We're now in BCon2 and targets for Blender 2.70 have now been locked! Also, I imagine we'll have a big discussion about the possibility of dropping support for Windows XP.
Thomas Dinges writes:
Here are the notes from today's meeting in irc.freenode.net, #blendercoders
1) Planning and targets for next 2.70 release
- We move to BCon2 in our schedule, bigger projects that will go in for 2.70 are known now.
- Target and planning list has been updated.
- Multithreaded Dependency Graph is reviewed and should be ready for merge soon.
- Merge of Game Engine LoD project is still unclear, needs to be reviewed (nexyon?)
2) Current projects
- Campbell Barton wants to finish the Toolbar Tab patch this week.
- Martijn Berger mentions progress on msvc 2012/2013 libs. He works on documentation and .bat scripts, to compile each library. Current plan: We will compile Blender 2.70 with MSVC 2008 still, and do the switch to MSVC 2012/2013 for Blender 2.71. Warning: When we do the switch, Windows XP support most likely will be discontinued. As Blender 2.71 won't be released before May/June 2014, plenty of time to do an OS update.
52 Comments
Why the need to drop support for XP? Is it simply because Microsoft is dropping XP support in April 2014?
I don't particularly want the expense to having to buy a new computer and operating system if I don't have to and I would imagine there plenty of other users who are also perfectly happy with XP now that it is, at last, reasonably stable.
Please reconsider unless there is a really good reason not to.
Happy Christmas and many thanks to the developers for all of the hard work on Blender.
Your existing version of Blender still works on your existing Windows XP.
I thank you for your reply but it still does not answer the original question that I asked. "Why the need to drop support for XP?"
I fully appreciate the fact that my existing version of Blender will function happily on my existing Windows XP; so, I imagine, would Blender 2.49 and possibly Blender 1.whatever.
The point I was putting across is that I would like to be able to take advantage of future Blender upgrades without having to shell out for a new computer and OS. Sorry if I did not make that obvious enough in my original post.
I think it's only for the installer. I don't use the version with the installer, I just download the installer-free standalone folder onto a memory stick, unzip it and start using it that way.
If we use that method, shouldn't it work on any version of windows? Or would the libraries link in a different way that breaks compatibility even in a self-contained folder?
Oh wait... is this a move to going 64-bit only? That might explain it.
I think it's to do with the actual compilers themselves. Microsoft provides the compilers which translate the source code of Blender to a format which can be run by the operating system. It is most likely that the latest compilers from Microsoft (MSVC 2012/2013) don't compile for XP any more, so unfortunately moving to the latest compilers will break support for XP.
I imagine though that if you'd like you could still compile your own version of Blender using MSVC 2008, which would work on XP.
You can always switch to linux. With my tests on linux, rendering is a whole lot faster anyways. Like, 30% or 40% less time!
As others have pointed out, newer versions of Microsoft Visual Studio won’t compile for Windows XP any more.
You realize that Visual Studio costs money? And you expect the developers to support you for free.
Switch to Linux my friend....
It does not say there will not be a blender 32bit windows XP build. I reserves the possibility that if building all the dependencies becomes to hard (i.e. time consuming) and if the newer compilers work out. the official support might be dropped. And even if this happens it does not mean there is going to be no one that makes either a MSVC or a build based on mingw (gcc for windows). You just might have to download them from graphicall.org instead
There is a chance that my ill look into targeting windows xp with MSVC 2012 after I am done with trying to improve the windows build dependencies situation. The reality is that supporting windows xp is going to be harder when Microsoft will stop supporting it. And Visual Studio 2008 is in some ways already holding blender back. If not by lack of modern standards it does so by taking up much time of people who would much more like to spend their time improving blender for everyone.
first you don't need the new unhappy users, then you don't need the old happy xp users. what's going on guys? you can't be serious right? there are plenty of old pc's that can handle blender, having xp as the only option, coz old linux drivers are badly optimized. at least wait for one more year...
You have had like 7 years to switch~ That seems quite a reasonable timeframe. And for all the rest of us to be burdened by the fact that you guys are using old software seems kinda unreasonable... and don't forget, if you guys are fine with using old software, what's the problem with using an old version of blender then?
don't you dare to talk to me like that, ...happy xp user... ...old pc's can handle blender... I think you have misread that somehow.
