Why you should replace Windows 7 with Linux

[sman]

Why you should replace Windows 7 with Linux

"https://vivaldi.com/pl/blog/replace-windows-7-with-linux/"

In less than two months, Windows 7 will enter end of life. Here’s why you might want to replace it with Linux.

Opublikowano Listopad 27, 2019 – przez Team Vivaldi

Wyświetlenia: 16460
Linux penguin peers out of Windows inviting users to replace Windows with Linux
On January 14th, 2020, your Windows 7 will stop getting support, software updates and security fixes.  

To be clear, your computer will continue to work but your machine (and your data) will be exposed to new viruses and security threats. Some have even suggested that there will be an increase in viruses targeting Windows 7 users specifically.

It’s hard to estimate how many people out there are pondering their next move but a recent report from Netmarketshare estimates that Windows 7 is still being used on 27% of all PCs. At Vivaldi, around 15% of all users are on Windows 7. That’s a lot of users. 

For many people, the simplest option would be to upgrade to Windows 10. 

However, that won’t work for everyone. 

Your Windows 7 is likely running on an older machine that might struggle with a resource hungry operating system like Windows 10. 

To run Windows 10, you need a 1 GHz processor, 1 GB for 32-bit or 2 GB for 64-bit RAM, 16 GB for 32-bit OS or 20 GB for 64-bit OS, and a 800 x 600 resolution display. And that’s just a bare minimum. 

For many machines, the answer will not be Windows 10. 

What you need instead is a lightweight, efficient OS that is – of course – resistant to viruses.

Why replace Windows 7 with Linux 
Enter Linux. Linux is an open-source operating system that’s completely free to use. 14% of Vivaldi users are already on it since our browser has pretty awesome support for Linux. And as if that wasn’t enough, a good chunk of the devs here use Linux as their daily driver.

Replacing your Windows 7 with Linux is one of your smartest options yet.

[exile360]

I'm sticking with 7 for as long as I can, and eventually probably will make the move to Linux, however that most likely won't happen until Linux is a lot more stable, easier to use and more compatible with mainstream applications, games in particular.  While things have improved greatly over the past several years, Linux is still a far cry from Windows with regards to overall usability, stability and especially compatibility, however with Windows 7 support coming to an end I expect many more users and most importantly, Devs, making the switch to Linux so we should see some great strides with regards to the overall viability of Linux as a Windows alternative in the coming months and years.  At least I sure hope so, because Windows 10 just isn't an option as far as I'm concerned.

[sman]

there is no harm in trying out a Linux Live-CD version and then make a decision whether to switch or not..I'm not sure about games but for general browsing needs I find Linux is sufficient..

 

[sman]

Though I have not tried it around, can check this too."WineHQ - Run Windows applications on Linux, BSD, Solaris ..."

"https://www.winehq.org/"

:Edited-

Adding on 

5 of the Best Linux Distros for Windows Users in 2019

"https://www.maketecheasier.com/best-linux-distro-for-windows-users/"

Linux is the best-known and most-used open-source operating system. Whether you’re looking for an OS that is tailored for laptops, workstations, desktops, gaming, A/V editing, or servers, you’ll always find a Linux distro for your specific need.

However, if you’re new to Linux or are switching to Linux from Windows, you’ll want an OS that is GUI-focused like Windows. There are many different distributions of Linux out there, with some aiming to replicate the look and feel of Windows. The goal of this is to make transitioning relatively painless. With Linux boasting improved hardware support, long term stability and a wider range of software applications, there is no better time to try it!

Windows vs Linux: what's the best operating system?

"https://www.itpro.co.uk/operating-systems/24841/windows-vs-linux-whats-the-best-operating-system"

A lot of people who have a Linux system instead install a free, open source alternative. There are applications for almost every program you can think of. If this isn't the case, then programs such as WINE or a VM can run Windows software in Linux instead.

Further Edits.. 

@exile360

It's Time To Pay Attention To Zorin OS 15, The Best Desktop Linux Distro You've Never Heard Of

"https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2019/06/05/its-time-to-pay-attention-to-zorin-os-15-the-best-desktop-linux-distro-youve-never-heard-of/#c9bd6521c80e"

Zorin OS 15 launches today(jun 9th), and I'm going to go out on a limb and proclaim that Zorin OS is the best desktop Linux distribution you’ve never heard of. Then again, it’s quietly had more than 17 million downloads since the initial Zorin OS 1.0 launch in July 2009. And though DistroWatch is far from a reliable metric, Zorin OS is ranked higher on that site than KDE Neon, Red Hat, Arch Linux and my current daily driver: Pop!_OS.

