Win2k Support Cancellation

QFT



LL isn't leaving you out in the cold.

<b>1</b>- It'll most likely be awhile until LL makes a change in a viewer release that no longer work with XP, when that happens you just don't upgrade your viewer or if you already have you download the version you previously had installed and reinstall.

<b>2</b>- It'll be almost inconceivably long (hopefully) until LL forces an upgrade to a viewer that no longer functions with XP. As I said above, to my knowledge forced upgrades that have been impossible to sidestep using -channel have only happened twice and while I can't speak for LL they are on record as saying that they try to do that only in the most severe of circumstances since they know the impact it causes.

When I mean break I mean substantially break where functions that you need to use SL day to day (logging in, building, scripting, etc...) are broken. I'm sure that there will be some things that only hardcore advanced menu tweakers will notice before then but 99.99% of users probably won't.





I think this is both true and misleading from what I've read from LL. They said that they themselves wont' support it but that isn't stopping a Win2K community from forming to create a third party viewer and/or to do QA work and submit patches to LL to keep it Win2K compliant, LL has said that they'll accept patches for it so what you really need to do is get a community together to essentially do the work that the community now does for the viewer but win2k compliance focused. That means having people to point out bugs in win2k, people who can look at the code and who can find where the bugs might be, people who can make patches.

LL is making you do more work and you may see it as unfair but they are not screwing you over or leaving you out in the cold as long as you can find people who have the skills or are willing to learn the skills to keep a win2k viewer alive, whether that be the LL version or a third party viewer. Even if LL did break the viewer for Win2K I'm guessing it will be a huge amount of time before they did something that couldn't be worked around to make a viewer still Win2K compliant even if that meant working backwards.

First of all "about 1/10 of 1 percent of our current active Residents" does not equal 10%. It equals 0.1%, or one resident in 1000.
And that's not an amount a serious company can really spend time on. LL must move on.

If the Win2K users need to stick to their old OS for whatever reason they have, they should find a developer who takes the Open Source viewer code and ensures that it still runs on Win2K. You are free to do so, although the Win2K community is probably too small to really do that. But that again is a sign why Win2K should not be supported any longer.

How dare they remove support for a 10 year old OS!

Whatever next! Soon you'll be telling me I shouldn't be using dial up!

OUTRAGE

To the one in a thousand whiney babies: LL does not OWE you anything. They will support what is financially feasable. They can't be wasting developers on a ten year old OS that hasnt been supported by the *developer* in years.

There are typically 65K people logged in at any given time. Statistically, you could fit all the Win2k users on one sim.

If you can't afford $300 to upgade your computer and/or OS, it's time you got a job and moved out of your mom's basement and maybe earned a little spending money.

And they're running Second Life?

Windows XP is almost as old, and apart from some stuff that shouldn't even be in ANY kernel it's the same code base.

They're not wasting so much as a single whole developer on it. But Microsoft is: Microsoft is still releasing security hotfixes for Windows 2000.

its a big yay or booo however you look at it, but of course LL can basically support which OS they please.....
BTW LL, When will you offer support for windows 7 ..The beta one (build 7000) works fine on SL, all be it a little slow in the frame rate.

Regardless, XP is still a highly supported OS, with probably 40% of the Windows user base still using it (myself included until Win7). If SL's software architecture is being held back by legacy support, then ditch it. I won't shed a tear when XP is no longer supported if it means things move forward.

Obviously there's a big enough difference in the kernels to warrant this decision, which I doubt was taken lightly.

Dragging people kicking and screaming into the present is part and parcel with emergent technology. Deal with it rather than trying to hold everyone else back with stubborn and ill informed belligerence.

At a guess, when the OS is released would be a fair bet. Supporting beta or RC OS's is a lesson in futility.

That's a rather full sim then, but technically possible, yes. Not to mention, that this change only means, that FUTURE Client-Versions will not be TESTED with W2k. It does NOT mean, that the current Client will now deny to run there; it doesn't even say a word about being able to run 1.22 or even 1.23 on w2k.



It's ONLY the OS. Any computer capable to run SL is *by far* capable to run Windows XP.

IMHO Linden should overall use much more manpower to make the SL-experience on modern hard- and software better; so I'd also suggest to drop support for Mac/ppc (which btw. needs *way* more manpower than W2k or even other i386-systems) soon and remove the compatibility code for graphics chips, that don't support Pixel-Shader 2.0. That would enforce a few users to update, but only those, who already have constant very low frame rates. On the other side give those with modern GPUs (PS4) shadows, more polygons and maybe even reflections.

...and think about a 64Bit-Version too

It's not.
The only substantial reason given for this is the size of the user base. There's been no information provided as to what the actual impact of supporting Windows 2000 is. And speaking as someone who was supporting Windows for 20 years, it would absolutely astonish me if the developer impact was more than one person for part of the day every few weeks.

All i say move with the time and dont stick.
technologie moves forward not backwards,
if technologie would stick with windows 3.11 (example but still its same upgrading from 3.11 to 95, and now 2000 to xp or vista), what would the world be now then? in 10years might be a windows 10 with 3d projectors or so powerfull a room transforming into virtual 3d world (would love that btw )

2k is almost 10years old, hasent the futures with has today annymore,
and btw allot of newer games dosent even run on 2k annymore

annyway drop 2k suport and add finaly 64bit suport with more and more people uses nowdays including me,

and note: to one sayd that vista users are users who knowing noting of pc, then your clearly wrong, i'm vista 64b user myself and im on pc ever since win 95, when a new os is out i upgrade , if i have to buy new hardware so be it, like i sayd before "technologie moves forward not backwards,"

Oh no, technology *often* moves backwards. Technology isn't a mighty river drawing us inevitably towards the rapture of the nerds. Technology is a wildfire in a multi-dimensional forest full of gunpowder trees and superconducting crystals and magic mirrors and portals to hell and heaven and everything between. Technology not only moves backwards, it moves backwards and forwards at the same time based on the toss of invisible dice in smokey backrooms where even God doesn't dare find out what's really happening.

