Is SL finished for win7 users ?

[Rick Nightingale]

Until just recently (when I finally stopped needing to test Cisco stuff)  I had four virtual WinXP installations that I would run in parallel for network testing clients. XP still makes an excellent platform for lots of things. Those were each on a different VLAN and routed out through VMWare Workstation and into my Cisco lab. I would monitor the network traffic on the same box on the native Windows 7 install on it. It had two NICs. One NIC had all network functions removed so was quiet (Windows is very noisy on a network!), and that was my Wireshark input. That took a couple of tricks that I bet Windows 10 won't allow.

Add to that software that connected to all of my Cisco kit (15 assorted routers, firewall appliances, VOIP appliances and switches) in both serial and TCP/IP so no matter what, I could talk to it all. Oh, and I could remote power everthing individually too, from the same PC. And play Witcher 3 at almost max settings. And of course SL.

All of that, and I never once needed Windows 10!

Edited February 6, 2023 by Rick Daylight

[animats]

32-bit is iffy at this point, but Win7 x64 with enough memory ought to still work.

[Frionil Fang]

Used Win7 until last December (i7-5820K I think, Geforce 970, 16 GB memory) with very few problems other than things chugging up if the GPU ran out of VRAM, turns out the last 0.5 GB of the 970's VRAM is super slow. Was forced to "upgrade" to Windows 11 with my new computer, quotes very sassily intentional, and I've had more trouble with SL and other software since then than many years with Win7 ever gave me, even with the jury rigging required to get some "unsupported" things to run on 7. Bricking the computer with updates on second boot was just a taste of what was to come, but at least 11 was smart enough to undo the damage automatically, I guess.

I'm getting too old for this. Please stop the ride.

Quote

I can't get off the carousel, I can't get off the carousel
I can't get off the carousel, I can't get off this world

-- Babylon Zoo - Spaceman

 

[JeromFranzic]

I just want to say I admire y'all who still natively run Win7 on a PC.

I run a older cheapo Pentium B960 CPU laptop that came with Win7 home 64bit preinstalled. Still have the image for that install on a external HD, but it now runs Win11/xubuntu LTS (Linux)/Android-x86. Yes, I fit all three OSs onto a 512 GB SSD in mid 2020! At some point (perhaps this year lol) I will likely scrub off 11 and just run Linux and Droid on that. I'm amazed that the laptop still runs at all, after 11 years of (ab)use*.

*I have done the usual maintenance tasks on it, and even though it's a cheapo POS, use a cooling pad with it, 'cause I want it to last a while! It was my bedroom TV last year when my 24 inch quit working after five years. Ha!

 

Edited February 6, 2023 by JeromFranzic

[Lyssa Greymoon]

7 hours ago, cunomar said:

i5 M520

There's your problem. It's not Windows 7, it's your 13 year old GPU Intel abandoned support for ten years ago and doesn't meet SL's minimum system requirements. I'm pretty sure you can put Windows 10 on that thing, but it's not going to make anything any better. I have a similarly old Thinkpad around here somewhere running Windows 10 and I don't recall ever being able to run SL on it.

Edited February 6, 2023 by Lyssa Greymoon

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

I still run Win7 on a couple machines at my bar.  They run the system that our touch-screen ordering system uses. The bar ordering system won't work on Win8 or higher and is no longer available as a perpetual license.

A new version is available only as a SAAS and would've cost us many times what our old system cost and has less features. We also have a Win7 laptop at home that works like a kitten and I sometimes log into SL on it.

 

[cunomar]

42 minutes ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

There's your problem. It's not Windows 7, it's your 13 year old GPU Intel abandoned support for ten years ago and doesn't meet SL's minimum system requirements. I'm pretty sure you can put Windows 10 on that thing, but it's not going to make anything any better. I have a similarly old Thinkpad around here somewhere running Windows 10 and I don't recall ever being able to run SL on it.

It has run SL for years as my spare laptop , not great but enough to rez other peoples avatars , right up until  last night .

This morning Firestorm insisted i upgrade to the newer version .

[Caeruleiae]

28 minutes ago, cunomar said:

It has run SL for years as my spare laptop , not great but enough to rez other peoples avatars , right up until  last night .

This morning Firestorm insisted i upgrade to the newer version .