Briefly circling back to the Windows 7 end-of-life discussion, the Zorin brothers say they're planning to expand the team towards the end of 2019. They say they're on-track to launch an organization-wide computer management SaaS (Software as a Service) tool which will make it easier for more businesses, schools and government customers to switch from Windows to Zorin OS.

"We were inspired to begin expanding and creating this tool after we saw that the city of Vicenza in Italy made the switch to Zorin OS a couple of years ago," says Arytom Zorin via email.

First and foremost, you can install the proprietary (more performant) Nvidia driver during the OS installation.

The second thing: there are normally some additional moving parts necessary to use Proton – the compatibility tool that allows Steam gamers to play Windows games on the Steam for Linux client. Zorin automatically pulls down and installs the Vulkan API dependencies when you download and install Steam. The latest Nvidia drivers are also available without having to enable any additional software sources (or “repositories.”)

Finally, I’m quite an advocate for Lutris, a piece of software that makes it really easy to play Windows games from the Epic Games store, Origin and other clients. Not only is Lutris available in the Zorin OS software store, but it automatically grabs Wine 4.0 which is required for many Lutris games to work properly. In other distros there are sometimes several extra steps to get all this humming smoothly.

Closing Thoughts

I've only spent 48 hours with Zorin OS 15, and I intend to spend a lot more time with Ultimate, Core and the upcoming Lite version featuring Xfce. So please don't treat this as a final review. But I am really enthralled by this distro, especially with its simplicity and focus on appealing to existing Windows and macOS users. It's worth checking out if you're a Linux veteran, and definitely worth recommending to friends and family interested in ditching Windows or macOS.

Edited November 28, 2019 by sman

[exile360]

Yes, I'm well aware.  I have friends who have been Linux enthusiasts for years.  Game compatibility isn't quite there yet and finding a distro I could actually stand is another matter (I've looked at Zorin already along with many others).  Eventually I may have to make the decision to switch, but it won't be any time soon.  The end of updates isn't the end of the world, especially considering the extensive lengths I go to in order to secure my devices (much of which has rendered my system immune to many common exploit attack vectors; for example, my system was completely immune to the EternalBlue exploit used to spread the WannaCry/WannaCrypt0r ransomware because I already had SMB, file/printer sharing and remote access disabled on my system at the time).

[sman]

@exile360I tried many distros, incl. Zorin (not the latest one, but maybe a year or two back) and found it slow and dropped it. Even Ubuntu, Lubuntu, Linux Mint etc. but none fit me as all of them were not stable and finally I found only Peppermint to really work for me (hv just 2Gb memory, so finding a distro to suit it, is the problem) and I'm not into any gaming, so for only my trading & general purpose browsing, this is sufficient.

But i do want to expand and provide trading services for others too , but find only skeptics around, who really don't understand the power of my strategy. It's a phenomenol strategy with good returns, so if people come up, would think about system upgradation and for now, peppermint (& slax os which is a lean distro and bootable to RAM suit my BIOS based system) are my inx favs.

[sman]

It's not only about OS support, once EOL is reached, slowly browsers & apps too will follow suit to drift away and stop support for OS (as happened with XP)..So, inevitably OS shift will become a necessity and unavoidable.

Edit -

@exile360

Operating Systems: Rust Redox – An Next-Generation Attempt to Plug Linux OS Gaps

"http://formtek.com/blog/operating-systems-rust-redox-an-next-generation-attempt-to-plug-linux-os-gaps/"

Rust is a language developed by Mozilla to help developers be more productive in writing all sorts of software.  Even the software for operating systems which normally tends to be written in languages like C or assembly for optimized performance.

A group of developers have decided to try to use Rust to build a ‘next-generation’ operating system.  Linux is the model, but the goal is to rethink and re-implement to improve the existing capabilities of Linux.

Redox Os is MIT-licensed open source.  And it is small, coming in at just 26MB out of the box.  The goal was to build a microkernel that shipped with the bare minimum of capabilities but which could be expanded, as needed, depending on the requirements of a project.