Quantum physics is simple by comparison.

You seriously didn't see this coming?

Not even when Microsoft stopped developing applications for Windows 2000? A couple years ago.

You mention Lenovo as one example of a big company supporting old OS

But see another one though... Adobe. Their installer for CS3 was for XP or Vista only! (if im not mistaken)
All others, go figure and find your way in... (power user experienced recommended to do that) But i reckon there always going to be ways

I think not much will change. This is just so that that 0.1% of users wont go requiring from LL developers to promise that it will run on win2k. I bet you will still be able to run SL fine from 2000 in the far future.

Posts about what OS is superior is really out of subject here. There's at least one reason for someone to keep using an os like 2000: financial.

I am a conservative user myself so i'm with you all the way Springdale. In 2007 i upgraded from my sweet 2000 to 2003 and I am more than happy. Of course Adobe was a pain to install but it did. Almost all games play fine too (i mention games because they are usually most demanding). I have all services stripped down and it really works just as well as my old 2000 was, (2003 is the only chance you have for a 32bit os to manage your 4gb memory better, rumour has it), and i reckon its more compatible with modern applications than 2000 is.

It is inevitable to have compatibility problems with the rest of the world when you stay back to an old OS, and im sure you know this already, as LL is not the only one who stopped supporting 2000.

Some occasions i have had no luck using with windows 2000 was AVID xpress, newer Adobe products (such as premiere) and software that require OS version upon install, such as drivers for mobile phones or music equipment (namely M-Audio midi controllers).

I had to use older versions of these (thus missing features) or find ways round it by faking OS version.. Sometimes it was impossible, and thats why i upgraded to a newer OS. If anything, 2003 (yes, server!, you can strip everything down to make it just like 2000 - and remain optimised for heavy server or workstation use) - Kernel of 2003 is even higher version than XP, and as mentioned here its NT 5.2 - the latest of the NT5.x series. For a user like Springdale, I think 2003 is something you will enjoy as much as you enjoy your 2000, Opt-out based light OS no extra overheads, and much more compatible than 2000.

In anycase I wouldn't worry about this. I believe the differences in the windows SDK between the XP (its the 2003 SDK) and the 2000 one are not so big to make the viewer break. And when/if it ever does, _worst case_, following instructions on how to build the official viewer code from sources and building it on your 2000 system (using its SDK and installed dlls), without even changing any code, would most probably solve problems.

Bottom line: If you choose to be conservative, you have to face the consequences. Even if i totally understand win2k users like Springdale, I believe that LL has more serious developing issues to address than this, specially when i doubt viewer will stop working for win2k anytime soon.

Do you have links to information about stripping 2003 down?

i have windows xp will this affect my loging on to sl and if so what can i do to enable me to carry on in sl as i really enjoy it

yes you need to buy a quadro computer with 8gb ram and running windows 7

hehe no im just joking, noting affects "windos xp" this topic is about windows 2000 with is a previous version of windows xp (wel dont count ME couse that was a flop and we all know it ) so your still fine running sl on xp

-Alex

Windows XP is a "Plus Pack" version of Windows 2000.
The relationship between Windows Me and Windows 2000/XP is akin to the relationship between Puzzle Pirates and Second Life.

Interesting point mentioned, no one is saying it won't work, it's just not supported anymore, meaning that at some point there may be a problem with it, but as it still works on XP, that's not likely.

Hello Everyone and thanks for all your comments. The cancellation of support of Windows 2000 does not mean it will stop working with SL. The fact of the matter is that Win2k QA is done at the expense of QA time spent elsewhere and Win2k represents less than a percent of our active users. The end of Win2k support means we will stop new development for the SDK (software development kit) of that operating system, and also stop doing QA testing on Win2k. We want to free up these Lindens for other work. One of the key points from the original forum was that we're not opposed to taking patches that help platforms we don't actually support. Resident submitted patches will be addressed on a case-by-case basis.

I have 4 computers at the moment. 3 have XP, and one still has Windows 2000.

Frankly, I can't believe I ever used to use Win2k. I will admit when Win XP first came out, i was one who was a 'holdout'. But When I got my new computer and used it awhile, I just ended up liking it so much better. It is more user friendly, more stable, and As fewer and fewer companies continue to support Win2K, it makes less and less sense to use it.

The only thing I've seen where Windows 2000 is superior to Windows XP is in the search capability. Windows 2000 literally searches the contents of every file on the computer, which yes, does take a long time, but at least I can find what I want. XP on the other hand, seems to be very choosy about what files it searches, and how it searches them. Even when I know a file contains a certain word, XP always seems to skip over it in searches. The new XP search 4.0 addon Microsoft came out with recently improved things, but I still do miss having a real, full search capability. But I digress.

Try XP, I think you'll like it.

I use XP at work.

It's just like 2000, but slower. There's minor differences around the taskbar and some of the control panels are dumbed down. What am I missing?

same 4 me :_(

*sight* ... *doublesight* ...... *GIANTSIGHT*