A Year After Microsoft Ended All Support for Windows 7, Millions of Users Are Still Not Upgrading (zdnet.com) 239
Ed Bott, writing at ZDNet: With a heartfelt nod to Monty Python, Windows 7 would like you all to know that it's not dead yet. A year after Microsoft officially ended support for its long-running OS, a small but determined population of PC users would rather fight than switch. How many? No one knows for sure, but that number has shrunk substantially in the past year. On the eve of Microsoft's Windows 7 end-of-support milestone, I consulted some analytics experts and calculated that the owners of roughly 200 million PCs worldwide would ignore that deadline and continue running their preferred OS. That was, admittedly, a rough estimate. During the holiday lull at the end of 2020, I decided to go back and run the latest version of those analytics reports. They tell a consistent story.
Let's start with the United States Government Digital Analytics Program, which reports a running, unfiltered total of visitors to U.S. websites over the previous 90 days. One of the datasets includes a report of visits from all PCs running any version of Windows, which makes it an ideal proxy for this question. At the end of December 2019, 75.8% of those PCs were running Windows 10, 18.9% were still on Windows 7, and a mere 4.6% were sticking with the unloved Windows 8.x. A year later, as December 2020 draws to a close, the proportion of PCs running Windows 10 has gone up 12%, to 87.8%; the Windows 7 count has dropped by more than 10 points, to 8.5%, and the population of Windows 8.x holdouts has shrunk even further, to a minuscule 3.4%. (The onetime champion of PC operating systems, Windows XP, is now nearly invisible, with its device count adding up to a fraction of a rounding error.)
Let's start with the United States Government Digital Analytics Program, which reports a running, unfiltered total of visitors to U.S. websites over the previous 90 days. One of the datasets includes a report of visits from all PCs running any version of Windows, which makes it an ideal proxy for this question. At the end of December 2019, 75.8% of those PCs were running Windows 10, 18.9% were still on Windows 7, and a mere 4.6% were sticking with the unloved Windows 8.x. A year later, as December 2020 draws to a close, the proportion of PCs running Windows 10 has gone up 12%, to 87.8%; the Windows 7 count has dropped by more than 10 points, to 8.5%, and the population of Windows 8.x holdouts has shrunk even further, to a minuscule 3.4%. (The onetime champion of PC operating systems, Windows XP, is now nearly invisible, with its device count adding up to a fraction of a rounding error.)
Sell us Software, not Services as a Software Subst (Score:5, Insightful)
Let Win10 Pro users deactivate - not merely nerf to "minimal" - telemetry, just like Enterprise.
Let Win10 Pro users choose when to install updates - not merely declaring certain hours as active hours - just like Enterprise.
Or, if Win10 Pro is the new Win7 Home - sell a single-user license of Win10 Enterprise at a $50-100 premium in the same way that Win7 Ultimate Edition was sold.
The first item in the chumbox of related articles is "Microsoft: This new Windows 10 preview is just to test how quickly we can issue builds" -- and is yet another reason why people who remain on Win7 are continuing to do so. Microsoft may get value out of rapidly issuing builds. The person behind the keyboard of a computer running Windows does not.
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Also, please drop the Home Editions. If you want to make Office and some other tools separate and charge for them, fine; but don't make us worry about not being able to install. One version should be all the same OS.
None of this is going to happen though. Ever since Nadella took over their stock has taken off. Throwing the old customers under the bus turns out to be profitable.
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sell a single-user license of Win10 Enterprise at a $50-100 premium in the same way that Win7 Ultimate Edition was sold.
$84...per year. $7/mo. is what they require.
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Let Win10 Pro users choose when to install updates - not merely declaring certain hours as active hours - just like Enterprise.
You can completely disable automatic updates in Windows 10 Pro with group policies.
You don't really grasp what is going on the last 20 years the videogame industry has been stealing PC games on a mass scale because the know the global public is stupid regarding computers. Apple and Google have been making sick profits off android and in app purchases from computer illiterate morons. So windows 10 is trying to lock down PC's and turn them into locked down computers like mobile devices. AKA Microsoft using Azure wants to turn all software into cloud apps that communicate from your PC to
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They want to kill piracy and move us to designed software obsolescense model by way of removing any control you have of your PC.