The Redox documentation says that “…we will not replicate the mistakes made by others. This is probably the most important tenet of Redox. In the past, bad design choices were made by Linux, Unix, BSD, HURD, and so on. We all make mistakes, that’s no secret, but there is no reason to repeat others’ mistakes.”

An interesting abstraction in Redox is the idea that everything is like a URL.  This is a change from Linux’s idea that every item is a file.  It simplifies how handlers are registered and provides more consistency.

Edited November 29, 2019 by sman

[exile360]

Yes, eventually 7 support will be dropped, however there is a big difference between 7's situation and XP's and it all comes down to the APIs and kernel.  Windows 10 isn't different enough from 7 in that regard to make programming for 7 compatibility a chore.  Basically if your application was developed for 10 it will work on 7, and this includes low level components like drivers.  The only real 10-only API I'm aware of is DirectX 12, however Microsoft has even backported DX12 into the Windows 7 versions of some games and many game developers are leaning more towards Vulkan, an equivalent bare metal API that boasts the same features and capabilities as DX12 and is compatible with many platforms, including Linux, Android, Mac OS, and yes, even Windows 7.  It isn't like it was for XP where it only supported DX9 and was left in the dust when games started coming out supporting only DX10 (Vista) or DX11 (7) because modern games are more focused on performance and utilizing more powerful hardware, especially for multicore CPUs, and this means that API's like Vulkan have become very popular, and Vulkan runs just fine on Windows 7.

[sman]

@exile360Dx12 and Win 7 compatibility vs win10 is different..

There are, however, some limits to support. Only 64-bit Windows 7 with SP1 installed is supported. There’s no PIX or D3D12 debug layer on Windows 7, no shared surfaces or cross-API interop, no SLI/LDA support, no D3D12 video, and no WARP support. According to Microsoft, “HDR support is orthogonal to D3D12 and requires DXGI/Kernel/DWM functionalities on Windows 10 but not on Windows 7.” This seems to imply that HDR content can work in Windows 7, but it may be on the developer to implement it properly.

"https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/297092-microsoft-makes-it-easier-to-bring-directx-12-games-to-windows-7"

There are technical differences between DX12 on Windows 7 and DX12 on Windows 10. DirectML (Direct Machine Learning) is not supported under Windows 7, but all other features implemented in the October 2018 Windows 10 update are supported. There are differences in terms of API usage (D3D12 on Windows 7 uses different Present APIs), and some fence usage patterns are also unsupported.

There are, however, some limits to support. Only 64-bit Windows 7 with SP1 installed is supported. There’s no PIX or D3D12 debug layer on Windows 7, no shared surfaces or cross-API interop, no SLI/LDA support, no D3D12 video, and no WARP support. According to Microsoft, “HDR support is orthogonal to D3D12 and requires DXGI/Kernel/DWM functionalities on Windows 10 but not on Windows 7.” This seems to imply that HDR content can work in Windows 7, but it may be on the developer to implement it properly.

Microsoft has published additional resources on the topic, including a NuGet package and a D3D12 code sample that runs on Windows 7 and 10 with the same binary.

Why Make DX12 More Accessible?
This is honestly a little surprising to see. Windows 7 is supposed to be headed for firm retirement in a matter of months. The implication here is that Microsoft is taking this step to cater to gamers that are still using Windows 7, but the Steam Hardware Survey suggests that’s a distinct minority of gamers. Windows 10 has a 71.57 percent market share according to the SHS, while Windows 7 64-bit is pegged at 20.4 percent. What’s interesting here is that the SHS actually tilts much more towards Windows 10 than a generic OS survey.

Chinese-Desktop-Market-Share

StatCounter data puts Windows 10 at 58.63 percent of the market as of July, compared with 31.22 percent of Windows 10. This suggests that gamers tend to update their hardware more quickly than the mass market, which makes sense. But from what we’ve read, the Windows 7 gamers may be concentrated in China, where it remains the most popular OS. 49.46 percent of Chinese gamers are using Windows 7, compared with just 41.13 percent of PC gamingSEEAMAZON_ET_135 See Amazon ET commerce occurring under Windows 10. Even if we assume Chinese gamers are more likely to be using Windows 10 — and it’s not clear they are — there’s still a much larger share of users in that nation.

