Is SL finished for win7 users ?

[Jaylinbridges]

47 minutes ago, panterapolnocy said:

But that needs planning.

And luck, like live for 15 years with no emergencies that require you to raid your computer piggy bank to survive.

Many middle age persons have no safety net in the USA, or savings.  

 

Edited February 9, 2023 by Jaylinbridges

[panterapolnocy]

36 minutes ago, Jaylinbridges said:

And luck, like live for 15 years with no emergencies that require you to raid your computer piggy bank to survive.

I'm not saying it's not true. But it's better to plan and think ahead regardless. I've been on Windows 7 myself until January 2022, because of that exact reason. Returning to Windows 7 topic - ESU, in its longest POS form (non-typical consumer version), will end in October 2024. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/faq/extended-security-updates - staying on it is definitely not the best idea. If hardware is the issue, then a light Debian-based (for compatibility) distribution may be useful - or a text-based Second Life viewer.

[Rick Nightingale]

Yep, all of the above.

For me, hardware isn't the issue right now. I'm on the last generations that could run Windows 7, at least without major driver headaches. I could run 10; everything except my scanner and my  printer (which is an ancient but unkillable big office machine) will work with Windows 10, although most of my electronics stuff (MCU and FPGA programmers and test equipment for instance) won't work either. I don't really do that stuff much now though.

I already use some hacked drivers from Windows 8 for improved performance but I'm getting to the stage that I really just want things to work™. Unfortunately, for me, that excludes Windows 10 for a number of reasons. At the moment Windows 7 definitely does what I need more than Windows 10 can. Even hacking libraries onto 7 to get a later Blender version to run on it... it works.

But some stuff doesn't. Latest photoshop... no chance. But do I need it? No. So far I don't need anything that I would need Windows 10 for.

Worst sign for me though that it's coming to an end was when Brave browser started popping up a 'you can't get any more updates because you are on Windows 7' a month ago or so. That's serious, because that is where we need security fixes and the like, and to keep up with the constant fiddling with the 'standards' to display websites. Once the other major browsers do that, I'm stumped.

No point me moaning about how things should or could be, this is how they are and it isn't something that will change for the better (like some SL stuff, but more so).

 

 

 

Edited February 9, 2023 by Rick Daylight

[Jaylinbridges]

1 hour ago, Rick Daylight said:

Once the other major browsers do that, I'm stumped.

Chrome and MS Edge already have stopped support for WIn 7.

Chrome 109 is the last version of Chrome that will support Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012 R2.  Chrome 110 (tentatively scheduled for release on February 7th, 2023) is the first version of Chrome that requires Windows 10 or later. You’ll need to ensure your device is running Windows 10 or later to continue receiving future Chrome releases. This matches Microsoft's end of support for Windows 7 ESU and Windows 8.1 extended support on January 10th, 2023.

And I get the nag screen in Chrome every time I start the browser now, about Win7 is no longer supported and I should upgrade to WIn 10/11.  But of course it will still work without updates (that change the style pages every update, grrr), until some day it won't.  So far MS is still updating the virus/spyware definitions every day though, for real-time Microsoft Security Essentials for WIn7.  The same continued for another year when they stopped WinXP support. 

Edited February 9, 2023 by Jaylinbridges

[cunomar]

The unwritten problem i worked out while whilst installing a new copy of windows 7 on a new and blank SSD is to use windows explorer 11 to find your visual studio downloads . And you have just days to install that before they kill the browser .

[shireena1]

Just as a test, I logged in to SL with a 3rd gen intel with ONBOARD 2500 hd graphics, using ubuntu linux, (the current desktop version) and the current firestorm linux viewer. The pc is around 12 years old.

Because i had onboard graphics, it lagged like crazy, and the actual view was pretty shocking, but it logged in, so I would suggest radegast viewer could work for shop models or bots. (although I haven't tried yet)

The picture is shocking quality, but it wasn't good to start with, and i had to size reduce it for here.

Edited February 9, 2023 by shireena1
added stuff, btw my main p.c is a new Win 11 pooter.

