Windows XP SP1 Support Ends Tuesday

tophee writes "ZDNet reports that support for Windows XP SP1 and SP1a will be ending this coming Tuesday. From the article: 'Microsoft will end support for Windows XP Service Pack 1 and SP1a on Tuesday, leaving people no option but to upgrade to Service Pack 2 if they wish to continue to receive crucial components, including security software.' Colin Barker of ZDNet notes, 'There's little reason for anyone to still be running SP1; SP2 contained a range of improvements to XP's security.'"

The problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with Microsoft is that they never separate bug fixes from feature additions. So either you stay vulnerable or you eat more and more of their junk.

They should be forced to strictly separate the two.

Makes sense

[linuxci]

It makes sense as people have had a long time to test their apps against XP SP2 and report bugs to MS. Of course if SP2 breaks anything and you're a paying customer then I can understand why you'd want to stay on SP1 otherwise SP2 offers some advanages.

I think things like WGA are being forced on people whatever version they're running so that's no reason not to upgrade.

When the upgrade is included in the initial purchase cost then this is fine. If they dropped support for XP altogether then that would have been bad but just think of SP2 as an update.

Anyway I hate MS versioning schemes, why service pack why not call it a point release? They also love weird names for their beta software I remember the IE7 beta 2 preview refresh (which was the second pre-release before beta 2)

Re:Heh

[Tod DeBie]

Yet another reason to switch to linux. You'll get support for a lot longer.

XP SP1 came out what, four plus years ago? What release of Linux was current then? 2.4? Can you still get timely support and bug fixes for 2.4 based releases?

Re:Heh

[mr_matticus]

The difference being that your laser printer is of a model no newer than 1998 and your camera is no older than 1999. You chose to buy that camera at a later date, and the fact that it requires a newer OS is simply a matter of course.

The joy of Linux is that two hardware pieces, both from 2005, can have mutually exclusive kernel requirements. And God help you if you want to change your video/network card after initial configuration...drivers for one might require you to upgrade and the other may well fail to install because the version you just installed is too new. Try undoing those changes for a REAL treat.

SP2 broke my XP box

[mr_matticus]

Maybe it's a forced upgrade plan, but SP2 completely broke Windows Update on my computer. It just cycles through the looping progress bar or the tray icon sits at 33% perpetually. It's a totally legitimate copy of XP, dotted with other minor annoyances that worked perfectly under SP1.

That computer now has Vista on it, so I guess Microsoft won after all.

Re:Makes sense

[Guppy06]

"A single point increase of .1 (Windows 4.0 to Windows 4.1) being 3 years worth of bug fixes, enhancements and addons isn't worth charging for?"

And don't forget they charged again for 98SE. But consider how 3 years worth of bug fixes, enhancements and addons nowadays only rates a "Service Pack 2" for XP rather than a new point version. Granted, "5.2" was already taken by then, but why not 5.11?

"5 years in the case of nt 5.0 to 5.1?"

No, it was only twenty months between Windows 2000 and Windows XP, less than the time between the release of XP and SP2. And the general consensus seems to be that XP introduced more bugs than it fixed compared to 2k.

Re:Heh

[bmo]

I am?

That depends on what the original poster means by Linux. Linux is, and has always been a kernel. If the OP meant distribution and support from a retail vendor, I know Novell still supports SLES 8 and SuSE 8 which were 2.4 based. Redhat still supports their enterprise 2.4 based releases. So, in other words, if you're still on 2.4, you can _still get support_. If you're on a free distribution, you support yourself anyway, which is no big deal.

2.4 is just a kernel. All the rest are applications and they can be mixed and matched at will. Windows people simply can't wrap their brains around that concept, but that doesn't surprise me in the least, because of the way Microsoft ties what should be userland to kernel space.

So I don't know what the big deal is. You windows fanboys amaze me, spouting the FUD "hey, maybe 2.4 isn't as supported as Windows is supported." Bullshit. If I wanted to, I could go grab one of the 1.1 kernels and build something around it. You can't even _buy_ Windows 95, but if I have an application that requires a kernel as small as 1.1.13 was, I can _still use it_.

Doing that is almost the equivalent of going back to DOS (but without the bogosity), but hey, you can't even _buy_ a retail box of MS-DOS these days, can you?

--
BMO

Re:Lots of people still use W98...

[Tony Hoyle]

You haven't worked in corporate IT have you?

4 years for some companies is about the time they start the *rollout*.

If take a sample of random customers the majority of Windows users are on Windows 2000 (6 years old!).. a sizable chunk of 2003 now as people begin to roll it out, very little XP (that was skipped for the most part).

We still have NT4 customers.

4 years is nothing.

(You get the same with other OSs - nobody is running Solaris 10 yet (only 1 query about it in the last year), lots of Solaris 8 and Solaris 9.. Even other stuff.. Oracle 8 is predominant even though Oracle themselves don't support it any more).

If it ain't broke, don't fix it

[SgtChaireBourne]

If it ain't broke don't fix it.

Sure those articles are from two years ago. So, what? The apps are already bought and paid for. They're older than two years. They didn't change. They don't need to change. Why should businesses and everyone else keep chasing MS' moving goals posts?

I'm glad you pointed out that Linux distros are a secure option and now easy to use. However, you miss the point that these organiszations and businesses are locked into NT 5 and 5.1 (pre SP2). If they can't make the transition easily to SP2, it'll be more of a transition to move to BSD, Linux or whatever else. However, in the medium and long term it may be very well worth it.

The only truely secure computer is one that is turned off.

Again, so what? The fact that no system is perfect doesn't not mean that all systems are equal. The heart of the issue there is about mitigating risks. Some architectures are designed with a multi-user, networked environment in mind, others are designed for no network and one app/user at a time.

Please run a copy of Linux from 2002, and only install the vendor released patches for that version without updating to a new version. How long will your box be free from critical security flaws?

I've done that before -- in 2002, since you mention the year. It was free of critical security flaws for over six months. Just to re-iterate, patches are not the same as updates. Yes, updating to a different version will cause trouble and if you do that in a production environment without first testing, you can end up having you ass handed to you. However, patches are not updates. Patches fix a problem with an existing version. Period.

How often does updating one thing in a Linux environment start causing problems with other things?

Who knows? That's irrelevant. The posts above are about patching not updating. Don't get confused about the two. If you want to start a new thread about updating, go ahead. But the original point is that instead of issuing a clean patch that fixes a specific problem, MS lumps several together and then piggybacks unrelated changes in functionality to essential patches in order to force the acceptance of the changes to functionality. That makes hell for MS' customers.