It’s not clear at all how Microsoft is going to deal with that problem as it relates to overall support, but it could be that this is Microsoft’s way of providing a certain degree of backward-compatibility without being willing to do anything equivalent as far as continuing to provide security features. Microsoft wants its customer base — all of it — to be Windows 10. It’s surprising to see the company extending DX12 backward, but we’d be stunned if they granted Windows 7 a stay of reprieve and kept publishing patches for it.

MS could also be hoping to encourage devs to adopt DX12 more widely. Three years after debut, neither DX12 nor Vulkan has done much to revolutionize APIs or gaming. Developers do use the APIs, but we’ve seen comparatively little use of them to pull off anything unique. The need to support older hardware and a wide range of users, plus the fact that these APIs require developers to be more familiar with the underlying hardware, seems to be a drag on their overall usage.

[sman]

After EOL, w/o brower updates, running latest media , netflix, prime video etc. would become a problem. yes, know that you use sea monkey (which is not in the list of supported browsers for Prime Video) but still further up, will face issues in media play even in FB, twitter etc.

Prepare to pay

In a blog post by Microsoft 365 Corporate VP Jared Spataro, it was announced that from January 14, 2020 a monthly fee, that doubles each year, will be implemented for Windows 7 users in order to keep their computers safe. Unfortunately, this offering is only available to Windows 7 Professional customers in Volume licensing. So the everyday user running Windows 7 Home will not be applicable.

A pricing plan obtained by ZDNet for Windows 7 Support is as followed:

 • Year 1 (January 2020 - January 2021): $50 per device, with Windows 10 Enterprise add-on rate of $25.

• Year 2 (January 2021 - January 2022): $100 per device, with Windows 10 Enterprise add-on rate of $50.

• Year 3 (January 2022 - January 2023): $200 per device, with Windows 10 Enterprise add-on rate of $100.  

While this increasing payment model was created to incentivize Windows 7 users to upgrade, the option to hold on to your preferred platform remains if you’re willing to pay for it. Whatever you choose to do, we hope these tips help!

[exile360]

DirectML has nothing to do with gaming (machine learning is strictly for the scientific community/cloud databases etc., and of course, companies like Malwarebytes, but that's all on the backend, on powerful servers, not desktop PCs or laptops), HDR is nigh useless until monitor manufacturers adopt the full HDR-10 spec rather than the lackluster, nasty looking HDR-4 that they try and pass off a selling point (if you own such a monitor you're much better off leaving HDR OFF in any games you play that might support it), and yes, I have Windows 7 x64 SP1 fully patched.

If you're going to try and argue a point, I'd appreciate it if you'd at least throw in some of your own thoughts and experiences.  Copy/pasting the contents of an old article on the subject (which I read back when it first came out, by the way, so I was already well aware of it) isn't going to persuade me to change my perspective.  Right now the reality is that gaming on Windows 7 isn't very limited at all and likely won't be for some time to come.  This may change when the new consoles come out at the end of next year, but until then Windows 7/DX11 can do pretty much everything that the current gen consoles can do (and more in my case since I have more powerful hardware than what ships in even the newer PS4 Pro and XBOX One-X versions) so if there is a game that my rig can't handle, I haven't found it yet.  Of course it also depends on the game itself, because a lot of newer games I actually have no interest in playing because I tend to hate things like loot boxes, pay-to-win and microtransactions (terrible things included in most modern titles to try and drive extra revenue to game publishers), and I never play online/multiplayer, so if a game isn't a single player title or lacks a single player mode I won't be interested in installing it anyway, even if it were free and since most game publishers focus on multiplayer these days because of its popularity, this also greatly reduces the number of games I'm even interested in playing in the first place.

I'm also very picky when it comes to the types of games I will play.  I like fast twitch based arena shooters like Quake III Arena and the Unreal series (but again, only in single player against bots, no humans, no servers) and I like 2D/2.5D fighting games (SF series/other Capcom fighters/MK/Injustice/SoulCalibur/Tekken to an extent etc.) and that's about it.  There are a few other genres I dabble in from time to time, like the occasional MetroidVania title I'll get into like the Darksiders series but I'm real picky.

