Why Windows XP is still relevant

After watching Valve’s video on porting games to openGL:
Strangely to me, their main reason for them to concentrate on openGL (rather then DirectX) is not so much the mobile platform but the desktop landscape.

I find Valve very forward thinking.
They can see other platforms emerging and converging (Android is a real threat to PC desktop).
To remain relevant, Valve is focusing on anything PC, this includes helping develop the Oculus Rift - Virtual Reality Headset, expanding their Steam ecosystem services (very much like to google play store) and supporting Linux and even Windows XP.

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DirectX is windows dependent.

Their research shows that the Chinese have modern hardware but are still running Windows XP- “Windows XP is extremely prevalent in China“.
Newer versions of DirectX drivers requires newer versions of Windows, ie Windows XP only supports DirectX 9 (no DX10/11).
OpenGL only requires newer hardware to support the newer features and it’s not tied to the OS like DirectX.

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Why is Windows XP still relevant to me

I personally use Mint Linux on both laptop and desktop.
But I still need access to Windows for Visual Studio and Shade 3D (3D modeling tool)

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Windows XP has great performance on new hardware

It’s memory usage is under 128MB (100MB on boot up).

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Windows XP is great for Visualization

I could use wine for windows programs but it’s ‘hit and miss’ with some programs.
Windows XP Pro SP3 has an installed size of only 2GB!
So, I prefer having a small Windows XP virtual machine (8GB/2GB RAM), using virtual box.

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Windows XP has limited support

Finding current drivers for windows XP for new motherboard, video card, etc can be difficult.
Most laptop/desktop manufactures don’t expect their users to be downgrading.

Also building software with windows XP support is now becoming a ‘Black Art’ using Microsoft’s Visual Studio.
The newer versions require a plug in and with a different compiler target!

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Developing on Windows XP

Windows XP only supports Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2010, anything newer wont install.
That’s why I’m looking at using Code::Blocks IDE with MinGW compiler and CMake.

Code::Blocks
Code::Blocks, is very impressive because it can open all visual studio projects files and compile/debug just like in visual studio.
No need to worry about make files etc.

MinGW
MinGW, is a windows 32/64Bit port of the GCC compiler and tool chain, including make, linker, gdb, etc.

CMake
CMake, is a multiple target setup file. It can create a Visual Studio projects or a make file depending on your platform.

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