a lot of suckers,,…er uh customers
if windows isn’t the “right choice” for legacy pcs what on earth is?
If you say Linux… you get shot, Linux is not designed for legacy pcs. Modern Linux needs a modern pc!
Or you could use a distro that is designed to be lightweight and good with old hardware:
http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/02/13/1854251
edit: And for people who don’t read the article, the system was designed with with enterprise customers in mind, not the common public: “Windows-based operating system designed for enterprise customers with legacy PCs who are not in a position to purchase new hardware”
Edited 2006-07-16 22:45
@Indech:
The only reason they even would consider to switch to another Windows Version are the distance management capabilitys for maintaining a big batch of machines at once. Do any of those lightweight linux distributions offer something like that (honest question – no trolling intended)?
I’m not really familar with mass installation, or any of the distros other than Debian, but Debian has FAI and SystemImager, which can be used for mass installs and updates. I don’t know if any of the smaller distros have those or other tools, but SystemImager is mostly distro independent and could be manually installed if you wanted a lighter distro than Debian. FAI I believe is more Debian centered, so I’m not sure about that one. I’m sure there are other tools out there as well.
If you talk about remote administration, then Linux is THE OS of choice imho. With SSH, you can administrate a remote machine very easily. For example, you can update all the software on a remote machine without interrupting the person working on it, you have full access to all config files, system settings etc. on the remote machine.
For mass installations, there’s plenty of tools for Linux allowing mass installs, mass updates, mass configuration changes etc.
Tom
This is primarily intended for Legacy PCs to be used as thin clients (AFAIK). A small Linux, such as Feather or DSL, can run better on this hardware, and still connect to a server, and then you don’t have to pay the licensing fees.
That is not entirely true. If you install a crappy legacy Desktop that makes your eyes bleed in disgust and was designed without any thought on usability, then you have plenty of alternatives.
On the other hand, if you run *such* old legacy machines it is most likely not because of cost but because some custom software. So good luck with Wine as well.
Such old boxes tend to have glitches and cause more cost by offtime than a newer low-end office pc would.
Well, good luck using legacy software on Windows XP SP2 – I don’t think the compatibility is much better than by using Wine.
Well, I might have to dodge a bullet, but Puppy http://www.puppyos.com/ IS designed from the ground up to run on legacy systems.
Likewise Vector http://vectorlinux.com/mod.php?%20mod=userpage&menu=&&page_id=1
still has version 1.8 available for purchase (11.97 USD) that’ll run on a 486 (If you can still find one.)
What does Windows Fundamentals really offer? I couldn’t seem to read it in the article but I heard that it was only slightly more than a Terminal Services client (you could for example run a few apps locally)..
What can’t you do in this edition that you can do with the full XP?
Remember that the ‘recommended’ specs for windows fundamentals are 300Mhz and 256 MB RAM – with that hardware you can even run Windows XP rather well as long as you tweak it and live with some restrictions…
Here is an older article I wrote on getting Widnwos 2000/XP running on old hardware with as little as 32MB RAM:
http://nexle.dk/daniel/win2000-32mb/
Cheers,
Daniel
perso i use a stripped down version of XP that needs only 45Mo and is incredibly fast :
Tiny XP v4 from Experience (there is a new one)
Edited 2006-07-16 23:42
How did you decrease memory usage by that much? Even though I used nLite and dropped my iso size with all sp2 and post sp2 updates to 189 mb I still use around 140 mb on idle, but then again I have nod32 running and including that a total of 20 processes. Surely you had to ahve sacrificed some functionality!
few functionalities but not much, and i probaly dont need them since i can not see they are lack,
if you want more information go to the forum http://www.retestrak.nl
the last tiny xp is optimized game and use only 42mo
i use the tiny xp v4 on my old laptop 500mhz and it sbreath of oxygene, incredibly fast (much more faster than debian/kde)
Where do I go after I go to that website?