I hate 'realistic' shooters where the player is forced to move at realistic/slow speeds and can't jump 2 feet off the ground because it feels like I'm playing with my feet stuck in mud and I'm just sniper bait waiting to be picked off with a headshot (which is what usually happens when you try to actually play any of these 'modern' titles and actually play the game instead of sitting in one spot hiding, waiting for a potential victim to walk by).  That type of gameplay is slow and boring to me.  I'd much rather pick up a rocket launcher, take off at 90MPH, do a rocket jump, dive 200 feet in the air, strafing the entire time and nail an enemy across the map with a well timed shot that mates my rocket with their head because I was clever enough to calculate where they were GOING to be instead of shooting based on where they were at the time I pulled the trigger.  There are a few games of this type still around today, but none from big studios and none that require Windows 10 or even DX12 (the Unreal beta was abandoned by Epic after the unexpected success of Overwatch, pulling all their devs to that project, Quake Champions pretty much suffered the same fate because the devs tried, and failed, to turn a popular twitch based arena shooter into a class based/character based casual shooter like Overwatch (a very bad idea since the entire point of fast shooters is to have a higher skill ceiling to cater to hardcore gamers who have been playing shooters for years rather than casuals with consoles instead of mice)).

I just bought SoulCalibur VI because it was on sale for cheap on Steam thanks to their holiday sale, and while I was apprehensive at first thinking my hardware might not be able to handle it well at max settings at 1440p, it turns out I was very wrong.  The game runs like a dream and even defaulted to the max settings when I started it up because it detected the level of hardware I have.

Windows 7 support will eventually end, but by the time it does, the level of hardware needed to run modern games will be so different that not even DirectX 12 support will matter any more.  There are big new features that are just going to start to show up in the next generation consoles at the end of next year that will give a hint of what the future holds, but even they are limited in capability compared to where things are going.  In the future full path traced rendering (not ray tracing, full on path tracing) will be the method of choice for photorealism in games and that will require a level of hardware that we haven't seen yet.  Something that won't be available for at least 5~10 years, so I fully expect I'll be just fine sticking with Windows 7 until then, assuming Steam doesn't arbitrarily drop support for it as soon as Microsoft does (which I don't expect they will).  Hopefully by the time that day comes, I'll have a real viable alternative to Windows, or better yet, maybe Microsoft will have pulled their heads out of their rears and will provide an operating system that was designed with the user/customer in mind instead of being so dead set on getting in their way and spying on them and I can return to Windows, but we'll just have to wait and see.  Either way, Windows 10 isn't an option for me, and right now, as well as for the foreseeable future, Linux is not a better choice than Windows 7 in any way, so 7 is where I will be.  We'll see what happens in the next 5~10 years and what the landscape looks like, but until then I'm good right where I am.

[exile360]

I'm not a corporate/enterprise user so that information doesn't apply to me.  I won't pay Microsoft for support/patches.  I'll receive my last updates on January 20th like everybody else.

I also don't use Sea Monkey, I use SRWare Iron which is based on Chromium.  And no, Netflix and all those other sites won't be dropping support for browsers that run on Windows 7 any time soon either.  They have no reason to because there are exactly 0 modern web APIs that they would ever use that aren't already perfectly compatible with Windows 7, including ones that haven't been widely adopted yet but will be in the future like IPv6 (which Windows 7 natively supports).

Edited November 30, 2019 by exile360

[sman]

Tks for all the info @exile360. I'm not a gamer and trading occupies large chunk of the day for me from 9am - midnight . so can't add anything from my side. But how long browsers will continue to support Win 7 for latest media plays?? And prime video doesn't run on Chromium as I face problems in using prime video in my Linux distro with chromium and have to switch to FF based distro to run Prime..Even I face problems with playing some  media under chromium in FB , twitter etc. while using Slax OS..9and have to download the part media and run it in a new browser tab- an irritant)..

 

Edit -

the problem with prime is due to the need for DRM compliance, and browsers which support it and recognised by Prime..

And when it's latest media plays it's about the media codecs supported by browser and also Flash support which is under phasing out..

Edited November 30, 2019 by sman

[exile360]

Considering the fact that they all use HTML5, they should continue to support it for the foreseeable future for many years to come.  I mean my current browsers all support full 4K resolution playback and beyond (even up to 8K if I had the bandwidth for it, but my internet isn't fast enough).