Then it's rather odd that the only thing that happens if you run an unlicensed copy of Windows 10 is it displays a small, semi-transparent window asking you to buy it.
Re:Sell us Software, not Services as a Software Su (Score:4, Interesting)
You can still activate Win 10 using Win 7 license (Score:2)
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I'm not pro-tracking, but if I recall -- didn't many or all of those "features" get backported to Windows 7?
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I'm kind of surprised that they still charge for Windows 10 licenses. The OS really seems to have evolved into a ad platform for selling Office 365 subscriptions and OneDrive cloud storage expansions.
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Windows 10 is on > 70% of all Windows-only machines. "They basically cannot give away Win 10 for free" is based on delusion and nothing else.
It's just XP all over again. (Score:5, Insightful)
You make a product that does what people want, people stick with it. No reason to update if it's already working fine and meeting all their needs. Can't depend on people just buying new PCs any more, too - they don't go obsolete as fast as they used to. I can see why Microsoft moved to rolling release on Windows 10, and made it impossible to prevent auto-updating on the home edition.
Just as bad as the windows 7 PCs people actually use though, what about all the ones stuck in cupboards and server rooms doing essential but unloved things? My workplace still has a Windows 7 PC sat in a corner, holding the software that manages the door security locks and card readers. How many windows 7 PCs are still running lifts, HVAC systems, CCTV, signage, and a million other things?
Re:It's just XP all over again. (Score:4, Interesting)
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We still actively use XP because a lot of our hardware doesn't have drivers for Windows 7, never mind Windows 10. This also ties us to older versions of .NET, and not being able to use much of the .NET and .NET Core NuGet ecosystem, because quite a bit of it requires at least somewhat modern versions of the .NET Framework (if not .Core).
The software would happily run on Windows 10, but nothing newer than XP supports the hardware itself.
If it were up to me the software would be Web-based, and require only a
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What would you do if and when the computer dies? Find alternative hardware entirely?
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You make a product that does what people want, people stick with it. No reason to update if it's already working fine and meeting all their needs.
They do. You can see the overwhelming majority of users are on Windows 10. Now you may handwave that away with some contempt but the reality is Windows 10 actually does what people want, and there is a need to upgrade as needs change.
If you ask many users their singular "need" is for nothing to change, regardless of whether it brings improvements or not because change = bad. You will always find people to reject every change, and you'll always find people like you claiming that something that is widely use
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Change itsself comes with a cost. Even if the destination is a better product, just getting there requires expense and effort. Training. Testing. The inconvenience of learning where all the options are all over again. People are asking 'what does windows 10 do that windows 7 doesn't' and the answer is 'not a lot, really.'
The overwhelming majority of users are on windows 10, yes. In the business world, that was an intentional upgrade. In the home, I imagine a lot of that was just people buying new computers
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I think we forget how much of security is simply based on best-use practices and not magic software that will defend you from your own stupidity.
Even if an XP machine is on the internet, a good firewall, adblocker and responsible browsing practices will go a long way to preventing issues.
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Some apps I simply can't reinstall, and a few won't work under Windows 10.
On the other hand, I have Lotus Word Pro and 123 from SmartSuite 9.8 (2002) installed on my Windows 10 Pro system (as well as Office 2010) and, with the exception of the online Help docs, they both run perfectly, so some props to Microsoft and/or Lotus that the apps can still be run.
As with any species... (Score:3)
There's the dominant variety (Win10), the one being replaced (whether you like it or not - and btw Win7 had telemetry too though not as pervasive), the variants that are going extinct (Win8), and the scattered remaining individuals that remain in various refugia (XP and older). I'm surprised that *any* visitors to govt web sites are still on XP; nobody using that should still be connecting to the Internet.
Re: As with any species... (Score:2)
Probably Firefox on centos with user agent switcher so that the web site works.
Needs to be free, again (Score:3)
I don't understand why Microsoft allowed free upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 only for a limited time. Now that Windows 7 is EOL they should make the upgrade free again. My grandfather has a Windows 7 machine that he was unable to upgrade, because his DSL was less than 1 Mbit at the time. I should have hauled the PC to my residence and upgraded it there, but missed that opportunity. Now he has faster internet and can upgrade, but you have to pay. As a casual home user that's not worth cost on that older PC. MS should make this free to avoid the security issues down the road.