I admit, I haven’t read everything, but how does this save money for people who can’t afford to replace their hardware? With bottom of the line Dells going for $300, is it really cheaper to pay IT professionals to convert old boxes to fundamentals and then maintain them? Remember, old PCs tend to fail (power supplies, processors, etc.) Even low end white boxes can run XP for most office software. Microsoft has put a lot of time and effort into what I see to be a very small part of the business market. Unless they are going after the HOME market. If they could get all those people at home still using Win98 to convert (using FUD), they would get a large new revenue stream. Monthly/yearly payments to have access to software (and files) stored on MS servers sounds like a plan from Redmond.
The idea is simply one of distance batch management (i have no clue what english buzzword does apply here since i’m not a native english speaker). Of course no company would save money by giving it away. Now XP and that “Fundamentals” version offer a possebility for doing maintanace in a partly automated, remote and batch type way.
So the idea here is to save money on administration and maintanance. I totaly agree thou that this might not save anything, since such old hardware has an enormous higher risk of failure.
I googled for it, and yes this does exist, read more here:
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/programs/sa/benefits/fundamental…
It sounded like a scam until I found out that the only way to get it is to sign up for Software Assurance. Then I knew it was a scam.
Software Extortion wasn’t around yet when even Windows ME was released, and now MS is trying to get some more seats signed up under the guise of providing a migration path from EOLed products. Crafty folks, them.
http://download.novell.com
First link under new releases:
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10
SLED-10-x86-DVD1.iso bd1ec85d1d71914206e3c54b56d1ce54
Website hasn’t been updated yet.
PS: Software Assurance not required to obtain this OS
oops…
Edited 2006-07-17 02:52
LOL I’m so sick of people saying that execs and techs only use windows because they dont like linux… i hate to say this but the fact is hardware failure and the effects of it on an OS are not basis for one OS being better than another, use good hardware and it isn’t an issue.
The reason people use windows isnt because they dont understand how to use it… the fact is they don’t want to! Linux over complicates things, people say microsoft has holes my god has anyone looked at the patches released for linux? Why is it things must be over complicated in linux, dont say that their are GUI’s because even the GUI’s appear that they were back from 1995… And don’t say “ya well real techs can use the Console”, because the response to that is WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO!?!? Because it makes me “3l33t”? I don’t want to be 3l33t i just want my server to RUN, and not have to worry about some trivial kernel patch screwing me over.
Great, server admins that don’t want to understand Windows and just want it to ‘run’. This is exactly the reason why reason Windows is such a big security liability in a lot of companies. It’s not (just) the OS, but it’s the incomptetent admins.
I fully agree. If you just want to drive around a car, then you don’t have to know it’s technical details. A secretary using a computer to write letters etc. just needs to know her office application – for her, it’s no difference if it runs on Windows or Linux. In fact I believe that Gnome would be a better alternative in this case than Windows, because it’s much easier to handle, has less options, looks nice, has a good usability etc.
But if you don’t want to just drive your car, but “administrate” it, then you have to know the technical details. The problem with Windows is, it hides most of the technical details, doing everything automatically. This may work in many cases, but it also doesn’t work in many other cases – and then the problems start, because the Windows admins (not all of them, but many) don’t know the technical stuff, and don’t know what to do except clicking a few checkboxes.
On Linux, you’re more forced into learning the technical details, which makes you a better administrator imho, since you know how it works “under the hood”. Managing a midsize or large company network isn’t easy, you *have* to know the technical details to do it right – and for this, Linux is a better alternative imho, because it doesn’t hide technical things. On modern distributions, you can do 99% of your work graphically, but the reason so many Linux admins *still* use the console is not because they want to be 1337, but because it’s often more efficient. The few Linux servers I’m managing here in my workplace all have webmin installed, but still I do most tasks trough SSH, because it just works better for me. But you don’t have to.
I dunno. Win2K3 is pretty darn secure out of the box.
I don’t know w2k3 in detail, but I’ve heard it’s considered pretty secure. Well but have a look at Solaris for example, *everything* is locked down until you explicitly open it. Ubuntu for example has a “zero open ports” policy which simply says that the default install should have not a single port open at all. There’s always room for improvement 🙂
AMEN
I’m a tech guy (embedded programmer), but I want to spend time doing my work instead of upgrading to the latest version of kernel/KDE/whatever. I use console-based tools most of the time, when I want to get work done quickly (ssh connection to the linux pc – Midnight Commander and mcedit ROXXX
). Linux PC works also as a server and router. I prefer YaST to get configuration done quickly instead of messing around with files in /etc.
