I remember when the Dolphin emulator dropped Windows 7 a few years ago. The absolute consternation, whining and even threats(!) against the developers was utterly sickening
Even as someone who enjoys "retro tech" far more than anything modern anymore, I'm hardly going to berate people to bend over backwards to keep supporting my ancient systems with modern software.
If someone wants to backport newer software as a hobby (such as Cameron Kaiser with TenFourFox, and the many downstream derivatives that spawned over the years) it's a welcome delight. But it should never be an "obligation"
Many (all?) of the people using windows 7 as their only OS at this point are zealots. It’s not surprising that some would respond that way. It’s largely a group of people who will never willingly change their habits and any removal of support is an assault. There were many valid reasons to not upgrade to 10 but the rational people have given up and upgraded or migrated to Linux/mac over the past decade.
Yeah, I’m not sure who else would be raging about dolphin dropping support. Not talking about people who keep an extra w7 box around for legacy software which Dolphin is not.
Why as their only OS? I assume many people connect their old PC to their TV and install a bunch of emulators. I suppose Linux could be an alternate solution for those machines.
A PC like this that doesn’t support Windows 10 is so outdated that even a $50 investment would get you a massive improvement.
The only reasons to keep Windows 7 are for niche SW/HW that only work on it and have no replacement, or because you want it out of principle. Neither of these are reasons to expect everyone else to bend over backwards to accommodate you.
Other than needing more RAM, all the hardware that works for Win 7 will work with Windows 10 and 11. Most software should as well.
Windows 7 drivers are compatible with windows 10 and 11 so there really isn't a reason you couldn't continue using basically any hardware after an upgrade.
What is the issue with building for Windows 7 target on Windows 10/11 host? Not that the team is obligated to support ancient OSes, but I am not following their justification. If it is just the fact that they can't properly test if the build works on 7, then they could call it "best effort" support.
> Due to GitHub upcoming lack of support to Windows7/8 action runners, this will be our last release officially supporting those platforms. As they have been unsupported for years by Microsoft, we recommend you upgrade to play OpenRCT2 for security reasons!
Those "security reasons" start more and more to look like "think of the children". The biggest entry point for exploits nowadays is the web browser, yet nobody cares about it (just look at the list of CVEs fixed at every browser release).
There actually used to be a time using outdated browsers was a massive issue. The thing is that portion of the problem is solved now, every browser auto updates at an extremely high pace and it has become accepted. Auto update of evergreen operating systems is still extremely unpopular and occurs at a much lower pace. All things involved have massive piles of CVEs getting fixed all the time, it's still an improvement to consume them.
Where are all the stories of these Windows 7 users getting hacked due to memory corruption CVEs or whatever? Whenever I hear hacking stories nowadays, it's from simple password reuse or SIM-swapping, stuff like that. Or Ransomware, sometimes, but you can counteract that with backups.
You might say, well the stories aren't there because of how many people upgrade their OS's nowadays, but apparently enough people are on Windows 7 to make a stink (rudely, unfortunately) when Dolphin dropped Windows 7 support. And we all know how bad the Android OS upgrade situation is.
The remaining Windows 7 users (at least the intentional ones) will loudly make a stink in various niches on occasion when they want to be heard but they individually have no reason to harass anyone about how they are still using Windows 7 if it turns out badly for them. And, honestly, the person who knows enough to be able to care about being attached to Windows 7 probably has better general understanding of security & attacks than the average non-tech aware user as well. That doesn't imply using Windows 7 is great security advice, it's just part of the selection bias of who cares to stay.
If you wait long enough much of the modern malware becomes incompatible though :D.
While I agree that there are lots of problems around security communication, I don't feel like the number of CVEs fixed is a good proxy for bad security, I would assume it's more the opposite. Like the more incident reports an airline company has, the safer it tends to be - the unsafe ones don't care to file them.
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