Suggesting me to throw my computer, which i'm totally happy with, to the dumpster and pollute even more this damned world, and buy a new computer for no reason, just to satisfy some random guy from the internet ?
no thanks. and you should check the numbers. xp is holding like 35% of the market. imho, maybe the corporation guys can easily convince you to buy a new computer every two years, to be, you know, the "cocacola generation". but in the end all this globalist shit will backfire if not on us then on our children. /*irony*/
just kidding man, but anyway, have you ever imagined, with your own brains, that the old computers still can be good, performing some useful tasks?
This is a great time to learn a new set of skills. Namely PC building/upgrading and you can also learn a bit of networking skill and begin building a render farm with your old computers. No one is saying you have to throw out your old system. And I didn't see anything about Blender not working on XP, just simply that they won't be supporting it sometime in the near future. Also there is the Linux route which will likely breath a good amount of life into your old machine.
oh i see, you kind of not getting it. then let me put it this way:
linux + old_machine + blender != new_life //xp have the fastest drivers for old hardware, linux is failing at this
render_farm::old_machine = StupidlyUnresonableSlowPieceOfTheRenderFarm
win_xp + old_machine = happiness + (flowers * victory)
i would draw you a diagram, but too lazy for this right now
I’m sure your computer hardware is still fine, it’s just the Windows OS holding it back.
Have you considered switching to Linux, and enjoying a new lease of life on your old hardware?
i can't use the dyntopo because it's glitching on xp. i wanted to report this, but before that decided to try how this goes on linux. thus i used wubi to install ubuntu then the more lite lubuntu, dyntopo was ok but blender was working too slow. i googled this and found people complaining that blender works too slow on linux tough i haven't found any solution to this. seems like the drivers are the thing...
Blender generally runs faster under Linux than Windows. I think it also crashes less, too. And the better multitasking lets you do other stuff while a render or bake is in progress.
Windows 7 and 8 will run just fine on xp systems, Windows 8 is likely to speed it up in my experience.
I appreciate the "we need to move forward" logic, but looking at the OS market shares: 47% Win7, 31% WinXp, 10% Win8/8.1, 8% MacOS X, 1,5% Linux. We would be losing the second largest user base.
In what way is WinXP support holding back development?
Something related to this, and which will certainly impact software development in the future is the maturing of the PC as a product: it is turning more and more into an appliance. The hardware requirements for most users have been reached a few years ago, there is no more "planned obsolescence", as it simply doesn't become obsolete. For most people, there is no reason to upgrade hardware, unless it doesn't work, like a (real) blender: why would I buy a new one, if the old one ain't broke?? Also meaning more and more people will stay on a given OS longer.
How will software development in general treat this? Simply cut off the old users? Force them to upgrade? Microsoft extended XP support years longer than originally planned.
I'd also like to thank all coders for another year of great Blender development and wish everyone happy holidays!
Blender still slows down on scenes where the number of vertices, though relatively high, still seem to run okay on other 3D applications, or so I've heard second-hand. If backwards compatibility is a factor in slowing it down, I would be okay with losing it.
Yes but what % of that is office computers. We all know that people love to browse the internet while at work. We also know that businesses are one of the last to adopt new OS due to security and proprietary software. So it's a fairly safe bet that a large % is office computers, not home computers.
Yes good point, one large part is probably corporate PCs (we switched from XP to Win7 this year).
But, another large XP user base is China and similar countries.
I wonder what other countries are well behind do to choice or limited availibity in their area.
I personally stuck with Win2K until XP was well stabilized and as secure as Microsoft was willing to make it. Win7 was pretty much the same for me.
Governments like the UK have also be slow or aren't bothering to move away from XP yet and have no plan to do so in the near future, most of their computers are still using IE8 or IE7,IE6.
The same is probably true of many governments including the US.
But I feel this is getting a little off topic, I was simply pointing out that we don't know the % of 3D or more specifically current and future Blender users that are still running XP.
User base ≠ market share.
The reason they’re still running Windows XP is because they’re not interested in actually buying any new products.
Depends who you ask. Some folks stick with Windows XP because buying a new decent PC is still out of the question for them. That's a case more common than one might would think. Particularly, in some countries outside North America and Northern Europe.
Of course, if your old PC works well, you are not interested in buying a new one. One program should not force you to.
"I don't particularly want the expense to having to buy a new computer and operating system if I don't have to".
You *do* have to - if you expect to keep using cutting edge software.
cutting edge software != free software like blender mainly being now seriously developed by like six guys
cutting edge software = proprietary software like 3dmax and maya //you pay them a lot of money so the can hire an army of developers that will sharpen it enough to cut some serious edges like hollywood vfx and next gen games
Blender moves faster than 3DSMax and Maya put together.
You have no idea what you're talking about, do you?
