I know some users held back on the upgrade while Windows 10 still had support, but there's many improvements to privacy & consent in Windows 7 that are worth considering, now that both are about to be equally out of their support window.
It's one of the last versions where the modal dialogs ask "Yes" or "No", instead of "Yes" and "Not now", "Maybe later", or "Ask again tomorrow".
I ran Linux for many years. But I needed to run some software that only supported windows and mac, and wine didn't cut it, so I had to reinstall windows.
I can't tolerate windows. I put up with 10 for a while then went back to 7. 7 was good. Then some stuff wasn't supported so I moved to 11. Couldn't do it. I'd get random garbage like a notification for some "grand prize giveaway". I legit thought I'd gotten adware installed somehow. Nope, official Microsoft notification! Want to configure the system at all? Keep defender from trashing your CPU for fifteen minutes after you compile something? Stop auto-restarts that close everything? Use actual sleep not the weird "connected sleep" nonsense? Tough, you don't get to. If you do it anyway it will revert after your next update (mandatory btw!) or sometimes just at random.
I can't remember a version since 7 that doesn't make me feel like I'm in a bazaar being accosted by freaking rug merchants.
I used to hate macs. I switched to a macbook. I am much happier now despite the occasional annoyances.
I don't want to motivate anyone to switch back to Windows (because Microsoft), but for anyone who doesn't want to or can't switch, but also doesn't want to endure Microsoft's chosen way of entirely ignoring user needs but instead focusing on squeezing money out of them through ads and the collection of user data in Windows 10 and 11, check out the Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC version! It's still supported 'til 2031 iirc. Plus, as it's meant to Enterprises and IoT systems, it's stripped from all the ads, bloatware, and what not. When I installed it first one year ago, I was just sad that I didn't know it earlier. It's everything I ever wanted Windows to be: lean, fast, and (somewhat) minimalistic, at least compared to stock Windows 10.
Can't 100% say whether Windows 11 IoT LTSC is equally good, but from what I've read it also is worth considering.
my favprite notfavorite win11 feature is that they broke keyboard layout switching, permanently. It has been reported as an unsolved bug for nearly two years now :-/. in 25+ years, I had been taking it for granted to work correctly. Apparently nobody in Redmond uses the feature..
I am european, and (try to) use it minutes apart.
As an extra bonus, MS Teams regularly either ignores keyboard switch, or switches 50% broken, half the keys. But what can you expect, from an app which is a selfupdating web server that installs itself with squirrel :-/
I switched my spare PC from Linux back to Win10, and it's way less annoying than I remember (rug bazaar was right). Maybe because it's not getting constant updates anymore.
Only issue is that Windows will periodically re-bloat itself - so you have to re-run it after more or less every quarterly windows update.
The only thing remaining that I want to remove but cannot get rid of is edge. Removing edge is only available in the EU for $ome in$ane rea$on. You might be able to get an EU ISO for installation? Unclear to me but I haven’t dug too deeply.
The forced reinstalls for updates is the worst. Sometimes when working on some Excel file etc at night, I went away without saving (e.g. crying kid needs attention, and I never returned). Auto-saving only works when you store files in OneDrive. So then windows Update will shut down Excel, and Excel often won't create an AutoSave, and then hours of work are lost -- totally intentionally, deliberately, all using Microsoft products that are apparently specifically designed to make you lose hours of work.
Just a data point on the "modern suspend" feature. I have a Win11/Fedora dual boot laptop. Fedora doesn't do modern suspend, at least on that machine. Found that deep, deep down in the "BIOS" (yes, I know, UEFI) menus - so deep that you have to do a secret keyboard dance to even get that menu - is a "enable S3 sleep" option. Figured OK, I'll just get good suspend in Linux and whatever in Windows.
Surprise! Windows 11 likes S3 suspend just fine. Push the button, instant screen off and winking power light... push it again, instant wakeup. So if by some miracle your hardware/UEFI still supports it, you're good. This is a 5-year-old-ish Acer Swift 3 for what it's worth.
Oh, wait, you mean Windows update toggles that setting back? Whoa.