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Think about it for a moment. So you'd upgraded his machine, and the next time Win10 wanted to download its updates (at around 4 GB or so?) he'd be looking at a full day of things timing out when he just wants to go online and read the news.
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Now he has faster internet
Reading. Try it!
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I was referring to if you'd taken his machine home to your faster connection and updated it to Win10 that way, then gave him the machine back while he still had the slow connection. Context. Try it!
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I would very much like to hear that from someone who's actually had Win10 on a 1 mbps (or slower) connection.
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7.8 mbps ADSL here. Until the 1909 feature update, windows updates definitely saturated the connection. A little googling found others with the same issue, and some who'd done some digging. They found that WU initiated hundreds of tcp connections, all in a bid to utilise their P2P service "Delivery Optimisation".
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You can still upgrade for free. Use the media creation tool to create a USB stick somewhere with fast Internet and take it over to that computer. Run the upgrade. Done.
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Why do you want him to upgrade? Do you think the machine is not secure enough that it will get pwned?
I would say get a good firewall, and an adblocker and tell him to stick with the well known pron sites and he should be fine until the PC dies. My 85+ year old dad keeps talking about buying a new PC, and I keep discouraging him because the windows10 changes are enough to confuse him and it will certainly be a less satisfying situation. So far the programs most older users need run just fine on windows7.
I
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While you don't have free upgrades you can use the Windows 7 key to install a new version of win 10.
Re:Needs to be free, again (Score:4, Insightful)
"Free" Telemetry like free Aids. /s
Just because you don't care about all the bullshit tracking doesn't imply that no one else doesn't care about privacy.
Stop changing the GUI! (Score:5, Insightful)
Most consumers don't care about backend changes. And unless they are a hardcore gamer, they don't care about DirectX/Vulcan support either. As long as their X,Y, and Z programs still run, that's all you need.
The limited GUI changes in Mate version changes is one of the reason's I love Linux Mint Mate, I can upgrade and get VERY little GUI changes between each version.
I don't have to spend time and energy to relearn things I readily knew to do before. This goes for every user out there.
Re:Stop changing the GUI! (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess the people behind the Windows 95 GUI should have listened to you then and remained with the Windows 3.x GUI...
I've gone through every iteration of Windows GUIs from 1.x to Windows 10. I usually get used to the new GUI in a matter of hours.
Re:Stop changing the GUI! (Score:4, Insightful)
With particular respect to the start menu and task bar, 95 was a significant improvement and have stood the test of time.
With Win8 they apparently decided that all computing devices are tablets with touchscreens, so instead of a nice list of text labels you could easily skim down to find what you want, you now have an entire screenful (or several screenfuls) of colored blocks and images, of different sizes, some distractingly animated, that you need to hunt through to find what you want.
That was such a disaster that Win10 almost goes back to the start menu format, but instead of cascaded menus that are neatly organized you get one gigantic list. And don't forget the boarderless UI elements that expand if you mouse over them, blocking what you may have been wanting to click on and causing you to click the wrong thing just because your cursor wandered one pixel beyond a hotspot you didn't even know was there because who actually needs to know where UI elements begin and end, really? Just waggle your cursor in the general vicinity and you'll get what you want eventually!
=Smidge=
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You're a techy. Most users are not.
Any techy with enough experience will give no fucks and use any GUI, but most Windows users are not old geeks with decades of experience. They don't "live" computing, they use computers.
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What the hell man, seriously? Is this a joke? The GUI hasn't changed enough to complain about "learning curve" since maybe Windows 95 .. and even that's debatable. Do you seriously have to check a reference manual every time you want to launch a program? You don't know about the "click the icon" trick?
Re:Stop changing the GUI! (Score:5, Interesting)
Win10 still lacks basic GUI features of Windows 7.
For example, there is still NO option for gradient title bars [techrepublic.com]. That article was posted 5 years ago and is still partially true. The current Windows 10 UI settings are complete shit compared to the options of Windows 7 which supported BOTH foreground and background options.