As for Prime, yes, it has an issue with some browsers.  This is one of the reasons I use 3 separate browsers.  I use SRWare Iron (portable) as my primary browser, I use Firefox portable for the handful of sites that don't work with it (like Amazon Prime video), and I also still use Internet Explorer 11 for a few sites that require it (though they are increasingly rare these days so I find myself using it less and less).

If you look at the history of browser support/websites in general you'll find that it took a very long time before most sites stopped supporting Internet Explorer 6 simply because it had such a wide install base.  I am certain given the array of Windows 7 PCs/devices and older smart phones that are still in use that use older builds of Android that cannot be updated, that we will likewise see continued support for at least a handful of browsers that fully support Windows 7 for a very long time to come, and right now getting all of my software and games to run is far more important to me than the websites that are supported by the likes of Facebook and Twitter (and in fact I actively block those sites because I do not use social media and I block the sites/servers that are used for tracking purposes, including those belonging to Facebook and Twitter which are embedded in nearly every site on the internet just like Google's).

[exile360]

Another big factor here is the fact that Linux is no alternative to Windows when it comes to application compatibility, and chances are this will continue to be true for a long time to come, even if the version of Windows being compared to it is Windows 7 instead of Windows 10.  As I mentioned, most software and even drivers for hardware are no different when written for Windows 10 than Windows 7, however the same cannot be said for Linux as it is a totally different kernel, set of APIs, and platform.

For example, you cannot and likely will never be able to install and run any game that is based strictly on DirectX 12 on Linux, even using Wine, simply because it is such a low-level/bare metal API.  This isn't true of Vulkan of course, which should work quite well in Linux, however if Vulkan compatibility is the only issue then Windows 7 is not a problem because Vulkan runs just fine on Windows 7 with all of the same capabilities it has on Windows 10 and Linux.  In fact, the argument could be made that device drivers are far more stable on Windows 7 than they tend to be on Linux, and one could even argue 7 is more stable than Windows 10 in this regard, especially considering all of the update woes many Windows 10 users have faced over the past couple of years with regular issues either preventing them from updating to the latest patch/release of Windows 10 or breaking hardware drivers for many of their components (in particular network drivers, sound drivers and occasionally graphics drivers have frequently had issues with major Windows 10 updates).  Because the code of 7 is so stable and well tested across the devices it runs on, Windows 7 users like myself don't generally have to worry about installing the latest Windows Updates each month in fear of them potentially breaking our systems or messing up our drivers.  That stability is a big deal, especially for large businesses and enterprises and you can bet that many large organizations will be taking up Microsoft on their offer of paid support/update extensions for the coming years even with the cost escalating each year simply due to the fact that upgrading all of their systems to support 10 and dealing with all of the changes and issues that come with it would be a far more costly proposition.  Their number crunchers and IT personnel will certainly come to the same conclusions and see Microsoft's pricing for extended support for Windows 7 as a bargain, especially since it will require much less work/man hours for their IT people, and no new learning/training for the users of their endpoints/devices in their environments (something that would certainly be a requirement given the major changes in Windows 10 compared to Windows 7).

[sman]

@exile360My needs are simple, trading and general purpose browsing, while you have a larger criteria software & gaming to cater to. So, any OS switch has to be in line with one's need. Agreed Linux is not alternative to Windows. I would in-fact watch out for Redox OS which seems to hold lot of promise with a distinct approach..

[Pierre75]

@sman and @exile360, interesting posts. I intend to stick with Windows 7 Home Premium for as long as possible. The only change I may have make is change to a new Antivirus as MSE will no longer be supported. I was thinking of using Bit Defender Free. There is a website which I tracked down which may supply updates for W7 after M$ pulls the plug. I will dig it up and post it (just found it).

hxxps://www.0patch.com/

[exile360]

Hmm, 0patch.  I never heard about them, but it looks interesting.  I'll have to do some research and see if I can determine if they are for real or just blowing smoke.  Apparently they've been around for at least a few years and they've made some headlines on the web in the past so perhaps they are for real; at least I haven't stumbled across anyone saying that they're not yet, so that's always a good sign.

[sman]

Selective patching effectiveness?? feedback from users would help..

[exile360]

Real testing by pen testers and against exploit POC's would help even more.  I'll be checking for such data, especially if I decide to go with their solution.