> I'd get random garbage like a notification for some "grand prize giveaway"
???
how? what kind of malware did you install? have several W11 boxes, none exhibit this behavior. No "official" notification for a prize give away or any ads.
>It's one of the last versions where the modal dialogs ask "Yes" or "No", instead of "Yes" and "Not now", "Maybe later", or "Ask again tomorrow".
This difference captures so much...
I recently setup a minecraft server on an old windows machine and had a hard time setting it to never restart automatically. After reading some support forums I found the menu to control when it restarts but still didnt see an option to completely stop it.
Eventually I found a way that I can't even recall at this point.
So much easier to run mc servers on Linux boxes. You just grab the jvm that version wants and throw everything into a folder and use the jvms java executable on the server.jar.
Completely disabling Windows Update is very difficult, much more involved than simply disabling a service or two or a registry key.
There's multiple services dedicated to monitoring / "repairing" windows update, scheduled tasks to enable those, and further tasks to repair everything completely if anything is modified.
And if all of that is disabled... there's a single exe which "helpfully" re-enables and re-creates all of the necessary scheduled tasks and services, which gets called by the service manager automatically: "upfc.exe"
Renaming / getting rid of this stops WaasMedic & other services from respawning.
Makes me think of notices around adult clubs I've seen such as:
"CONSENT: A clear and unambiguous agreement, expressed outwardly through mutually understandable words or actions, to engage in a particular activity. Consent can be withdrawn by either party at any point."
and
"No means No"
What I'm about to say is strongly worded and I understand not a _perfect_ analogy by any means. However, it does sum up my feelings on this issue.
If Person A makes repeated unwanted advances towards Person B, we have words to describe that. But if Person A, a company, makes repeated unwanted advances towards Person B we call that business.
I wish Microsoft would have never changed the business model of Windows away from paid upgrades.
Now they have no incentive to make good upgrades. Instead, they are only incentivized to add privacy-compromising services that nobody wants or asked for.
Nice window you have there, would be a shame if somebody threw a upgrade into it.. should pay insurrance and protection money, so we could save things from "pimprovements"
If "support" doesn't allow opting out of their actively user-hostile decision making, I seriously question the value of "support" at all. In many ways I'd rather my computer go to some Russian botnet than trust an American corporation with my data—at least the former has a chance of getting shut down.
While both OSes are no longer supported, important software like Chrome still run on Windows 10 and will continue to do so for a while. Staying on Windows 7 means losing security updates, and very soon, not being able to load websites that use the latest web features.
Stop selling Windows 7 so much.. As a 40-year veteran of tech, "latest web features" are usually a red flag for me more than anything.. More spying, more PII selling, more addiction attempts, etc..
Windows 7 is still dramatically less secure by design (i.e. not missing patches but architectural changes) compared to Windows 10, even Windows 8 had some meaningful kernel security features that 7 lacks. This includes sandboxing measures that Chrome & Firefox use, meaning you're still less secure even if you're not downloading shady software.
You're frankly better off applying a bunch of registry changes to 10, using a Education or N (EU) edition "illegally", or blocking DNS than going back to 7 just for privacy concerns. You're cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Meh... technically, you're probably right. In practice, it probably won't make a damn bit of difference. It's just like how everybody was scared to run without anti-virus years ago. More people got their computers fucked up by AV than by actual viruses. Still to this day Defender is there fucking up your computer and really not doing a great job protecting you from anything. Ransomware is still running amok despite everything being "up to date" and running AV, and 30 different corporate security defense suites.
Oh my god i HATE the lack of a “no” option! I’ve been meaning to go find a guide for editing registry to disable the windows 11 upgrade requests, but now I worry that might not exist?
I recently bought a laptop and that came with Windows 11.
After hours of trying to work around the OOB "experience" that really really wants to you to sign up for a Microsoft account I finally managed to circumvent it.
After using it for a while I actually like it. It's smooth and no major glitches.
Then I didn't use my laptop for a while, logged in and was greeted with
"Let's finish setting up your account". Only options are "Remind me again x days later" and "Ok"
This is so obnoxious behavior it really makes me want to just roll over the whole machine with Linux.
I wish the clowns from the marketing department hadn't taken over the Windows product division.