Specifically [cbsistatic.com].
Why is customization of the title bars important?
Because Active and Inactive title bars help make it easier to determine which window has focus. Gradient title bars (can) provide extra "signal" without too much "noise" IF you want them. Also, having a different window title color for active and inactive also provides a nice visual summary.
Windows 10 is just more proof that Microsoft doesn't know what the fuck they are doing and just making changes for the sake of making changes without actually THINKING or LISTENING to how people ACTUALLY use the UI. By continuing to "dumb down" the UI by removing features that have standard for the past 20+ years they demonstrate they drinking the mobile / table Kool-Aid TM. And they wonder why people hate all the constant changes or 1 step forward, 2 steps back with Windows 10.
Memo to Microsoft: Stop removing useful features -- and maybe you will win some of the trust back.
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Microsoft Windows, noun: A 64-bit compilation of 32 bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor written by a 2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition with 0 bit of understanding good UI.
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Why is customization of the title bars important? Because Active and Inactive title bars help make it easier to determine which window has focus.
Classic Mac OS excelled at that, not by using different colors, but by hiding decorations and controls from unfocused windows. See. [winworldpc.com]
Re:Stop changing the GUI! (Score:4, Insightful)
The title bar is the most convenient way to move a window about. But it is not filled with so many active user controls, there is no place to "grab" it to move.
Win10 windows presentation sucks. In Windows8 time frame they tried to cram the full desktop UI into their 5 inch phone and flopped miserably. Win10 stretches a stupid 5 inch phone UI across my 48 inch 3840 x 1080 monitor. No real indication of what is active, what is clickable and where controls are hiding. Randomly context menu pops up in the corners of desk top, ... settings menu are not simplified versions of full settings, they are the watered down version without any way to get to the full settings.
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Take a Windows 95 user and put him in front of Windows 10 and he'll have no problems working with his programs.
The problem isn't the user finding his programs. The problem is when the user tries to find where the file sharing options are. Or network configuration. Or printer configuration. Because, since Windows 10 was released, all of these have changed, sometimes more than once.
The main pitfall of trying to make complicated things easier is that you usually end up making them even more difficult.
One Windows 7 vs multiple Windows 10s (Score:2)
The people still using Windows XP and Vista should be forced off the internet for their own good though, as the update servers are dead.
DR DOS 5.0 (Score:2)
Fuck all of you I'm running DR DOS 5.0. I browse the web in text mode. Deal with it.
Pussy. (Score:2)
Real men send queries to the web by wrapping two bared wires from an ethernet cable around their big toes and precisely dancing out bits of data on an aluminum plate. Incoming data is provided by two other wires which are attached to their nipples and decoded from the sensation. Somebody who's really good, can deal with their email while participating in a Zoom call while suppressing any thought of an erection.
I don't know why I wrote that, other than to say I hate it when a story coming out about a techn
Morally superior people don't post as AC (Score:2)
One day you will wake up and realise its because they are morally superior.
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Posted from my SparcStation5 running Solaris with CDE!
Just saying - if you're actually proud of positing this from a 25 year old system and think you're morally superior, you should at least use your /. handle (if not your name).
At least backslashdot had the balls to identify themself.
Ending Win7 Support pushed me to end Microsoft (Score:2, Informative)
I was well on my way on moving away from Microsoft but I did like Windows 7 for legacy applications that I've used for years. I used to run it on a nice i-5 system that now runs Mint.
All code & hardware development is on Linux (Ubuntu) and normal PC operations went to Macs (Apple's probably not better than Microsoft but OSX seems to be much more solid and nicer to work on). Business functions on Libre Office. Cloud storage is Github and Dropbox.
Couldn't be happier.
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I was well on my way on moving away from Microsoft but I did like Windows 7 for legacy applications that I've used for years. I used to run it on a nice i-5 system that now runs Mint.
Same here; just MX Linux in my case. I'd been dabbling for some time, but Windows 7 going end-of-life (and reading all the war stories about Windows 10) was the final push I needed to switch permanently. I haven't looked back.
I suspect there a quite a few people who have upgraded Windows 7 by moving to Linux or a Mac.