Folks, I am a professional Windows system administrator and I will tell you that you will not want to stay running Windows XP after Microsoft drops support. Within a few months of that, if you connect to the internet at all, your computer WILL become infected with malware and probably be hacked too!
The only way around this will be to completely isolate your computer from the internet. Firewalls and antivirus software will NOT protect you as more and more unpatched OS vulnerabilities accumulate!
Please help the internet out and upgrade your OS. You don't have to buy a new computer. If your computer runs XP, it will most likely run Windows 7 without problems, and very probably Windows 8 as well. Or if you don't want to spend the money, make the jump to Linux and have an ever better experience running Blender!
Here are some useful links to help you check if your computer can run Windows 7, 8, or 8.1:
Windows 7 upgrade advisor: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20
Windows 8 and 8.1 upgrade assistant FAQ: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/upgrade-assistant-download-online-faq
Before I start this I am not a blender developer. I do, however, build blender on Windows from source.
VS2012/2013 do support XP targeting, so you can compile applications to run on XP, however there are issues.
In order to compile blender you first need to compile all of it's dependents (last time I built it there was 31 of these). These are all tied to the compiler version (so you can't use libs built for vs2008 in vs2012). This means you need a second entire set that need to be maintained and compiled. Using libs built for XP disables some of the C++ runtime improvements Microsoft have made (since these tie into the OS) so there's a performance hit if you do this, so it's recommended to have two separate builds.
The reasons for moving to vs2012/13 are pretty simple: Better C++ support (so less patching required to get it to build) and the test vs2012 builds give around a 10-15% performance improvement (the 30% quicker render times under Linux almost disappear with this and the memory optimisation changes they made earlier in the year).
Given that support for XP ends in April it's unlikely that the next version of VS will support it. While you can still use the older versions, some of the libraries used in blender already require newer features than 2008 supports, and with the recent increase in development of C++ it wouldn't surprise me if this only gets worse in the next year or two. In other words, not moving isn't going to be an option, as this would require every library that blender depends on staying with the older versions as well.
There's nothing to stop others from compiling blender with older versions, or with alternative compilers, but it makes sense for the official builds to be built with VS2012/13 to ease development and give the best performance.
It would be interesting to see the number of users that would be effected by this change. The OS usage figures often quoted probably aren't representative of blender users as they include a lot of businesses (it will be interesting to see how this changes in the next few months). For example the steam hardware survey puts XP less than 8%.
Just for reference, if you're running a Linux or Mac OS X system the official builds only work on machines installed since 2009, while the Windows builds go as far back as 2001 (when XP was released).
the email thread about winXP, please read http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/2013-December/042371.html
Windows XP will be 13 years old when this switch happens folks, it'll be in line with the same time that even Microsoft is going to cease all support for the aging OS, and when the switch happens, Windows 7 (in my opinion, a great upgrade option from Windows XP) will be 6 years old, and short of that there is Ubuntu too. Many companies & projects have already dropped support for Windows XP.
Vista was released in 2006 remember? When the switch happens, that will be 8 years old. Any computer capable of running Vista should run 7 no problem too, since in my opinion, Windows 7 actually is faster than Vista.
And you're saying you're using an OS that is 13 years old & 3 major upgrades behind the latest, and 8+ year old computer hardware so old it should of already died of natural causes, yet you want the current up to the minute version of software and expect free open source software to support your OS/hardware configuration that's out of date by roughly a decade? Be reasonable!
XP was great! .. in 2004. Not in 2014. Let it go folks. It's time to upgrade. Any computer hardware 8 years old could be replaced with something significantly faster today for a cheap price. And Windows 7 is a nice upgrade option from XP, and with some minor tweaking isn't even that different from XP, and probably the best option until Windows 9 comes out to fix Windows 8. Upgrade folks, at least once a decade! Preferably every 3 years. No more than once every 1.5 years.
Not sure if I could agree with the "every 3 years." By that logic, I should be using Windows 8 by now, and you'll have to pry Windows 7 out of my cold dead hands before I use Windows 8.
A good fourth of my software will immediately suffer from compatibility issues brought on by some of the rather senseless direction of changes made with Windows 8.
If a "Windows 9" proves to continue the "change for mere change sake, not improvement" trend that Windows 8 has exhibited, I'll be holding on to Windows 7 for about 13 years myself.
Though, I think the biggest issue about the Windows XP thing, though, isn't about the people who don't want to let go of Windows XP, but rather, those many people in the world still relying on an old machine.