I use Windows for movies, mp3s, playing games and browsing the web and linux+windows for programming. I’ve tried several linux & *BSD distros running on laptop, but they all sucked with hardware support and USABILITY, which most of the zealots forget.
For old PCs – even Windows 2000 does the job better when it comes to usability compared to the latest linux distros. Everything works out of the box. I used to use Win2k on P150/32MB RAM/ATI Mach 64 1MB and it was quite usable. Now try running KDE or Gnome with comparable USABILITY – it’s SLOOOOOOW.
I’m not against linux & linux distros, but some people tend to overestimate their capabilities.
If you’re used to using Linux it’s not a problem. Same’s with Windows. Thing is, most people are only used to Windows and don’t understand why they should learn something new. It’s not necessarily harder to use, it’s just quite different.
If the idea is to make it run as light as possible on older PCs wouldn’t it make sense to turn off the silly Luna stuff and disable the themes service? I’ve noticed that speeds everything up quite a bit with XP on older systems. I always turn it off anyway since I think it’s really ugly but to have it enabled on legacy PCs seems ridiculous.
Any organization that still runs Windows gets exactly what they deserve. If you are stupid enough that you want to keep buying Windows which the Department of Homeland Security advises NOT to use then when you get a virus or when you get hacked its your own fault. Windows and security is an oxymoron. If Microsoft continues to reuse the same code in Windows then Windows will never truly ever be secure. Vista isnt going to help, nothing is going to help. Im predicting the first Vista virus launched within 3 minutes of its release. My only hope is that the Virus infects Bill Gates demo computer when he is up on stage. Windows is a dead platform, only zombies and imbecils use Windows. Dont even come to me and try to tell me you are an IT professional if you use Windows. i will laugh in your face.
Most places I’ve worked at over the past two years have been exclusive Windows shops; not one of them has ever had a crash, intrusion or a virus. How? Because the administrators are bright blokes, who know what they’re doing.
If you are stupid enough that you want to keep buying Windows which the Department of Homeland Security advises NOT to use then
The Department of Homeland Security said no such thing. They recommended that people stop using IE, which everyone agrees, is solid advice. They said nothing about Windows.
The department did switch servers, but this may have been a move to bring it under the same hosting seervice as the rest of the Whitehouse websites, rather than an answer to a specific threat.
http://www.newsforge.com/software/03/01/27/1831240.shtml?tid=2
Also, the department’s advice, was given in just over two years ago; before IE7 was on the radar.
If Microsoft continues to reuse the same code in Windows then Windows will never truly ever be secure. Vista isnt going to help, nothing is going to help
That sound like wishful thinking. Vista doesn’t use the same code as XP; that is one reason for the delay. Having started the project, MS realised that they couldn’t make it secure without going back to the drawing board … so they did.
Im predicting the first Vista virus launched within 3 minutes of its release.
OK, here’s where we agree. Although I find it odd that a Vista vulnerability hasn’t been found yet, I reckon we’ll have a load of them on release day. But the number of viruses is not important. If I step out of my house, there are thousands of germs that could potentially kill me, just by my taking a deep breath.
No, the launch of a virus is no big deal; how Vista protects against them; that is what needs to be looked at.
My only hope is that the Virus infects Bill Gates demo computer when he is up on stage.
Yes, it’s always a bad sign when folk wish for stuff like this. I prefer success on a product’s own merits; rather than its users praying and hoping that the competitor will trip up and fall.
Windows is a dead platform, only zombies and imbecils use Windows
Indeed! Rather than look at why your chosen platform is unattractive to 95% of the computer population, it’s much easier to just call them names, in the hope that some of them will join your cause, just so that you stop calling them stupid …. 🙂
Good luck with that approach. And if you are going to call people ‘imbeciles’, then you should really learn how to spell it.
Dont even come to me and try to tell me you are an IT professional if you use Windows. i will laugh in your face.
Well, I’m an IT Professional and I use Windows, and I honestly don’t give two hoots what think.
What does make me laugh is when folk imply Windows users are all sheep.