I'm going to be hip and go back to 8.1 (Score:2)
Oh no! How horrible. (Score:2)
Whatever shall we do? These ruffians cannot be allowed to use something they purchased and which still works perfectly well. It's a disgrace these people are being allowed to get away with not being maliciously tracked with every click of the mouse and not having ads shoved in their faces.
Imagine, these people are using an OS on which they can do things without being interfered with. No pop ups, no warnings, no suggestions, no third party snooping. These poor unenlightened souls must learn of these peac
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This is what happens... (Score:2, Insightful)
... when you invoke a major change to an OS from one version to the next.
That change would be windows 7 to windows 8.
Hindsight is 20/20 vision, but the damage was done - and the stats don't lie. Windows 8 is used less than Windows 7.
Instead of slow and steady incremental updates, Microsoft hit users with an absolute whammy of a change - trying to bake in touch devices, despite the fact that for most people, this wasn't needed.
Windows 10 reigned back in on this - but the change from 7 to 10 is not easy.
Then
For the record.. (Score:2)
I use macOS as my primary creative & web development OS, Linux for all my server needs and as a secondary desktop - and as a TV box. Hmm, also on my mobile device. Windows 10 still powers my infrequently used gaming rig.
Agnostic, as always.
I went from XP straight to Ubuntu Linux (Score:2)
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They should be booted off the internet (Score:2)
Damn anti-vaxxers putting the rest of us at risk.
A horrible mess (Score:3)
Other than that, Win 10 is sluggish in day to day use (e.g: opening windows or programs) and the wrapper on top of a wrapper overlaid on a sorry excuse for a disorganized GUI mess gets old.
I'm using Win 10. I tried to like it. My next version will be back to 7.
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People don't upgrade because the don't have to. (Score:2)
For most people, it isn't because they hate Windows 10, or even because they prefer Windows 7. It is just because they don't have to upgrade, so they won't.
Granted today upgrading your OS isn't nearly such a big deal as it was 20 or even 10 years ago. However sense Windows XP the Home user, has been having Windows with the NT Kernel, which is far more stable and and secure than the DOS based Windows of the olden times. So Windows 7 Users are not suffering with using an Old OS, like you might have been sa
Two reasons (Score:2)
1) Windows 7 is a pretty decent OS ( still ). Easy-ish to use, does everything needed. Yes, it doesn't get security updates, but for most folks that's a obscure risk ( until it isn't ).
2) Windows 10 is a hot mess. 7 is still far easier to use and administrate. How many control panels do you really need? I guess it's good to have redundancy as half of them don't actually work right. Windows update fails more often than not.
I wouldn't have upgraded either if I didn't need to for my job. A recurring the
I'd love to dump the last windows box in my life (Score:2)
but there are no descent retail POS solutions that run on Linux that don't require to be "In the cloud" for some reason or their design is stuck in the 80's If I could find some POS software that is around $1000 to buy and say $400/per for upgrade/support and I'd dump the last windows box today.
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Why the hate for "1980s design", I've never been to a store or restaurant where I gave a ripping shit what their cash register looked like. If it gets the shit done...
No to Win 10, forever and ever (Score:2)
When I eventually transition, it will be from Windows to Linux or Mac, or maybe both. I will never allow Windows 10 on any machine I own. In fact, I nuked it on a laptop I bought and replaced it with Windows 8.1.
So my current situation is two Win 7 PCs, an 8.1 laptop and an ancient Lenovo Thinkstation running XP to accommodate old, reliable peripherals I will not replace until they physically break. All have internet access except the XP box.
I employ good internet hygiene and back up regularly, and so fa
Old hardware (Score:2)
I don't care about whether its running XP or not, but old computer hardware is annoying to me. I don't like slow.
Depends on use case. (Score:2)
You don't need old hardware for your use case. Some do, to make money. For example a CNC mill running DOS etc isn't worth spending thousands to upgrade because it works perfectly well as it is and the software is faster than the hardware. Upgrading for the sake of change means thousands of dollars in downtime.
