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From: Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Microsoft makes a lot of money, Is Intel exceptionally
 unsuccessful as an architecture designer?
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 2024 15:35:05 +0300
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On Fri, 20 Sep 2024 11:02:39 +0200
David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

> On 20/09/2024 01:47, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> > On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 19:01:34 +0000, MitchAlsup1 wrote:
> >  =20
> >> In particular, MS has not added anything I want in Office since
> >> 2003 and in the OS in particular since 2005. Windows 7 is still
> >> better than windows 10 or 11 or 12... =20
> >=20
> > Would you entrust mission-criticial business operations to obsolete,
> > unsupported software?
> >  =20
>=20
> His suggestion was to /continue/ the support and updates for existing=20
> systems, rather than making new ones.
>=20
> But would /I/ trust mission-critical business operations to Windows 7=20
> over Windows 11 ?  Well, I wouldn't trust it to anything Windows, but
> I certainly trust Windows 7 more than Windows 10 or 11.  The more
> useless crap added to the system, the more scope it has for failures
> or security issues.  (The only Windows systems I currently have are
> Windows 7.)
>=20
> I am not sure I can think of anything I want to do on Windows, and
> which I can do with Windows 11 that I could not do with Windows 2000
> - excluding running programs that refuse to run on earlier systems
> without good reason, or hardware that does not have drivers for older
> systems. (In Mitch's dream world where MS continued to support old
> systems, those would not be issues.)  There are a few things that
> newer Windows does better than older ones - it makes better use of
> more ram and more cores, for example.
>=20
> > Open-source software is more responsive to community needs. =20
>=20
> Absolutely.  It is not perfect either, but it is a lot better in many
> ways.
>=20

In recent years, starting from ~2021, it's various Open Source software
(of various licenses, not just GPL) that is most bullish (or should I
call it "bearish" ?) about killing Windows7 (including WS2008).

For some of them (msys2) it's a nasty warning at startup plus purging
archives so you can't get older versions of tools via package manager.

For others (Firefox, Chrome) it forces you to freeze the version.
Sounds like not a bad thing in theory. But in practice web designers
feel bad when they don't introduce dependencies on the most latest
feature for two weeks after the feature appeared in either Chrome of
Safari.

For yet others (Go, Rust) the latest version of tools just crashes in
the most nasty manner, not giving to poor user the slightest hint for a
reason. Luckily, reasonably functional versions that run on Win7 are
available n their respective downloads archives. But the desired
version never marked clearly as last version supporting Win7, nor newer
versions marked as not supporting it.

The whole picture very match resembles of how mostly the same bodies
strangled WinXP 10 or so years ago. But back then, at least, they had a
technical justifications - several useful Win32 APIs were introduced in
Vista and few more in 7. This time similar justification do not appear
to exist. It's more like being evil for pure enjoyment of breaking
things.

> >  =20
> >> MS would make more money by allowing old OSs to keep running and
> >> sent the employees home... =20
> >=20
> > They=E2=80=99re going to charge businesses who want to stick with Windo=
ws
> > 10 a steadily increasing support fee. Charging lots of money to
> > those who want to stick with old versions of your proprietary
> > software sounds like a business model with a much more promising
> > future, don=E2=80=99t you think? =20
>=20
> MS can't make a business from supporting old software.  While there
> is a proportion of more technical people who are happy with "if it
> ain't broke, don't fix it", a much larger proportion of potential
> purchasers are in the "the latest is greatest" camp.
>=20
>=20