Anyone who bleats the same old “Windows is crap. It crashes a million times a day, and you can get a billion viruses just by plugging a Windows machine into the wall socket” rubbish; well you’re also just sheep following the flock. The only difference, is that your chosen flock just happens to be smaller.
Very well said. I agree with you 100%. I would mod you up if I could but you are at the max already!
hummmm, buy a piece of software to run terminal server, on a power hungry old pc that is probably gonna die soon anyways.
or buy a low power terminal server client box. save energy, and you dont have to buy another version of windows.
it would be cheaper to buy an actual thin client rather than to buy windows fundamentals. and even if it wasn’t, after a year, you would have saved enuf energy to justify the cost. And you would have skipped all the hardware problems that are typical on many old as dirt systems.
Edited 2006-07-17 06:17
Talk about a need for a reality check; people run Windows because of its hardware support and availability of applications.
If Linux/FreeBSD/OpenSolaris supported all the same hardware, either out of the box or via driver download as Windows, and all the software that are available on Windows, there was a native version available for Linux/FreeBSD/OpenSolaris, no one would run Windows.
The simple fact is, like I said in a previous reply, people purchase computers with an operating system (MacOS X or Windows) to run applications to get work done – if they can’t run the same applications that they’ve always run in the past, to them, the operating system is a failure.
Believe me, there is absolutely no love for Windows in any business, but the majority are stuck with Windows for the simple reason as addressed in the above paragraph.
“if they can’t run the same applications that they’ve always run in the past, to them, the operating system is a failure.”
Alternative operating systems are not designed to run the same applications that you’ve been running before, they’re intented to do the same tasks on an alternative system with alternative applications. If you want to stick with Windows applications, then use Windows, if you want to switch to Linux or Mac OS, then choose Linux or Mac OS applications. Of course some applications are available for multiple OS which is a good thing. Linux is not and will never be intended for running Windows applications, or providing a complete lookalike replacement to Windows.
Linux is not and will never be intended for running Windows applications, or providing a complete lookalike replacement to Windows.
Who said anything about that? Linux needs to get the same, native applications that currently run on Windows; businesses need software, consumers need software; both of them have spent time and money in learning these tools and have many megabytes if not gigabytes of information stored in these said file formats – do you expect them to through away all this valuable information, simply to get the fuzzy feel good factor that comes to running Linux?
I moved to MacOS X from FreeBSD for the very reason why people keep with Windows or MacOS X; its the applications stupid! (comment not directed at you) I can run Microsoft Office 2004, Adobe, Macromedia, MYOB, plus software from Apple such as iTunes, iPhoto, Pages, Keynote etc.
If Linux or FreeBSD (or PC-BSD) came out tomorrow, and it had all the applications that I am running now, in native executables, I would migrate without any problems, but until that day, the only viable platform for me is MacOS X.
You say that if all your Mac OS X apps where available for PC-BSD, you’d switch … well if you use all your same applications, then why do you switch actually? Well one reason for _me_ why I switched to Linux was the different “software culture” that Linux offers – which is, open source, free, standards conform etc. Of course I can’t speak for the whole Linux community, but sorry I don’t know if I really want to see e.g. Adobe Photoshop on Linux. Nothing against Photoshop, it no doubt the probably best tool for this purpose out there, but every time I install any closed source or commerical application on Linux, it just “doesn not fit in”. You can’t update this software with Apt, it often has a complete different HIG, it looks different than the rest of the desktop etc. Well today if I’d d o serious graphics stuff I’d get a Mac and buy Photoshop, but instead of having Photoshop for Linux, I’d prefer an open source solution with similar functionality & similar usability (no, I’m not mentioning Gimp here, this is definitely not an option 😉 )
Tom
If all I needed was e-mail, basic internet browsing and , vector and bitmap graphics, spreadsheet and presentations, Winsows 3.1 would still do. And I didn’t even say 3.11 as 3.1 is networkable just fine :o)
I remember running Word 6.0 and Corel Draw in parallel (I think it was because of Word’s embedded object something) on an 486 33MHz with 4 MB RAM. And the disk was compressed (Stacker)! Yeah, it got slow at times, but so does my Pentium III 700 MHz 256 MB RAM laptop with windows 2000. The reason? I think too many helper apps, like firewall and antivirus, plust dozens of Win2000 services I am not allowed to turn off. I bet Win 3.1 would fly on this laptop :o)
It is, isn’t it?