[Jaylinbridges]

17 minutes ago, cunomar said:

The unwritten problem i worked out while whilst installing a new copy of windows 7 on a new and blank SSD is to use windows explorer 11 to find your visual studio downloads . And you have just days to install that before they kill the browser .

The visual studio downloads are right on the Firestorm installation page. Just download and run the .exe  Not sure why you make everything so complicated for yourself.

If you see errors like “missing vcruntime.dll”, “missing msvcp.dll” or the application is not starting at all, then please download and install Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio for 64-bit operating systems or 32-bit operating systems.

Edited February 9, 2023 by Jaylinbridges

[cunomar]

Because im not a geek and would still be using my original first nokia phone had it not been lost at sea .

In rage and frustration i fix what i need to make it work then say a silent prayer it will be left alone to continue working ,hence i haven't updated my only email provider since i got it must be nearly 20 years ago .

That is the crux of why i hate win10 - they wont leave anything alone .

[Theresa Tennyson]

53 minutes ago, cunomar said:

Because im not a geek and would still be using my original first nokia phone had it not been lost at sea .

In rage and frustration i fix what i need to make it work then say a silent prayer it will be left alone to continue working ,hence i haven't updated my only email provider since i got it must be nearly 20 years ago .

That is the crux of why i hate win10 - they wont leave anything alone .

The thing that you're trying to do - continuing to use outdated hardware and software for uses that require dealing with the outside connected world*- will pretty much require you to be a "geek", if that means dealing with complicated technical settings.

___________________

*I have a computer at home that runs DR-DOS 6.0. Works fine. As long as I don't try to run any software from this millenium.

Edited February 9, 2023 by Theresa Tennyson

[Rick Nightingale]

An often-cited reason to dump Windows 7 is that it's been around since 2009 as if that is a bad thing. Can't deny its age; I was there, having skipped the pile of nonsense called Vista and jumping from XP to 7 with glee.

How long has Linux been around... a lot longer than that! Since 1991 in fact; I was there for that too. SUSE was my favourite distro when it came out. (I even used real Unix back in the day). Linux is still used. No-one says about that "it's too old, you need to upgrade". Sort of kills the 'it's old' argument dead IMO.

The only reason Windows 7 is dead/dying is that MS is deliberately killing it so it can force something else on us, for no-one's benefit but Microsoft's.

Edit: I'm just waffling on

 

 

Edited February 9, 2023 by Rick Daylight

[Lyssa Greymoon]

10 minutes ago, Rick Daylight said:

How long has Linux been around... a lot longer than that! Since 1991 in fact; I was there for that too (I even used real Unix back in the day). Linux is still used. No-one says about that "it's too old, you need to upgrade". Sort of kills the 'it's old' argument dead IMO.

If you're still using that 1991 build of Linux, it's too old, you need to upgrade.

[Rick Nightingale]

Thank you @Lyssa Greymoon I was waiting for someone to say that 😆 (Not that I usually bait traps, but...)

Yes, of course... Linux is still going strong because it has been updated but it is still 'Linux' at heart. MS could have done the very same with Windows 7 instead of saying it needed to be dumped for the next great thing which still didn't fix the bugs that have been in the core since XP.

Talking of bugs... one of the very first I encountered in testing 10 was something I complained about in 7 to MS (and I knew about it in XP and didn't expect to see it in 7). I was given a 'fix' for 7, which wasn't at all. Was promised (other people were too) that such bugs did not exist in 10. Yet, the very same networking bug is still 100% present. MS said some time later it had been fixed in the update. No, it hadn't - it was still there and probably still is to this day. Questions about it after that got locked because as far as they were concerned "it is fixed". MS lies, but tells us we need to get the latest version of Windows to correct things they cannot be even bothered to fix in that!

 

Edited February 9, 2023 by Rick Daylight

[Lyssa Greymoon]

2 hours ago, Rick Daylight said:

Yes, of course... Linux is still going strong because it has been updated but it is still 'Linux' at heart. MS could have done the very same with Windows 7

They did. Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 and 11 are all still NT.

