Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 support will end tomorrow (January 1st 2024)
Steam Support :: Windows 7 and Windows 8 Support
This affects roughly 0.91% of the users according to the latest hardware survey (november 2023)
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam
Understandable but bad since all newer Windows versions are really heavy on telemetry and privacy hostile practices.
Of course I use Linux but I don't live in a bubble and see that most people won't switch in the near future.
according to the latest steam hardware survey, only 0.91% of the users still use Windows 7 ~ 8.1.
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam
I know it doesn't have much to do with your comment, but what you said got me curious.
Not sure why this made me look but it is cool that Linux as a whole has a bigger user share than Windows 7 and 8.
I am relishing the idea of switching, I just need my last few creative outlets (mostly music software) to work on Linux fully, and I will jump. 😊
The day every game I play can be played on Linux is the day I swap. I used to have a dual boot setup but honestly it was just easier to only use one OS and the one I use the most ends up being the one that supports my main hobby the most.
It's unfortunate that such a compromise has to be made.
I do tech support in a school that still has Windows 7 on all PC's. These are old relics from 2008 and just this week I was informed we'll have to manage with them for a few more years. There's no way I can upgrade those things to Windows 10 not to mention we don't have the licenses. They can barely run 7. I'm thinking of throwing a user friendly Linux distro in those things. The principal liked the idea but I'm not sure the users will like it. But Windows 7 is becoming a liability.
Everything I did on the school pcs would've been just as easy and likely easier to do with Linux. Our 7 PCs were slow as hell and that was when those PCs were new.
ChromeOS flex could also be a way to go for education. You can manage them through Google admin if you have Google workspace for the district.
I don't know much about linux, but maybe try those debian stable distros (mint, ubuntu, or debian itself).
When we use linux for basic things like browsing the web, opening pdf files, editting a picture (on gimp) and so on, I don't see much of a difference on the experience.
By the way, I once installed linux on a old laptop with 2GB ram, the performance got so much better, I was even able to play simple 2D games (kingdom rush) at 60 fps, this wasn't possible on the old windows 7 it had installed.
I got a bunch of old Thinkpads for my classroom at the school i work at and installed Ubuntu on all of them. They run smooth like brand new laptops, and I have been surprised to see my students having an easier time using Ubuntu than Windows 11.
I would go for Zorin! It's based on ubuntu and quite close to the windows experience so easy for beginners!
Just put linux mint and its basically the same experiente imo. Also much safer, since now to download stuff they are going to have to rely on the graphic app store application which is much safer then downloading on the internet.
I expected five miliseconds of scrolling to find someone with a megaphone hammering on about Linux.
It took none.
Im one myself but this is just as bad as the circlejerks on the Teletubbies website.
I opened the thread to see the same thing. Yup. Anything Windows and it's LINUX BETTER immediately.
I mean, got a better idea for fixing win7 problem?
I've seen people bring up Linux on non-tech related posts. It's a weird flex.
While understandable I hope Steam does keep working on these platform's for some titles which might only run on older systems.
What titles only run on x86 and not x86_64?
Some obscure title will surely have weird driver, hardware and OS quirks. For example Crazy Machines 2's physics break down and the fixes didn't work for me. They use PhysX for their physics engine, before Nvidia acquired it, and it was heavily updated of course and now the puzzles don't work anymore. Maybe somebody found another solution to it by now, but I haven't checked it.
Funnily enough, today I was going through old shit and found two copies of Vista Ultimate. Pretty sure those are ready for the bit bucket in the sky.
Just install Linux mint and install flatpak steam. I think minimal distros are better in general but they do require more familiarity with terminal usage which can be harder for newer users (I personally use void). So mint is a very solid distro that has a good amount of support in older hardware and stuff, no need to think hard basically
Windows 7 was okay, but I still can't fathom how Windows 8 and 8.1 came to be. In the computer companies I've worked for, I don't think they have a single product that runs on Windows 8 or Windows Vista. The OS progression was XP to 7 to 10. Now, they're all working towards Windows 11 support.
I'll miss you, Windows 7 that I ran into the ground in a machine that ignored the fact by all accounts it should have died ages ago.
But hey! Solid state drives are cool now that I'm in modern times.
Didn't win7 support end already?
By Microsoft, not by Steam
https://www.linuxmint.com/
Time to use something better boys
I tried. I finally wanted to switch away from Windows and installed mint. Spent about 3 hours trying to get my headphone jacks to work with some mildly obscure tools and commands but no dice. Then I managed to destroy one of my partitions by trying to Mount it but it gave me an obscure error. Searched the forums and found NTFS fix, well turns out I accidentally had turned the partition dynamic when moving it to a larger drive. NTFS fix didn't like that and promptly destroyed the file table. I lost a buch of data. So back to the cruddy Windows then...I'm not tech savvy enough, which is sad.
If you've never, ever used Linux before and are not confident about its tools, it's almost always better to use a fresh machine. NTFS and Linux really don't mix well, for example.
Well, valve plans on bringing steam deck os to desktop eventually.
Backups before doing anything else with partitions (or OS in general)
Mint will use xorg as the default session until 2026, where it is projected that wayland will solve most if not all of its showstoppers.
Mint's cinnamon DE is built off of Mutter, GNOME's compositor, so all it means is that Mint will be doing the same thing that it has always done, been what GNOME could have been if it hadn't reinvented itself.
Mint is a workflow extremely similar to what most users have experienced on Windows and specifically caters to Windows users or users coming from proprietary operating systems.
Why does it matter? What user really cares if it's Wayland or x11? Software is about solving problems for the user. Mint is far superior to Windows.
Sent from KDE with x11...
To me mint was always the closest to what I wanted as a Windows user. I still user windows most of the time now but whenever I use Linux, it's mint.
My last attempt to get games working on Linux did not go well, but I am hopeful the kinks will be sorted out by the time Win10 starts getting dropped.
I game exclusively on Linux these days. I haven’t had an issue that I couldn’t solve so far aside from shitty anti cheat software that doesn’t play nice.
I play single player almost exclusively, so that isn’t much of a problem for me.
I thought you said better
https://archlinux.org
no, they said better
https://hannahmontana.sourceforge.net
Well both are good choices, but for new linux users coming from windows - Mint would be way easier to get started with.
Linux is linux, no matter the distro! It's not by arguing which distro is better that the year of the linux desktop will happen!!!