Can you upgrade to one of the newer, but not the newest, versions? The newest update put their 3 version rule in place and it blocked version 6.5.3 which is probably why it told you to get a newer version. I don't think it's the windows version causing a problem, I think it's that you're using firestorm 6.5.3 and that's why.

Just because it says it's not supported on firestorm's site, doesn't actually mean it won't work at all. It just means if you have problems with it, they won't help you, because they'll automatically say - we don't support WIN7 and leave it at that. Lots of companies will tell you the same thing. It doesn't mean that you can't do what you want, it just means, if you have an issue, you're on your own. 

[Lyssa Greymoon]

20 minutes ago, cunomar said:

It has run SL for years as my spare laptop

And now it can't. Because it's an obsolete configuration no one supports, tests against or fixes bugs on.

One thing you can try is download the last version of Firestorm that worked and try using the --channel startup switch to get around the old version block. Right click your Firestorm shortcut and select properties, then in the Target field add --channel cunomar to the end.

[JeromFranzic]

30 minutes ago, cunomar said:

It has run SL for years as my spare laptop , not great but enough to rez other peoples avatars , right up until  last night .

This morning Firestorm insisted i upgrade to the newer version .

Can you run other viewers on that? The few times I've run SL on my old laptop, I used Cool VL viewer, the stable version. I only attempt it through Linux as Windows 11* has too much overhead.

*Yup, installed that with an installer that has the settings which bypass TPM detection. On a lark, wasn't expecting it to work at all but it works OK for now. Haven't installed the 22H2 update on it.

[cunomar]

The linden viewer doesn't even bother to give an error message just puts a dead icon on my screen .

Firestorm  tries to start - crashes , then says unable to load basic shaders .

Edited February 7, 2023 by cunomar

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

20 hours ago, cunomar said:

My car/computer = my choice .

Your frame rate = also your choice

[cunomar]

Yeah , truth is i only login to watch myself being bored out of habit ,  hence i won't buy a computer for sl . Ram and ssd just arrived so we shall see .

Edited February 7, 2023 by cunomar

[cunomar]

Nope , missing DLL error which i remember happening when i installed win7 years ago , took months to find the solution and i have no recollection of what it was .

Copying my old hard drive seems no simple task any more or maybe you just shouldn't try it at 4 in the morning when patience is in short supply .

[StarlanderGoods]

Like others stated, I dont think the OS is the issue, but the fact that you are using a 32bit OS.

I loved Win7 but I eventually had to migrate to Win 10 for compatibility reasons, this is a cycle that has repeated itself since the DOS days, arbitrarily wanting to stop ptime at 32bit Win7 is not a long term solution, it wasnt a long term solution 10 years ago.

Honestly, people keep complaining that SL is dated, and this might be one of the reasons, having to support extremely outdated rigs. Win 7 is from 2009 !  64bit computers have been available sincec 2003.  I would love if I could play SL in my ATARI 800XL, connected to my 14 in tube TV, but at some point we have to accept that technology moved on.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

53 minutes ago, cunomar said:

Nope , missing DLL error which i remember happening when i installed win7 years ago , took months to find the solution and i have no recollection of what it was .

Copying my old hard drive seems no simple task any more or maybe you just shouldn't try it at 4 in the morning when patience is in short supply .

Odds are you don't have the runtime dll for the right version of MS Visual C++ installed, you can download and install these from the web in minutes...

Just install them all...

[cunomar]

You were right about ms visual c , i figured that out when i realized my internet explorer was so out of date it wouldn't open (i use firefox) installed i.e 11 and the necessary updates and then ms visual c .

Catznip lets me login though i think from what ive read the Radegast viewer would suit my laptop better though it gives a dodgy signature error or something and won't install .

[Pixie Kobichenko]

Why doesn’t a Linden weigh in on threads like these?  They’re watching everything on the boards now like Big Brother.  One of them should clarify things ithey would know the answer to.  🤷‍♀️ 

[Rick Nightingale]

I really don't think there's a need for a Linden to weigh in. Is Win 7 officially supported? No, it's clearly stated Windows 10 is the minimum. Does it still work just fine (as fine as it does on anything, anyway) on Windows 7? Yes, as evidenced by me, and several others. No company is going to say anything other then "it's not supported - upgrade your OS" at this point.