[Theresa Tennyson]

8 minutes ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

They did. Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 and 11 are all still NT.

And, on the other hand, there were applications for XP that required service packs to be installed. XP wasn't necessarily even sufficient to run XP applications on its own.

[cunomar]

Windows employees just need lessons in consent .

Draw short straws to decide who gets thrown off the roof each morning should be in the jobs contract .

[Coffee Pancake]

SL is a primary hobby.

It's not realistic to buy one PC 10 years ago and then never need upgrade ever again.

Third party viewers like ours will do out best to stretch things out for you, but our resources are limited and there is only so much we can do. At the very best we're buying a little time to work out an upgrade, and maybe this time .. don't buy a budget business laptop.

[cunomar]

Don't buy a windows machine you must mean because surely you can't be suggesting anyone buy one with an operating system that doesn't work and is based on several other operating systems that didn't work and will be obsolete before they ever get around to fixing it .

Does anybody at all believe win11 will be any less awful than win10 ?

[pizza7]

30 minutes ago, cunomar said:

Don't buy a windows machine you must mean because surely you can't be suggesting anyone buy one with an operating system that doesn't work and is based on several other operating systems that didn't work and will be obsolete before they ever get around to fixing it .

Does anybody at all believe win11 will be any less awful than win10 ?

i am sorry but i dont really get your problems, win10 works faultless here for several years now, nada issues.

not updating is asking for problems eventually, or go linux yes.

[Kadah Coba]

11 hours ago, Rick Daylight said:

For me, hardware isn't the issue right now. I'm on the last generations that could run Windows 7, at least without major driver headaches. I could run 10; everything except my scanner and my  printer (which is an ancient but unkillable big office machine) will work with Windows 10, although most of my electronics stuff (MCU and FPGA programmers and test equipment for instance) won't work either. I don't really do that stuff much now though.

Run Win7 in a virtual machine, then run whatever currently supported OS you want on the host. The number of hax and compromises you'll need to stay on 7 has already beyond those needed in the opposite situation, and this will only increase during this year. I'm saying this coming from a position of still having to support a bunch of Win7 machines at work and have a very strong dislike for 8/10/11.

Also, what ancient and probably long EOL'd MCUs and FPGAs are you working with that don't have tool chains that work on anything newer than 7? I'm pretty sure every single MCU I've worked with over the past decade is supported by the current tools, though I could see that happening with some old FPGAs.

[Crim Mip]

Windows 7 is well past it's original end of life. I get it, upgrading to Windows 10 or 11, basically means a total reinstall of all software and maybe some messing about with settings in the bios. It's worth it. This is far less of a jump than the fact that SL will be moving from Open GL to Vulcan for it's graphics environment this year. This is either great news or horrible news depending on whether your GPU supports Vulcan. I hate to say it, but it's high time LL raises the bar to something approaching modern hardware and then takes full advantage of that.

[Henri Beauchamp]

34 minutes ago, Kadah Coba said:

Run Win7 in a virtual machine, then run whatever currently supported OS you want on the host.

Running Win7 in a VM won't allow you to run OpenGL applications such as the viewer... Beside, the whole point of keeping Win7 (against Win 10/11) is because it runs most applications faster (this is true of the viewer), so running it in a VM (even if you could for that particular app) on a slower system makes no sense whatsoever. 😜

34 minutes ago, Kadah Coba said:

The number of hax and compromises you'll need to stay on 7 has already beyond those needed in the opposite situation, and this will only increase during this year.

The main problem is to find proper drivers to go with modern hardware, especially modern CPUs with built-in USB controllers, for which the motherboards rarely ever implement alternate/supplementary USB ports that would be recognized natively by Win7... I managed to install a Win7 partition on an i7-9700K and a Zen2, using hacked drivers, but I'm not sure it would be possible any more with newer CPUs.

34 minutes ago, Kadah Coba said:

Also, what ancient and probably long EOL'd MCUs and FPGAs are you working with that don't have tool chains that work on anything newer than 7? I'm pretty sure every single MCU I've worked with over the past decade is supported by the current tools, though I could see that happening with some old FPGAs.

