Bye Bye Win 7

[P.]

Can't be gamer on Linux. It died fast for me there. My daily work life is Centos so.. 😅

[xX-Alex-Xx]

[Pigeon]

In the earlier days there were a few big drivers to motivate switching to Linux that don't really exist today.

1. Cost. Linux was free. Legit windows cost circa £150 but then you had to bump on £40 of Norton Anti-Virus or similar.
Yes there were free WinXP methods (but usually dodgy). Also Free AV, but again, a lot of people just paid for McAfee etc

Now Windows is really easy to get for less than £20 (or free) legitimately. And it comes with Anti Virus protection.

2. Performance. Linux was extremely fast compared to Windows.
PC's used to start chugging after 12 months if you were lucky under XP. Partly down to the massive AV clients people installed that ballooned with crap. Booting up could take 2-3 minutes.
Windows 7 seemed a lot better at lasting longer before getting bogged down.
But crucially, CPU performance eclipsed software requirements, RAM prices crashed and SSD's arrived. Booting was reduced to 15 seconds. You didn't have to wait for apps to load.
Linux is still faster, but what does 5 second boot time matter compared to 15 seconds.
My PC is 8 years old and runs Windows 10 very happily.
I would not have wanted to try and run Windows XP (when released) on a 486 DX2-66 with 16mb RAM (a roughly 1993 PC)

3. Security. Kind of tied into point 1. But it was a significant issue that was largely resolved by MS buying and absorbing an AV company.


Other impacts. Smartphones and tablets now exist and the desktop (at home at least) is less important all round. Why spend time learning something new which isn't on a platform that will be used a lot.

Open Source in general has done well though.
Blender, Fusion, Gimp, Lightworks, Inkscape, Scribus, Apache, PHP, MySQL (I use PostgreSQL), VLC, Chrome etc

[blurredman]

Was on winXP full time until 2018 when I built a new PC (that one was 10 years old- and I'm an occasional gamer!).

I never updated security on it. The only thing I updated was for the service packs, otherwise updates were (and still are) always off.

The same with my windows 7 machine now. SP1 but updates off.


Windows security scaring is the same as lynch mobbing and brexit scaring when out of hand.

I often use win 3.1, 95, and 98 connected to the net with no security.


I won't use windows 10 until I am absolutely forced out by the support or lack of it over 'time'. Likely another 8 or so years.

The lack of support for XP just happened to coincide with the requirement for a new PC to play new games.
____________________
CBT: 12/06/10, Theory: 22/09/10, Module 1: 09/11/10, Module 2: 19/01/11
Past: 1991 Honda CG125BR-J, 1992 (1980) Honda XL125S, 1996 Kawasaki GPZ500S.
Current: 1973 MZ ES250/2 - 17k. , 1979 Suzuki TS185ER - 9k, 1981 Honda CX500B - 91k, 1987 MZ ETZ250 (295cc) - 38k, 1989 MZ ETZ251 - 49k

[GettinBetter]

[P.]

I never used to update.

I then worked where I work.

I won't 'not update' now.

It has cost schools hundreds of thousands in time, money and support getting back on their feet after a machine or two was unpatched and script kiddy fucked them into oblivion.

This recently affected me, its obscure, its Linux, its huge.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/01/netsweeper_filtering_flaw/

It would have absolutely destroyed us and our 1 million+ users.

Windows is highly subsceptible, even just network wise, a DDoS when gaming is still common as muck, I'd rather patch.

There were older patches where if you had windows file sharing over netbios enabled, you could cause a machine to crash and run administrative commands, gain control and crytolocker it with ease. MS patched it in 2016 and STILL I find servers open with it, one was cryptolockered that day.

Leave it open if you want, your call. I used to be so blasé about it too.

[Lord Percy]

Updates aren't all that bad. Specially Windows 10.

As far as I've heard, Windows 10 is Microsoft's final version of Windows. They're just going to keep sending automatic updates forever now.

So far, each update has been an improvement. Probably lots of security aspects in there too.

[MarJay]

[thx1138]

I was dragged kicking and screaming from Windows 98 to XP, I liked both, I was still tinkering with DOS a tiny bit.

hated vista

liked 7, hated 10, managed to get 7 back on my laptop myself

finally gave in and put 10 on recently

no more Civ4 Beyond the Sword, and I hate steam, so probably no more Civ.

This old laptop couldn't run Civ 6, and Civ 5 I have played in the past, but not mad keen on.