They only managed to pry Windows 7 from my grip a few months ago and I'll be riding Windows 10 LTSC all the way to 2032...and probably longer if my previous rig is anything to go by.
Windows 7 was a beautifully matured product. All they needed to do was keep it stable and patch security vulnerabilities and it would be fine for another twenty years. Everything past that operating system has been a degradation in quality and control of the system.
They already have their enterprise licensing shit for that. They make ungodly amounts of money licensing their OS and office software to businesses. They didn't need to burn their good products to the ground, they just needed to continue charging businesses for products that worked like they'd been doing for years already.
I thoroughly reject the premise that they needed to change the OS in order to sell it again because they were already on the subscription model for perpetual revenue.
Linux is just a different set of headaches and ones you don't have decades of familiarity with circumventing. It's a case of the devil you know, but goddamn do I hate what it means for the future of PC gaming, or just PCs in general.
I still feel like I should give it a try and just have two computers: productivity and gaming. That way I spend less time on a Microsoft product.
If you want to start using Linux, and you're not trying to use it for gaming, I'd run it in a VM. You can even then boot your computer off the same Linux image that you run in the VM, if you set the thing up right.
I run Linux all the time, but I've never had the inclination to try and game on it. I do keep separate PCs for gaming just because gaming and all the twiddling you have to do tend to interrupt actual work. Make you reboot, and shit.
I think there's a threshold at which it simply stops being viable. It's the "no man is an island" principle. You can't prosper by cutting yourself off from the whole of humanity and you can't realistically cut yourself out of these digital ecosystems either. Mitigate where you can, but ultimately these systems matter and it's important that they be shoved in the right direction because otherwise we will suffer the consequences. You can't really opt out.
I had to switch to Win10 in 2023, when my 10 year old laptop finally started to show signs, it was on the last of its legs. I hope this laptop will last as long.
I would have put Win7 on this one as well, if it had been at all possible, lol.
The main issue is that I'm just not tech savvy enough to deal with all the issues that would come with even attempting it.
You have to find compatible drivers for everything and if they don't exist you have to find a component that has compatible drivers. I'm limited by a laptop, narrowing down my choices even more. Not sure where you can even get a laptop configured this specifically. I'm not confident I could built my own. (I assume it would be trickier than building your own PC, and honestly I'm not even sure I could pull that off.)
The compatibility issue starts with the motherboard. Not every motherboard works and even with the ones that do, you have to configure something in the BIOS to make it possible to boot Win7.
Even if I manage all that and get Win7 installed, there's no telling what will happen if I encounter some issues between a program I'm running and the hardware drivers. I sure couldn't fix it on my own and with a such specific configurations, I'm not confident I could even find help on the internet.
All of this sounds unfamiliar to me, or like it's an issue specific to laptops. I don't think I've ever heard of drivers being an issue for Windows 7. I think what you're more likely running into is that fresh builds, be they laptop or desktop, need to simply have motherboard drivers installed. Usually you just need to find out the motherboard model or in your case the laptop model and then go to the manufacturer's website and download the drivers. It's just a bunch of .exe installers you gotta run before stuff like your network interface card will work properly.
I think you're getting into your own head with this one. The real hurdle I ran into with running 7 for so long was that Chrome stopped supporting 7 and you started running into some weirdness there.
They only managed to pry Windows 7 from my grip a few months ago and I'll be riding Windows 10 LTSC all the way to 2032...and probably longer if my previous rig is anything to go by.
Windows 7 was a beautifully matured product. All they needed to do was keep it stable and patch security vulnerabilities and it would be fine for another twenty years. Everything past that operating system has been a degradation in quality and control of the system.
You can't make money making a great long-lasting product. Gotta push shit shovelware 24/7.
They already have their enterprise licensing shit for that. They make ungodly amounts of money licensing their OS and office software to businesses. They didn't need to burn their good products to the ground, they just needed to continue charging businesses for products that worked like they'd been doing for years already.
I thoroughly reject the premise that they needed to change the OS in order to sell it again because they were already on the subscription model for perpetual revenue.
Welcome to the rent-seeking economy.
I kinda just want to give up on Windows and switch to Linux, but I need Windows for games.
Linux is just a different set of headaches and ones you don't have decades of familiarity with circumventing. It's a case of the devil you know, but goddamn do I hate what it means for the future of PC gaming, or just PCs in general.
I still feel like I should give it a try and just have two computers: productivity and gaming. That way I spend less time on a Microsoft product.
It sucks, but doing it right is the only way to go forward. De-google, De-Microsoft, De-Amazon, De-Mastercard. We just have to.
If you want to start using Linux, and you're not trying to use it for gaming, I'd run it in a VM. You can even then boot your computer off the same Linux image that you run in the VM, if you set the thing up right.
I run Linux all the time, but I've never had the inclination to try and game on it. I do keep separate PCs for gaming just because gaming and all the twiddling you have to do tend to interrupt actual work. Make you reboot, and shit.
I think there's a threshold at which it simply stops being viable. It's the "no man is an island" principle. You can't prosper by cutting yourself off from the whole of humanity and you can't realistically cut yourself out of these digital ecosystems either. Mitigate where you can, but ultimately these systems matter and it's important that they be shoved in the right direction because otherwise we will suffer the consequences. You can't really opt out.
I had to switch to Win10 in 2023, when my 10 year old laptop finally started to show signs, it was on the last of its legs. I hope this laptop will last as long.
I would have put Win7 on this one as well, if it had been at all possible, lol.
What stopped you?
The main issue is that I'm just not tech savvy enough to deal with all the issues that would come with even attempting it.
You have to find compatible drivers for everything and if they don't exist you have to find a component that has compatible drivers. I'm limited by a laptop, narrowing down my choices even more. Not sure where you can even get a laptop configured this specifically. I'm not confident I could built my own. (I assume it would be trickier than building your own PC, and honestly I'm not even sure I could pull that off.)
The compatibility issue starts with the motherboard. Not every motherboard works and even with the ones that do, you have to configure something in the BIOS to make it possible to boot Win7.
Even if I manage all that and get Win7 installed, there's no telling what will happen if I encounter some issues between a program I'm running and the hardware drivers. I sure couldn't fix it on my own and with a such specific configurations, I'm not confident I could even find help on the internet.
All of this sounds unfamiliar to me, or like it's an issue specific to laptops. I don't think I've ever heard of drivers being an issue for Windows 7. I think what you're more likely running into is that fresh builds, be they laptop or desktop, need to simply have motherboard drivers installed. Usually you just need to find out the motherboard model or in your case the laptop model and then go to the manufacturer's website and download the drivers. It's just a bunch of .exe installers you gotta run before stuff like your network interface card will work properly.
I think you're getting into your own head with this one. The real hurdle I ran into with running 7 for so long was that Chrome stopped supporting 7 and you started running into some weirdness there.