I think many in the Western world tend to forget just how easy it is for us to suggest "just upgrade or buy a new computer." You're talking about a general society who buys a new smartphone about every 1.5 years.
To some people in many other countries, that sort of rate is very hard to come by. Some folks still rely on 32-bit Windows XP machines.
It's definitely a sticky issue overall, though. On one hand, you want to reduce the workload for Blender developers. On the other hand, you don't want to exclude accessibility to those still relying on older machines.
But I think some XP owners can take a bit more relief in that now, reasonably-affordable PC solutions are plenty, such as this (http://goo.gl/Jh4AKi).
And the free Ubuntu's a lot more user-friendly these days, which, while would be awkward to some longtime Windows users for a while, they'll at least be able to use the latest Blender releases.
Well as I said, I'm waiting for Windows 9 to come out and fix Windows 8, I hate Windows 8 it's horrible. I'm operating on the hope that they'll follow their standard model of releasing a crap version of Windows followed by a better version that fixes the first one. But I suppose that's no guarantee. For now, and for the foreseeable future, sticking with Windows 7 seems to be the best idea.
And I know not everyone in the world can afford a new computer every year and a half or even every 3 years, but I think it's reasonable to expect a hardware update every decade. Most computer hardware will fail and stop working before it reaches 10 years old, in my experience anyway. After a decade, computer hardware would be so out of date and so slow in comparison to the software expected to run on it, it would be almost useless, if it's even still functional.
Even so, there are versions of Linux which would run on a computer capable of running Windows XP that could serve as a nice replacement.
I agree. I'm reeeally hoping Microsoft wises up with any Windows 9. Or even just release a Windows 8.5 with all the speed improvements in Windows 8 but without the stupid changes like the tablet features for a desktop OS, bringing back the Start Menu button, and eliminating issues of incompatibility with some of my production software.
So not gonna happen.
Windows 8 is just fine, and Window 9 will make no substantial changes to the UI, other than further integrating it with Windows Phone and Xbone interface. An windows 8 in my experience runs faster on older or less powerful hardware.
As a winxp user in the same time i can understand the decision, as indeed microsoft made it so that msvc 2012/2013 compilled executables can't work on XP, they deliver faster Blender builds and none of the Blender developers are using XP themselves, and with microsoft ending their support it makes sense the devs give up on supporting it too as they supported it for a long time and i thank them a lot for that.
So it means that i'll stay with 2.69 as even if the 1st 2.70 release is still XP compatible, with all the new breaking stuff it will very likely break several addons i use daily that own devs are unfortunately not with us anymore.
With that said, please dear Blender devs, consider a 2.69a release, i mean one we can stay with for a long time like 2.49b was during the unstable 2.5x development, the thing is that in the stable 2.69 there are important modelling tools like the knife or the bevel that are buggy, and that have been fixed only a week or two after the official 2.69 release.
A Blender 2.69a with all those important bugfixes (i mean only the bug fixes none of the 2.7 features or UI rework or whatever else of course) would make for a much better 2.69, so please consider it before ditching XP completely in 2.70.
testing.. looks like a comment got eaten.
"An Immodest Proposal" :)
How about a free and open source Blender Hardware Console (BHC), priced at a very reasonable $50.00 at point of purchase and supported through donations. Something that is optimized to run Blender with all the current bells and whistles, healthy room for expansion, and a transparent upgrade plan as required.
Though it will never happen, if it did I would certainly get on board with such an initiative. I'd be the guy with the red hair in the middle of the crowd shouting "Shut up and take my money!" :)
Would a Raspberry Pi fit work?
Am not bring funny but a Raspberry Pi would not even be powerful enough to render the UI let alone Cycles. Also Raspberry Pi is quite expensive I think
it can be as expensive as £100 for a Raspberry Kit, av also seen then even more expensive.
Then again, at a $50 price tag, expectations would have to be humble as well :)
I really like that idea, but it would cost quite a lot of money to create a console that would be powerful enough to run blender at similar performance's than what you get with normal pc hardware.
Something along the lines of the Ouya console would be cool but with more processor grunt, also if the console was specifically built for use with blender, you would be able to extract more power out of lower end hardware like what sony has done with the PS4 but on the software side of things instead, like for instance with windows and other OS, they do other things in the background that takes u a lot of memory and other resources, but if it was all designed around blender like the ouya was then I think it would work a lot better and more efficient on comparable hardware.
but like you said this would cost quite a lot and probably not see the light of day unfortunately.
Hey DEVELOPERS what do you think about this proposal? I think it is better to put letters vertically....what do you think people?????