Will it stop running on Windows 7 one day? Of course it wiil.

Edited February 8, 2023 by Rick Daylight

[Pixie Kobichenko]

6 minutes ago, Rick Daylight said:

I really don't think there's a need for a Linden to weigh in. Is Win 7 officially supported? No, it's clearly stated Windows 10 is the minimum. Does it wtill work just fine (as fine as it does on anything, anyway) on Windows 7? Yes, as evidenced by me, and several others. No company is goinng to say anything other then "it's not supported - upgrade your OS" at this point.

Will it stop running on Windows 7 one day? Of course it wiil.

99% of the thread is computer tech savvy things that maybe not everyone understands (I don’t).  It’s way above my head.  Lots of back & forths on if it’s deD or not supported & specs that I wouldn’t be able to understand with a dictionary explaining an encyclopedia (you know what I mean).  Just seems to me personally when they see these sorts of conversations it might be helpful, since it is their product.

[Kadah Coba]

There has been only reasons to migrate to a 64-bit OS and viewer for a very long time.

This ancient chart of mine of FS crash stats is exactly 10 years and 1 month old today.

Edited February 8, 2023 by Kadah Coba

[Coffee Pancake]

15 hours ago, Pixie Kobichenko said:

Why doesn’t a Linden weigh in on threads like these?  They’re watching everything on the boards now like Big Brother.  One of them should clarify things ithey would know the answer to.  🤷‍♀️ 

Because the answer is simple .. 

Once MS drop support for an OS, so do LL. 

Support isn't just security patches for those on the OS, it's development tools too.

The non techie outcome is ... sooner or later, there is the probability that LL will put out a viewer that simply doesn't run on Windows 7, and that will be tough luck.

All the TPVs are in the same boat unless they explicitly decide to keep supporting it. I'm well equipped to do viewer testing on a huge range of OS and hardware combinations if needed for Catznip. You know what I wont be keeping around .. A windows 7 box.

Anyone on Windows 7 needs to upgrade to 10, it's really very good. (11 is garbage) If not Windows 10 or Apple, all Windows SL viewers run 99% perfectly with proton-wine if there isn't a Linux native version of the viewer you like -  as most everyone uses firestorm which does have a native Linux port, it's not a big deal.

 

Pictured  - Windows Caztnip On Gentoo Linux.

[steeljane42]

Windows 7/10 aside, I would imagine when the PBR viewer gets released (and TPVs will get updated with its code), then it just won't run on a such machine anymore, not counting the text-only viewers/modes.

Knowing LL they'll probably take forever to finish it (and given the amount of issues with it right now it's for the best), but when they will the lowest system requirements will get bumped up some more as the forward renderer won't be a thing anymore. Unfortunate for those on the ultra low end machines, but maybe some creators will finally stop "overbaking" their textures and using the excuses like "Some people are not using ALM" for that. One can dream at least.

Edited February 9, 2023 by steeljane42

[cunomar]

Its like electric cars , only 1% of the worlds population meet the criteria of wanting to own one , being able to facilitate the use of one , being able to afford one .

Everyone else can live in a hutch at work and be fed rabbit food - and kids are voting for this !

[panterapolnocy]

2 hours ago, steeljane42 said:

then it just won't run on a such machine anymore

ALM itself is not much more resource-intensive; the shadows are. If you switch them off in the graphics settings, the damage to performance will be less. Of course, the viewer still needs to download and render material textures, so it will still be a bit slower. Forward rendering will most likely be removed in the final PBR version of the viewer.

2 hours ago, steeljane42 said:

maybe some creators will finally stop "overbaking" their textures

This will only happen when some other creators stop telling residents to set the LOD to 4.0 or higher.

1 hour ago, cunomar said:

Its like electric cars , only 1% of the worlds population meet the criteria of wanting to own one , being able to facilitate the use of one , being able to afford one .

The truth is, when you buy a computer today, you should start saving for the next one. So, when the current one reaches its end-of-life, you'll have enough money for an upgrade. For example, if a person started saving $5 per month (so not much, really) since the launch of Windows 7 in October 2009, they would have saved 160 months x $5 = $800 by now. But that needs planning.