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by grapeshot 3596 days ago
It's going to be very difficult to get Windows 7 working if Intel won't release things like USB or video drivers for it.

There are already problems with Skylake where you'll do a fresh install of Windows 7 and none of your USB ports or network devices will work because they require newer drivers. Microsoft is doing their best to drive everyone to Windows 10 by not doing another service pack or releasing updated ISOs.
2 comments
georgyo 3596 days ago
Intel has no reason to not release those drivers for it. Windows might not ship the drivers themselves, or make it "just work." But that's not in Intel's interest, they want to sell chips. They don't care what you run on it, and will support whatever has a large enough install base.

Microsoft is the one not doing the supporting. Which means that if something doesn't work, and you create an issue with them (think enterprise customers) their official response is going to be that you need to upgrade. This is perfectly reasonable and Apple does this all the time. There is no reason why older iDevices can't install newer IOS, besides pushing people to upgrade.

I don't see Windows 7 "not working" with Kaby Lake. Maybe things that require deeper OS support, like Optane as DDR chips, or booting off Optane. Maybe Thunderbolt 3 won't work right. But for the most part, most things will work just fine.

Think of it this way, if OSes had to actively support new chipsets, you would need to buy/get new install disks with every release. That just doesn't happen.

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vertex-four 3596 days ago
Linux definitely does have to get updates for new chipsets, mostly around power management features. iGPUs also tend to get updated, which needs new drivers. Old kernels will still run, but they will use more power than necessary and not have access to many new features.
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jschwartzi 3596 days ago
Indeed. In the past when I've needed to add support for something during installation, I've never had a problem slipstreaming it in.
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cptskippy 3596 days ago
It's more than that. Windows 7 doesn't natively support XHCI (USB3) and Intel dropped EHCI support in Skylake. EHCI was expected to be dropped for a long time from hardware support since modern Operating Systems have supported XHCI for quite sometime.
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