Familiar applications like the old edition of GibbsCAM my machinistbro uses are ample for his purpose so no reason exists to learn different software and be less productive during the learning curve. I
Companies are still putting out releases on Win7 (Score:2)
Synopsys is planning a 2021 release which will support Windows 7. [synopsys.com]
Synopsys is also planning for a release in 2021 which will support CentOS 6, which went EOL in November 2020.
Perpetual UI changes are not desirable. (Score:2)
You are reading this post in text, an established standard human interface.
UI designers don't care about users, they care about their careers and regard "change" as "progress". Every dog wants to piss on the same tree to mark its spot.
Computer users invest thousands of hours becoming maximally productive then a Windows (or Linux) change shits on that because some unaccountable thought it was cool and nothing more or different than that.
Linux users always have the command line (and expect Linux DEs to be unf
Windows 10 bs (Score:2)
My favorite non-feature of 10, is admittedly not suffered by many people:
If you use an alternative shell that replaces explorer.exe than you can't use the fancy new Settings dialog, instead you get this helpful error msg:
explorer.exe
File system error (-2018374635).
Thanks microsoft.
I install 0patch onto customers PC's. They're fine (Score:2)
I need windows for one thing (Score:2)
Best OS they ever made (Score:3)
Win 7 was the best OS Microsoft ever made.
I'd still be using it if I hadn't switched to Linux almost exactly 2 years ago.
Re:Windoze 7 rocks! (Score:5, Interesting)
I just installed a fresh Windoze 7 install. It's rock solid and much better to use than 10...
I use it in several VMs for sandbox testing. The fallacy that "end of support" means "end of life" is one that Microsoft loves to perpetuate. The end of Microsoft's patches generally means increased stability, as they stop monkeying with everything to shoehorn in new restrictions on previously open subsystems that were never designed to be controlled. And the vast majority of newly discovered vulnerabilities are ones which require either the use of the built-in browser, which nobody used anyway, or local access to the machine or network.
A Year After Microsoft Ended All Support for Windows 7, Millions of Users Are Still Not Upgrading
Maybe they should be asking themselves why people trust an end-of-support operating system more than Windows 10 and work to address that. And when I say address, I mean with meaningful change, not the combination of PR and coercion they continue to favour.
The revelation that a huge breach by foreign state actors occured in multiple government and private systems through the interception and subversion of several companies' software update systems should be a huge warning to everyone about the dangers of automatic updates. The fact is, Windows 7 without updates is safer than Windows 10 with them.
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And as the rule of thumb says; once an attacker has local access to your machine it's pwned no matter what.
Besides, I have two machines sitting in my living room that are primarily used for gaming. I am yet to encounter anything that has demanded Win10 or it flat out just wouldn't run, so I'm sticking with Win7 for as long as I can get away with it.
Re:Windoze 7 rocks! (Score:5, Insightful)
once an attacker has local access to your machine it's pwned no matter what.
True for Windows, certainly. Linux is a far harder target, there are zero open vulnerabilities in kernel at the moment. If you want to escalate privilege you need to go seeking some hole in crapware like mysql. There used to be a grab bag of suid escalations, now those have basically dried up due to a lot of hard work on the part of open source sleuths, packagers and upstream maintainers. Maybe there is something exotic out there that only NSA and Russian state actors know about, but the pickings are otherwise pretty slim. Basically, you need to trick an administrator into installing malicious code with root privilege.
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True for Windows, certainly. Linux is a far harder target, there are zero open vulnerabilities in kernel at the moment. If you want to escalate privilege you need to go seeking some hole in crapware like mysql.
There are. "zero open vulnerabilities" in ADOBE reader. Should we all be drawing some kind of useful assumption from that as well or does this nonsense only apply arbitrarily to whatever you say it applies to?
A partial list of known Linux kernel escalation vulns reported just within this year:
CVE-2020-29569
CVE-2020-28974
CVE-2020-27825
CVE-2020-27786 (My personal favorite)
CVE-2020-27777
CVE-2020-25221
CVE-2020-15436
CVE-2020-14390
CVE-2020-14386
CVE-2020-14381
CVE-2020-14356
CVE-2020-14351
CVE-2020-14331
CVE-2020-126
Re:Windoze 7 rocks! (Score:5, Informative)
A partial list of known Linux kernel escalation vulns reported just within this year:
OK, I'll bite. Impressive list. That is, unless you look closely. Then it looks more like:
Not as impressive when you actually look at the certs, hmm? I'm just going to have to go ahead and step out on a limb here and call this very slim pickings for the hungry hacker. And notice how long they don't survive. (with one single exception) Let's take a moment and give thanks to all the hard working and talented developers who make the Linux kernel such an awkward place for black hats.
