Doesnt the delicate subject of 9/11 have an impact on the loss of privacy and excessive security? I mean, since 9/11 for example, phone companies are obliged to store data from the phones rather than discard them; I find it quite abusive. I can see Windows 10 doing the same...

Over the past several months I have upgraded 2 laptops and several desktop computers from windows 7 to windows 10. Actually they were all clean installs of win 10 downloaded from microsoft. All I needed was the key for win 7 for each computer and they all activated to my microsoft account right away. I am surprised to be fairly impressed with windows 10. I still use linux for financial stuff but find myself really happy with windows. Have tried all the latest updates with no problem on any of the computers. I'm not a microsoft cheerleader by any means but this has been my experience.

Kerr Avon wrote:

If, like me, you've stuck with Windows 7 (either because it does what you need, and you're loathe to change, or any other reason), then what are your plans when this year ends and Microsoft stop supporting Windows 7?

It is a long tread, so I have not read it through. I will just report what I did personally. (not telling anyone what to do)

Back in around some 2016, I read that Win7 were to be discontinued in 2020, and I was given a used yet faster laptop than what I used as my daily driver. So I began researching various Linux distributions. I did however have tons of Linux experiences at that time, as I had tried various Linux distributions over the years, going back as far as 1995. So I knew about some aspect's of Linux. I have even had a tiny bit of real Unix experience, as I had taken courses in Unix, on old school consoles, back in 1995. Basically, I knew what the beast was about. Just not those specific thing. Oh well... Google is your friend as they say.

So I installed Xubuntu on that laptop. Namely 16.04 LTS distribution, and off to the deep end of the pool I went. To me it was quite easy, as not only did I have those years and years of Windows experience (95 to and including 8.1) at that time. Yet I also had experience in MS-Dos (3.3 to 6.22), tiny bit of DR-Dos and tiny bit of IBM-Dos, AmigaOS, Commodore64, BeOS and other platforms. So yeah... It was easy for me to get a hang on things on Linux. Now I am on my second laptop after that Thinkpad that I was given in 2016. The one I am using now is an Thinkpad X220 with 8gb of Ram, and I am using Ubuntu Mate as my daily driver. For my needs, it can do so much more than I need personally. I do web surfing, E-Mail and all sort of stuff with it. And it is quite fluid. I am not making any videoes at all, and I am not doing any heavy tasks such as rendering and stuff. So it suits me quite well.

What about gaming? (Everyone wants to game at some point) For me it is a no brainer. I have a Playstation3 and that is all I need for gaming. Unless it is gaming on computers, and that is what I have my vintage stuff for. Like 286/486/Pentium4, Amiga and Commodore64. To say it short, my gaming need's are well covered. Heck... I even have a Ps2 and a RaspberryPI if I my vintage collection of PC/Amiga/C64 is not enough for me.

If I had to give any advice on Linux, for those that want to go the route that I have taken. Then start by getting a laptop that can be used for a well known and well used Linux distribution. Install it and just jump into the pool. If you go for something like Ubuntu, Xubuntu or Ubuntu Mate, then google "Things to do after ??? installation". Were ??? is replaced by your choice of distro. Then slowly start using it more and more. And if you really need a PC to game on, then keep gaming to Windows10 only. Like, personal information will be handeled by the Linux machine, and the Windows10 machine is for gaming only. That way you avoid getting Microsoft to spy on your stuff, and you avoid the system updating during some important work.

Corporate use? Well... That is for your boss to decide. Keep in mind, that this is how I am going to use my stuff from now on. What everyone else does, is their thing and choice.

As for how I see Windows10... Well... I get annoied by it personally. I find the GUI to be incoherant and rather a big pile of mess. Things are not structured in an ordered way, and why two versions of settings or control panel if you like? There are a giant lack of borders around objects, so I am really having a hard time adjusting to Windows10. Files, personal settings and personal information are not clearly in my face, and I find my self using more time finding stuff when I need to use it, than actually using the system. I must say, that I have never seen any other operating system at all, that have given me so many problems like that. Even WinME and Vista are a better choice in my book.

A virtual machine, or BootCamp are your only options. Or create another partition and install a previous version of MacOS, one that does work for your needs. With BootCamp, you can boot to a full Windows environment, where practically nothing MacOS related is running. You can use this with(if I'm not mistaken) Windows XP, if you wanted to go that old. So Windows 7 would not be a problem. Even if support ends for Windows 7, it will still run. And with either Parallels or VMWare, you do not even have to boot to those operating system's to run their programs. You may even be able to run a previous version MacOS this way(not sure about this). I know you can run Linux this way. I would imagine someone with enough technical expertise could maybe even get DOS itself running on such a virtual machine(not sure if this would be worth the effort).

EDIT: This was aimed more or less directly at the conversation of running Mac OS Catalina, which btw, will not work with DOSBox, because it is not 64-bit. Don't know if it can be.

Catalina's got bigger issues hindering independent software development than the loss of 32-bit...

sailor0703 wrote:

EDIT: This was aimed more or less directly at the conversation of running Mac OS Catalina, which btw, will not work with DOSBox, because it is not 64-bit. Don't know if it can be.

Excuse me, but... what are you talking about? I have macOS Catalina and I can run DOSBox on it. I've compiled it for personal use and it does run. Even DOSBox-X runs.

sailor0703 wrote:

A virtual machine, or BootCamp are your only options. Or create another partition and install a previous version of MacOS, one that does work for your needs. With BootCamp, you can boot to a full Windows environment, where practically nothing MacOS related is running. You can use this with(if I'm not mistaken) Windows XP, if you wanted to go that old. So Windows 7 would not be a problem. Even if support ends for Windows 7, it will still run. And with either Parallels or VMWare, you do not even have to boot to those operating system's to run their programs. You may even be able to run a previous version MacOS this way(not sure about this). I know you can run Linux this way. I would imagine someone with enough technical expertise could maybe even get DOS itself running on such a virtual machine(not sure if this would be worth the effort).