My laptop is already setup thank you very much. I don't need your condesdencing dark pattern UX BS in my face.
I use a few utilities to tame Windows 11 and make it work more like Windows 7, 8, and 10. It should get rid of that "Remind me again" thing, I haven't seen it in a long, long time. No ads, no crap from Microsoft.
I have an old laptop that boots Windows 7 and in my opinion, it's peak Windows (having used everything from 98SE onward, including 2K). It feels modern in a way that older entries don't but doesn't have the annoying and user-hostile elements of newer entries. The visual style is slightly dated feeling but it wouldn't take a whole lot of work to fix that.
I think it was windows 8 or 10 that introduced the new menus which I found somehow both too simplistic and harder to navigate. And then sometimes you get lucky and figure out a way to open the old menus to do what you actually want.
Yeah it still uses the old Control Panel system, which is far from perfect (it's really bad about "dialog tunnels" where some things are buried too many levels deep), but overall is more servicable for technical users.
Another thing that it has over XP is that it's better at providing a minimally usable environment post-install, with a better payload of default drivers. I don't miss booting into 256 color 640x480 and trying to get all the hardware in a functional state without a network connection like was a frequent occurrence with XP and older.
The new menus are really fun in 11, where it starts out new, and then when you want more info pretty much everything changes back (font/kerning/color) to the point of feeling you need to do a doubletake. Its something that if it happened online you'd swear you've been slip-streamed and shouldn't continue. Guess they dont have anyone who can move over the old items to the new look, go figure.
I always try to reach to arrive at the old configuration before I even consider looking at the text, the newer version just wastes my time and the setting is never there or labelled wrong.
Give KDE Plasma a shot! You can even try it in QEMU with virgl for graphics acceleration without risking anything more than an hour or two of time setting it up.
Yeah that's not bad looking at all. What happened to UI styling and the theming engine in 8 was a travesty. It was so ugly and because the theming engine had been gutted, the user couldn't even fix it with third party visual styles.
That's maybe 11's single saving grace: it course corrected and Fluent actually looks pretty good. If only the rest weren't awful.
Respectfully disagree. NT/Win2000 was the peak as it was before they added all the DRM/phone home junk. It ran fast, in fact diablo ran smoother on it than on the win 98 partition I had at the time. Granted some programs failed because they were doing things memory wise they should not been doing...
2K was amazing compared to 98, but 7 has a number of QoL and tech improvments that I'd have a hard time giving up, and it's easier to make 7 better behaved than to bring 2K into the modern era.
I hated how much 7 bloated the base installation size (10x or more) versus late versions of XP, but otherwise, yeah, it's by far the best desktop OS they've made.
(EDIT: Actually maybe it was Vista that introduced the inexplicable massive installation size bloat? My memory is fuzzy there)
The Vista/7 era of visual styles had so many good entries. You could throw a dart at the VSStyles DeviantArt page blindfolded and hit something nice looking. Frankly it still severely outclasses the Linux theming scene.
W8 and W8.1 are atrocious out of the box but you can customize them to make it even better than W7. Swapping the start menu for something good and customizable like Stardock Start8 will completely change the experience and remove 95% of the problem people have with that OS.
I kinda mentioned it in another comment but I don't think I could make 8/8.1 work no matter how good it is unless the awful theme engine could be replaced wholesale with that of 7. It's just so hideous.
I still have Windows7 on my fathers computer and it's more than enough for him (Firefox + FreeCell). We are behind NAT and he doesn't open anything except for a couple of pages + has uBlock.
The whole hype around Win10 loosing support is way overblown…
Worth noting that "behind NAT" is not a security measure. Technologies exist that circumvent NAT to various degrees (and that's usually without malicious intent!). WebRTC is a famously annoying example of this where it's got tons of legitimate applications but has also been responsible for serious security issues, especially in earlier implementations.
The same set of tools exist with different names to punch the same sorts of holes automatically in ipv6 firewalls, so are ipv6 firewalls also not security measures?
I'm fully aware, it was mostly a "shorthand". In general it's harder to attac/access a computer that is not directly exposed to the internet and/or not listening on any port.
