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whalesalad

In 2025, I can only think of two reasons to use Windows as a primary operating system:

1. You develop Windows software, exclusively to be deployed on Windows.

2. You play games that use kernel-level anti-cheat that are incompatible with Linux.

I am really really happy with Debian+KDE combo.

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3. Your employer’s IT team refuses to let you use something else.

At work or at home? At work, I'd argue the employer is mostly using it. Windows's problems are their problems then.

> Windows's problems are their problems then.

Unfortunately, the user bears the masochism of using Windows. The employer gives only the deadlines.

I am having Windows 7 not only at home, but at work also and successfully doing web apps and sites.

I booted into my 7 partition the other day because for whatever reason my frayed 10 partition wouldn't let me run an offline defender scan.

My suggestion is, install Microsoft Security Essentials (you can get a copy of the installer out of archive.org) and definition files are still published for it and are up-to-date. MSE is what became Defender in 10. The Defender in 7 is not the same and doesn't scan for the same things. MSE is needed to replace it.

Congrats on your vulnerable system. I hope you're not doing anything important at all on it.

Congrats on being a parrot in the "oh noes, taken over by bots!" securitah echo chamber.

W7 is just fine. Daily driver on multiple machines, never been "taken over" or turned into a crypto miner or a hub for a bot network, never had a single virus or other issues.

That you know of.

easy enough to tell by merely monitoring traffic flow from suspected machine.

Seriously. Also less and less software is supporting 7. Importantly, Firefox ESR 115 is the last modern browser to support Windows 7 and it's entering EOL after this month[1]; Chrome dropped Windows 7 support in 2023[2].

[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-users-windows-7... [2] https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/7100626

Right now I wonder if a browser or chrome embedded framework (and then when applications that use it update past the cut-off version) is the 'killer app' that motivates upgrades. The CEF cut-off for win7/8/8.1 was when their extended support periods ended, and presumably they upgraded the underlying SDK they to rely on features not present pre-win10, and presumably oct 2028 (+3 years) is when the same will happen again

Just made dirty hack and be able to run latest LibreOffice 25.8 on Win7 despite official "unsupported status". Save dialog is not working but luckily software is cross platform and has it's native dialog and it can be enabled in options.

Who needs 115 ESR? I am running RedFox 140.

that's quite a bold statement. i am doing all my stuff without any problems. If you check ms bulletin you'll see that quantity of bugs in recent Windows is waaaay above old crony, just see ghacks for comparison. I'm applying patches from 2008R2 which are still coming (till 2026). Having two firewalls, h/w and s/w, all unneeded services are stripped off or disabled. So the chance is slim to none.

I ran into a problem at my new job where TI's typically garbage software doesn't work on Linux, not even inside a windows VM with the USB device passed through.

Though it's hard to tell if it doesn't work because of the VM or if it's just simply broken garbage.

3. You just prefer how it works after being used to it for decades.

Had a Mac through work for a couple of years, so it's not for lack of trying. Also had Ubuntu as main boot for a while.

They are kinda destroying much of what I like, though. As if the Windows designers at MS are all using Macs as their daily driver and want to make it the same. I had to hold off upgrading to Win11 for a while due to the stupid new task bar couldn't ungroup windows. Why continuously hurt power users?

> As if the Windows designers at MS are all using Macs as their daily driver and want to make it the same.

I’m 100% sure that some months or years ago, someone working or who worked on the Windows team explained just here on HN that it’s exactly that.

To be honest, I’ve tried to find tutorials for using Linux daily and have come up short. It seems too intimidating or maybe like it will require a lot of fiddling unless you’re a software engineer.

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