Re:Windoze 7 rocks! (Score:5, Insightful)
I have been running Linux as my desktop on multiple machines for 22 years now. During that time I have never once wiped my computer and reinstalled the OS, other than to switch to a different distribution. You seem to regard wipe/install as normal procedure... my condolences.
That said, I admit the possibility that even my Linux machines may suffer a malware attacks at some point, or the rather more likely danger that a disk may fail, so I keep backups. Air gapped backups even, from time to time.
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Or perhaps by "local" you really meant "physical access"? In which case your comment would make more sense for Linux. Windows still remains a child's garden of swiss cheese holes.
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I meant physical, yes. My apologies, English isn't my native language and I blanked on the correct phrasing.
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2nd that, whilst I know there are a handful of win10 only games, I also know that windows 7 is far better at game compatibility. I like old games and indie games, many of which won't work with win10 and if I wanted to muck about spending hours trying to get games to run I'd be using Linux.
Re:Windoze 7 rocks! (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe they should be asking themselves why people trust an end-of-support operating system more than Windows 10 and work to address that.
If Microsoft's primary goal was to make a product that was widely loved by its end-users, then yes that is exactly what they should do. They are in a position, however, where they can apply some market-muscle to the task of forcing end-users to accept a product that they don't like very much, and the specific things that they don't like about the product are things that make it more profitable for Microsoft.
So, if one sets aside any sense of compassion or empathy, the decision here makes perfect sense. "We anger a lot of people but make more money this way. Win!"
And is this a bad strategy in the long run? Of course not! Even if by some miracle Microsoft loses its position of dominance, it can just push out a new version of the product that gives end-users what they want, to reclaim it. "The masses" are largely stupid and have no memory of past abuses, so a good reputation is easily reclaimed once lost.
Re:Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever m (Score:5, Funny)
This is bullshit. Windows 10 is installed in basically +90% of desktop computers so I'd say it's the best, most successful spyware ever.
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Gaming on Linux is reportedly getting surprisingly good these days, largely thanks to progress made by Proton. No-one expects it to be a 100% thing any time soon, but the majority of popular titles already appear to be playable with at most minor glitches (which, as CDPR can attest, can also happen on officially supported platforms too).
It's the business/creative software that tends to be Windows-only and might also use obnoxious licensing and DRM/activation schemes that is the greater barrier these days, i
Re: Microsoft: Terribly abusive management. (Score:3)
Abuse? But I wanted an argument!
https://genius.com/Monty-python-argument-lyrics [genius.com]
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XP still works fine too - off the net (Score:4, Informative)
Agree completely WRT investment in software. Also...
FTFA:
My copy of Windows XP is running happily and safely inside a VM (on my Mac Pro, heh heh) without Internet access; no problems whatsoever, but invisible to such metrics as were used to make the assumptions in the article.
I use it to build applications that are compatible with pretty much everything from XP onwards. XP is a very handy, and very stable, development environment.
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"Why" is the interesting question, especially when asked of the non-geek population.
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Are you the same guy who writes the "my trouble with the modern internet" trolls?
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I think that was a 'yes'.
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I have an older Dell Latitude laptop that I upgraded from Win7 to Win10 when 7 reached eol.
Conversely, I have a Dell XPS 420 and Dell 530 (both w/8GB RAM) that I upgraded from Windows 7 to 10 Pro and both are rock solid as is the VM running Windows 10 Pro on my Ubuntu 18.04 system (DIY i7 w/32GB RAM). The Dell XPS 420 is my main day-to-day browsing/email system. (All my systems are older as they're cast-offs from friends when they upgraded their hardware...)
Perhaps people would be happier if they knew more definitively *why* Windows didn't work well/reliably on their systems so they could impl