Maybe I am using some (use mostly firefox at home on my Linux box, other than when streaming certain sites where the picture is better on chrome) - but I can't think of many "new" FFox features I actually like, going back to like version 68 or something.. Every time they introduce something new, I have to disable it or work around it, or whatever.. Just let me keep my "it works" workflow, FFS.
I've had my dad, with similar usage patterns, using XFCE for close to 15 years now. Very few problems with it, I only have to play tech support maybe once a year. Worth considering..
I do consider migrating to Linux but... "ItJustWorks" and even the tiniest change throws him off (like order on tiles in firefox) so I'm waiting for the current machine to die completely ;)
The third option is to install some Linux like Ubuntu or Linux Mint on it.
It is nowadays actually easier to install Ubuntu Linux than a Windows. Just be sure to back up your data to an external hard drive, and restore it from there after the install.
Ubuntu/Linux Mint are actually the worst, for the simple reason that when I tell it to install to a specific, completely empty drive, it will still insert its bootloader onto a completely different drive for absolutely no reason(except it being earlier in the boot order). Absolutely baffling design choice.
I recently added Windows 7 support to an open source app I run, Kindle Comic Converter.
It was as easy as downgrading a bunch of dependencies (PySide6, numpy) and created a legacy build, and the Windows 7 version got like 2% of downloads (~200). I assume it works since I've gotten no complaints and I don't have a Windows 7 machine to test haha, Windows 7 in UTM crashes a lot for me on macOS ARM.
Man people are still using this. I really only did this since I added macOS 10.14 support (prior minimum was macOS 12) and most of the work needed was already mostly done by that. In theory I could even get macOS 10.10 support, but that would require downgrading Qt6 to Qt5
How many trashed Windows 10 PC's are home desktops or laptops used without a password in the first place? But grandma's PC needs secure boot against Tom Clancy level threat actors, it's for her own good.
I think it's great that Microsoft are still job-creators after all these years. Just think of all the extra cyber-security jobs they creating by making windows 11 adware and AI infested garbage!
Readit News
It's one of the last versions where the modal dialogs ask "Yes" or "No", instead of "Yes" and "Not now", "Maybe later", or "Ask again tomorrow".
I can't tolerate windows. I put up with 10 for a while then went back to 7. 7 was good. Then some stuff wasn't supported so I moved to 11. Couldn't do it. I'd get random garbage like a notification for some "grand prize giveaway". I legit thought I'd gotten adware installed somehow. Nope, official Microsoft notification! Want to configure the system at all? Keep defender from trashing your CPU for fifteen minutes after you compile something? Stop auto-restarts that close everything? Use actual sleep not the weird "connected sleep" nonsense? Tough, you don't get to. If you do it anyway it will revert after your next update (mandatory btw!) or sometimes just at random.
I can't remember a version since 7 that doesn't make me feel like I'm in a bazaar being accosted by freaking rug merchants.
I used to hate macs. I switched to a macbook. I am much happier now despite the occasional annoyances.
Can't 100% say whether Windows 11 IoT LTSC is equally good, but from what I've read it also is worth considering.
I’m convinced it’s a frog in boiling water situation for people still using windows. It’s so bad.
Only issue is that Windows will periodically re-bloat itself - so you have to re-run it after more or less every quarterly windows update.
The only thing remaining that I want to remove but cannot get rid of is edge. Removing edge is only available in the EU for $ome in$ane rea$on. You might be able to get an EU ISO for installation? Unclear to me but I haven’t dug too deeply.
Who designs these antipatterns!?
Surprise! Windows 11 likes S3 suspend just fine. Push the button, instant screen off and winking power light... push it again, instant wakeup. So if by some miracle your hardware/UEFI still supports it, you're good. This is a 5-year-old-ish Acer Swift 3 for what it's worth.
Oh, wait, you mean Windows update toggles that setting back? Whoa.
???
how? what kind of malware did you install? have several W11 boxes, none exhibit this behavior. No "official" notification for a prize give away or any ads.
This difference captures so much...
I recently setup a minecraft server on an old windows machine and had a hard time setting it to never restart automatically. After reading some support forums I found the menu to control when it restarts but still didnt see an option to completely stop it.
