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Comment by apankrat | Hacker News Reader

For what it's worth, we are making a system utility for Windows and our user base in the desktop segment is:

  Windows 11       18%
  Windows 10       71%
  Windows 8.x / 7  11%

That is, the percentage of 8/7 is still very much non-trivial. Though our user base is probably skewed towards techy people.

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Electron (accidentally) broke Windows 7 support last month, and as a result a number of applications broke for Windows 7 if they used that Electron version (e.g. VSCode). Lots of people complained. It was a fairly minor thing and was quickly fixed by the Electron people.

My favourite comment in one of the threads about it:

"Related "MS ended support for Win7" - sorry, how it corresponds to development?! Does your operating system gone away from SSD? Or Windows become rusty? Not. SYSTEM WORKS AS BEFORE, so please don't write stupid reasons "MS doesn't support" - nobody care of it, system works as usual and nothing prevents you from using Win7 (as I do now)."

I kind of like the no-nonsense honesty of it; made me smile :-) I don't think it's necessarily smart to keep running on Windows 7 given the support status, but they're not entirely wrong either: Windows 7 is a fine system. It works. Why "upgrade"?

> Windows 7 is a fine system. It works. Why "upgrade"?

Im da sheng, beratna.

Software is a living thing, it's not a chair.

Sure, keep using it. Just don't complain when one of a million external variables your software depends on suddenly stops working and nobody cares.

Don't keep using it after Microsoft stops updating. At least not unless it's airgapped.

> "Related "MS ended support for Win7" - sorry, how it corresponds to development?! Does your operating system gone away from SSD? Or Windows become rusty? Not. SYSTEM WORKS AS BEFORE, so please don't write stupid reasons "MS doesn't support" - nobody care of it, system works as usual and nothing prevents you from using Win7 (as I do now)."

This is just nonsense. If the user feels so strongly, why don't they maintain the relevant software themselves and find out just how easy (not) it is to maintain support for an EOL operating system? Or why don't they just stick to outdated versions of all their software, like they chose to do with their operating system? Harassing open source developers who work for free is not a sane response.

No one was being harassed. They opened an issue because they were facing a problem, which is what issues are for. The first response was "they need to not offer the update on Win 7. We don't need our environments seamlessly fucked." from some random drive-by commenter. They posted that in reply after it actually got fixed by one of the vscodium maintainers.

Well, the older version of VSCode worked too ...

It's true.. If they are fine using and old OS, they should be fine with an old VSCode release.

Does Microsoft still provide security updates for Windows 7?

If no, then the machines with Windows 7 could only be run offline, and existing software will continue to work as it is.

You just need to be really really careful about downloading anything (through user action or by the system) to it because there will be a long list of exploits to choose from for anyone wanting a free bitcoin farm. Microsoft might even be paying the 'security researchers' to come up with more.

Forking over a couple hundred to uncle Bill for protection every five years or so is not entirely pointless.

You just need to be really really careful about downloading anything

...as you always should be anyway.

Forking over a couple hundred to uncle Bill for protection every five years or so is not entirely pointless.

...and being forced into their increasingly user-hostile manipulations? If anything, that saying about "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns" comes to mind.

Every upside has a downside - Cruyff

You're right of course, but I do think the quote accurately represents the feelings a lot of people had, and continue to have, even when they know they should upgrade (and most likely, already have upgraded) due to lack of support.

FWIW, I'd think people buying and using system utilities are more often than not users that run old machines for business reasons. More the "XP machine in the basement to control the boiler" situation rather than "I don't want the free update to Windows 10" situation.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Windows 8.1 is still supported by Microsoft for another three months. Windows 8.1 is not outdated yet, not even according to Microsoft. Chrome's support will end a month after Microsoft's support ends, I'd think because very few people actually use 8.1 compared to the rest of the world.

In case your customers ask, Windows 7/8.1 users may be able to use Firefox (ESR, if necessary) if they want a maintained browser. The current Firefox ESR should be supported until at least August of next year and if Mozilla includes 7/8.1 support in version 115, then support should last until at least the end of next year.

> Windows 7/8.1 users may be able to use Firefox

and Pale moon, SeaMonkey, K-Meleon etc and judging by the Win XP situation a plethora of other (Chinese or not) Chromium based browsers as well.

https://msfn.org/board/topic/182794-updated-browser-list-for...

Support is a lot more of a nebulous concept than it used to be. I recall AMD stopped releasing new drivers for Windows 8 at least a couple years ago, even though it is still supported by Microsoft. At the same time they were still releasing Windows 7 drivers even though MS stopped support in 2020.

f.lux is also at 11% on Windows 7/8.

As a Windows 7 fan, one confounding factor is that Windows 10 eventually added their own Night Light which replaces basic uses of Flux.

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