It seems like MS is realizing that Vista will NOT run on many PCs, and they have to do something about it.
But then, if i had an old PC i would better install 2000 rather than this capped XP, as it can run with 64MB, and is quite usable with 128MB.
It would make more sense to discount XP and keep 2000 support for older computers, but i guess this is too expensive for MS to do that.
Another alternative would be some linux that can run with few computer resources, as it would be more secure, and probably faster.
What all you linux fanboys forget about is software. Since when are people able to use every single app on linux which they are used to using on windows. They aren’t. If i need some custom-build tool for my work that only works in windows what use does linux have for me? None! I know I can’t argue about the usability of linux (however something in me still doubts about this), so the only front linux will still lose is the software. I know that there are a lot of alternatives. But if one is missing, linux is completely useless for me.
This is not only an issue for older pc’s, but for each pc with linux on it. Especially think of gaming…
As soon as there will be full win32 api support in linux, the amount of people who will start migrating will rise to the stars.
“As soon as there will be full win32 api support in linux, the amount of people who will start migrating will rise to the stars”
Please, no. If this happens, I have the fear that companies start to say “hey why to port to Linux, it runs Windows binaries anyway”.
About the usability of Linux: I think you should always make a difference between the “end user” (office worker) and the administrator. For the end user, if you tell him/her how, Linux offers the same usability – if not even more. Imho, Gnome beats Windows hands-down usability-wise.
For administrators, it’s a completely different story. “Under the hood” Linux imho is just very, very different, mbut not more complex. You just have to know what to do.
MS has been selling us a LOAD of crap for years! To keep PCs selling and Windows selling in a big ole loop.
Now as we see, in reality we never had to do that since MS could of made a lighter OS in the first place that can do everything the new, bloated OS can!
Shows that MS cares nothing about customers and ALL about money!
As always, shady!
to me is that they used NT5.1 kernel when 5.2 is more stable & runs better on older hardware. The GUI that run in that new Windows eat about 5%-25% of CPU power on such 300MHz computer. Why they don’t set minimal version? It needs 256MB of RAM. But on screenshot there is that there is no “ping” ! I think they missed many things in that windows variant. They should delete IE, Windoes Media Player, & all many other things, that 90% of ppl uninstall when they try to use it on slow PC. Instead they delted most used things & say that it’s better for slow PCs. Terrible
For all those Linux zealots. Please stop that! Those arguments are just over the same & currently noone believe them any more. You can’t say “if linux got more software… if linux become more popular… if linux will got better drivers. if.. if… if…”. Sorry guys but all those “IF” make windows much easier for home users to use. So don’t say that Windows is worse, because it’s not. for people that wanna to edit their documents. Play some game, or just talk with skype.. All those people, don’t have to know why their f–king init deamon load spooky server on port XXX. Or why my libs are nos linked onto older version so software XXX will run. Or why the hell my kernel do not support this driver version. Linux shuld shut up & learn usability from Windows & making configuration & apps KISS from BSD UNIX variants.
Edited 2006-07-17 14:24
What an idiot.
I have run Windows Server 2003 SP1 on a laptop (IBM Thinkpad 770X, PII-300 Mhz, 320MB RAM) as a test.
It flew. It was faster than XP Pro (I ran Beta 2, RC1, and SP0 on it), or Windows 2000 Pro (which is what I used to run on it).
If I were Microsoft, I would not base Windows Fundamentals on XP. I’d use a cut-down version of Windows Server 2003. You’re going to get mostly the same desktop support, and the ability to use it as an RDP client. Vista’s based on 2003 SP1 anyway. You might as well keep things consistent if its main purpose is to provide Citrix, RDP, or basic IE connectivity to users.
You also might as well keep it on an OS Kernel that won’t run like crap on a PII-300
.
If you want a thin client, be modern, be stylish, be energy-efficient and reliable:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39272166,00.htm