EDIT: This was aimed more or less directly at the conversation of running Mac OS Catalina, which btw, will not work with DOSBox, because it is not 64-bit. Don't know if it can be.

https://sourceforge.net/p/dosbox/news/

DOSBox 0.74-2 has been released DOSBox emulates a full x86 pc with sound and DOS. Its main use is to run old DOS games on platfo […]
Show full quote

DOSBox 0.74-2 has been released
DOSBox emulates a full x86 pc with sound and DOS. Its main use is to run old DOS games on platforms which don't have DOS (Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 / Linux / FreeBSD / Mac OS X)

This is a maintenance release for DOSBox 0.74, which solves the following problems:

Windows: Fix auto/max cycles algorithm on Windows 7, which helps with stuttering audio.
Mac OS X: Bring a 64 bit version and improve performance
2018-08-30

Also the thread topic is "What to do when Windows 7 support ends in a few weeks time?"

https://www.zdnet.com/article/bypass-discover … on-all-systems/
Bypass discovered to allow Windows 7 Extended Security Updates on all systems

nature always finds a way

HAIL WINDOWS 7!

I'll keep running Windows 7 as long as the software I use supports Windows 7. As for Microsoft's support, I don't care one way or another. I've already been running EMET for a few years, and don't rush to get the latest flavor of the month patches from MS, and didn't have a problem with malware or viruses. That, in combination with using my brain before I download something from some shady website, has kept me free from viruses for over 15 years. But I would switch to Linux before installing Windows 10 as my main OS. The whole "we will update and install stuff on your PC whether you like it or not" really aggravates me.

pixel_workbench wrote:

The whole "we will update and install stuff on your PC whether you like it or not" really aggravates me.

+1 this is the main reason I dislike Windows 10

bfcastello wrote:

pixel_workbench wrote:

The whole "we will update and install stuff on your PC whether you like it or not" really aggravates me.

+1 this is the main reason I dislike Windows 10

There's also the fact that the OS keeps.. changing, which I feel is not fair to the customer. You buy something and in a couple of years it becomes something drastically different from what you paid for. I mean, I realize this upgrade model is nothing new, but at least in other OSes they have version numbers and you can actually stick with an older version, but with Windows 10 Builds it's not as clear cut and support for older Builds dies out really fast. Regardless of whether you liked what Windows 10 was when it first came out, if you bought it for what it said it was, it's not the same thing today in many ways.

appiah4 wrote:

I mean, I realize this upgrade model is nothing new, but at least in other OSes they have version numbers and you can actually stick with an older version

Yeah, look at OS X for example. Apple has been selling the same OS (with minor tweaks) for the past 20 years and no one has any complaints about it.

sf78 wrote:

Yeah, look at OS X for example. Apple has been selling the same OS (with minor tweaks) for the past 20 years and no one has any complaints about it.

This is a joke?

You must have missed the entire Mojave/NVidia debacle that's been going on. I had to finally walk away like so many content creators have because of this. Not to mention Finder is the biggest joke of a file manager on the face of this planet. Had to purchase Path Finder so I could have an actual usable file management front-end. I could go on and on.

Finder is such a piece of shit to use... I don't know how anyone uses that thing. It's so clunky.

I don't know what you guys are talking about...

Finder is perfect as it is for me... It has always been perfect for me since I started using macOS/OS X (2010). Windows Vista/7/8/10 Start Menu is the real piece of shit here, not Finder. Apple's operating systems (macOS/OSX, iOS) has been the best OSes I have ever used in my entire life: as an UI/UX designer, I can tell that the user experience in them is the best ever, the easiest and quickest. I have zero complaints. If you have to use third party apps to change Finder's behaviour, then you shouldn't be using a Mac in first place. Go for a Linux distro then.

My mom wanted to give her father an android tablet, and I spent almost 2-3 hours with her trying to set this shit up for him. The Android user experience is terrible, clunky, useless. Since her father is very old, I had to download an app just to boost the volume for him. iOS has this built-in. We even struggled to find a certain app version for this tablet, that we have in our iOS phones, and when we found it we were graciously presented with the message "this app does not work for this OS version". Brilliant... i won't go further into Windows OS user experience because I do like the older Windows versions, but since Vista its experience has been utter garbage for me and I have already discussed before about how much I hate the automatic updates.

Meanwhile, secretly, me and my dad were setting up a new iPad for my mother, as a surprise christmas gift. We didn't needed more than a few minutes to set it up, install some apps and fill it with some family photos as a surprise for her. It was quick, smooth, and easy to prepare for her. She has an old iPad completely battered with some cracks here and there, so I bought her a cover to protect the new one.

As for Mojave/NVidia, I have never heard about this "debacle". You all know that Apple switched to AMD GPUs because a couple of years ago, NVIDIA sold chips that had a critical flaw, that would led to a high failure rate in their MacBook Pros. Since then Apple and NVIDIA have a terrible business relationship, hence why they switched to AMD. It's not Apple's fault, it's NVIDIA's fault. If you want to complain about that go to NVIDIA.

Windows 7 is the real evil thing here, not macOS.

Closed.

Everything has been said and don't see this going anywhere good.

Use what you want, be safe and good luck.

https://www.onmsft.com/news/microsoft-says-it … s-for-windows-7