+1

And you do not even need Windows at all !

I can run most Windows programming software (e.g. Xgpro for a TL866 II+ programmer) under Linux, via Wine !... But it runs as well via a Windows VirtualBox VM running under Linux.

Also, MCU makers often provide native Linux tool chains (e.g. Microchip's MPLAB IDE+IPE)...

Edited February 9, 2023 by Henri Beauchamp

[Henri Beauchamp]

32 minutes ago, Crim Mip said:

This is far less of a jump than the fact that SL will be moving from Open GL to Vulcan for it's graphics environment this year.

You might be (alas), a tad bit optimistic on the release date for a Vulkan viewer...

32 minutes ago, Crim Mip said:

This is either great news or horrible news depending on whether your GPU supports Vulcan. I hate to say it, but it's high time LL raises the bar to something approaching modern hardware and then takes full advantage of that.

Vulkan-capable GPUs

That's a pretty big list, and most (i)GPUs released in the past 8 years or so can do it... Plus, there will likely be a transition time with OpenGL viewers still maintained for some time.

I'm afraid that the bar will be raised much sooner however, with the future PBR viewer (which, at least for now, got rid of the less demanding forward rendering mode)...

Edited February 9, 2023 by Henri Beauchamp

[Istelathis]

27 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

And you do not even need Windows at all !

Plus you can make Linux look like windows 7, I mean if someone really wanted to.  

https://tipsbeginners.com/how-to/ubuntu/essential-guide-how-to-make-linux-mint-look-like-windows-7/

Or Windows 95

https://lunduke.substack.com/p/make-linux-look-exactly-like-windows

Or an Amiga with New Icons?

https://lunduke.substack.com/p/make-linux-look-like-amiga-os

 

 

[Rick Nightingale]

10 hours ago, Kadah Coba said:

Also, what ancient and probably long EOL'd MCUs and FPGAs are you working with that don't have tool chains that work on anything newer than 7?

Ancient ones

Sorry, should have said CPLDs, not FPGAs there. My FPGAs and flash of course are still easy to do (JTAG).

I have an old Altera Master Programmer with a load of adapters that works off a custom interface card that doesn't work under Windows 10 and I'm not aware there was ever Linux software for it (could be...). Yes, long, long out of production but since I have had hundreds of chips, I frequently incorporated them into my projects. No need for current stuff (and I couldn't afford it) as I'm only an amateur, mostly. Plus a universal device programmer that plugs into a parallel port... fine on Windows 7 hardware, not so fine once Windows 10 gets on there plus the software balks. Couldn't be bothered trying in a VM since I had other means of programming what I needed. Shame, though, that programmer wasn't cheap! Was one of my 'investments' like the Altera Master.

Then there are a couple of customised POS keyboards that I use on my PCs like big function pads... can't program them in anything past Windows 7 even though once programmed they will then work on anything with USB. That I could do in a VM though.

 

[cunomar]

11 hours ago, Crim Mip said:

I get it, upgrading to Windows 10 or 11, basically means a total reinstall of all software and maybe some messing about with settings in the bios

 

Installing win10 couldn't be easier all you need is a free iso provided by windows downloaded to a usb dongle .

After about a year of tolerating win10 and learning my gtx1050 msi i resolved that it is easier and faster to remedy my printer problems by doing a clean install . Usually on a Friday when the printer gives me the paperwork i need to cross examine in order to calculate other peoples wages . Wages paid so now i can spend at least as much time again turning off every "useful" win10 feature i can find because its just influencer spyware which would have me believe i been wrong about my favourite colour , my gender , what food i like to eat , what cars i like to drive , etc , etc , etc for 50 years - rolls eyes .

And then i can install the stuff i actually use . A full day just to achieve basic function . 

I am not opposed to change , I would like the newest and best browser out there , trouble is they achieved that with win7 and have been going downhill ever since by hiding basic function beneath evermore layers of junk failed miserably to copy andriod and apple .

Windows 7+ operating system 2025 would do a lot to resolve the issue I reckon . A basic functioning platform able to download windows entire library of junk files should the user so wish .