Eventually I found a way that I can't even recall at this point.
There's multiple services dedicated to monitoring / "repairing" windows update, scheduled tasks to enable those, and further tasks to repair everything completely if anything is modified.
And if all of that is disabled... there's a single exe which "helpfully" re-enables and re-creates all of the necessary scheduled tasks and services, which gets called by the service manager automatically: "upfc.exe"
Renaming / getting rid of this stops WaasMedic & other services from respawning.
"CONSENT: A clear and unambiguous agreement, expressed outwardly through mutually understandable words or actions, to engage in a particular activity. Consent can be withdrawn by either party at any point."
and
"No means No"
What I'm about to say is strongly worded and I understand not a _perfect_ analogy by any means. However, it does sum up my feelings on this issue.
If Person A makes repeated unwanted advances towards Person B, we have words to describe that. But if Person A, a company, makes repeated unwanted advances towards Person B we call that business.
Now they have no incentive to make good upgrades. Instead, they are only incentivized to add privacy-compromising services that nobody wants or asked for.
I find the idea of people upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 7 sad and hilarious in equal measure.
https://github.com/win32ss/supermium
What new browser feature made in the past decade has improved the user experience?
You're frankly better off applying a bunch of registry changes to 10, using a Education or N (EU) edition "illegally", or blocking DNS than going back to 7 just for privacy concerns. You're cutting off your nose to spite your face.
I recently bought a laptop and that came with Windows 11.
After hours of trying to work around the OOB "experience" that really really wants to you to sign up for a Microsoft account I finally managed to circumvent it.
After using it for a while I actually like it. It's smooth and no major glitches.
Then I didn't use my laptop for a while, logged in and was greeted with
"Let's finish setting up your account". Only options are "Remind me again x days later" and "Ok"
This is so obnoxious behavior it really makes me want to just roll over the whole machine with Linux.
I wish the clowns from the marketing department hadn't taken over the Windows product division. My laptop is already setup thank you very much. I don't need your condesdencing dark pattern UX BS in my face.
https://pxc-coding.com/donotspy11/
https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu/releases
https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher/releases
I think it was windows 8 or 10 that introduced the new menus which I found somehow both too simplistic and harder to navigate. And then sometimes you get lucky and figure out a way to open the old menus to do what you actually want.
I think Windows 7 was my favorite as well.
Another thing that it has over XP is that it's better at providing a minimally usable environment post-install, with a better payload of default drivers. I don't miss booting into 256 color 640x480 and trying to get all the hardware in a functional state without a network connection like was a frequent occurrence with XP and older.
I use macOS now and basically hate it.
(but to be honest I have never used Windows 11 and barely used 10)
https://github.com/knazarov/homebrew-qemu-virgl
That's maybe 11's single saving grace: it course corrected and Fluent actually looks pretty good. If only the rest weren't awful.
NT4 had a lot of issues. Good foundation, but not 'peak'.
(EDIT: Actually maybe it was Vista that introduced the inexplicable massive installation size bloat? My memory is fuzzy there)
Deleted Comment
This was fixed in 2010, about 15 years ago. And it's still the nicest looking UI of any desktop OS to this date:
https://www.deviantart.com/zainadeel/art/Shine-2-0-for-Windo...
It's what "liquid glass" wishes to be.
The whole hype around Win10 loosing support is way overblown…
It is nowadays actually easier to install Ubuntu Linux than a Windows. Just be sure to back up your data to an external hard drive, and restore it from there after the install.
Unfortunately, some of us have to be able to actually get work done in our corporate environments.
Deleted Comment
It was as easy as downgrading a bunch of dependencies (PySide6, numpy) and created a legacy build, and the Windows 7 version got like 2% of downloads (~200). I assume it works since I've gotten no complaints and I don't have a Windows 7 machine to test haha, Windows 7 in UTM crashes a lot for me on macOS ARM.
Man people are still using this. I really only did this since I added macOS 10.14 support (prior minimum was macOS 12) and most of the work needed was already mostly done by that. In theory I could even get macOS 10.10 support, but that would require downgrading Qt6 to Qt5