Windows 7 End of Life

[Pierre]

it's win-7 that is real easy to get an working Dual_Boot System, up & working,
& whereas that win-10 does require a bit more work, which can also confuse any windows user.

[Eadwine Rose]

I didn't have any issues really.. but then again I DO have separate SSDs for the installs.

[Route99]

For desktops thats really THE solution to avoid problems, why ignore the presence of the available bios/UEFI bootmanager, avoiding the unnecessarily complexity of an extra.... bootmanager like Grub.
As in my laptop I can replace the DVD player with an extra hard disk unit (HDD caddy) I apply the same method there.

For unexperienced people... never do the learning stage on your good system (desktop/laptop), you can get easily for little or for free old computers that are stil suite suitable to learn how to deal with this problem. You can use a Windows installation for 30 days, and after that you have to reinstall it, and then you can learn how to install MX Linux on a second disk and try whatever you want ... as it its just a test machine.

In a similar way I learned Linux auto didactically in the mid nineties. Got a very cheap or free 486DX PC, bought a book with a CD (Red Hat 6.1) as downloading through a land line phone internet connection in those days was not affordable for so much data...

My 1st real good & very profitable built was to make a Linux (RH 6.1) netwerk server which included a cable router setup, cloning the MAC address to circumvent the original cable router protection.... which we shared with the neighbors.. and thus have shared paid access to 4 MBps cable speed instead of land line speed (before ADSL...) of max 48 kBps....

[handy]

Nice article here ... https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/win ... guide.html ... basically debunks fearmongering regarding Win 7 EOL.

Good wrap.

[jordansc]

Nice article here ... https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/win ... guide.html ... basically debunks fearmongering regarding Win 7 EOL.

Thanks for this!!!

[j2mcgreg]

Nice article here ... https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/win ... guide.html ... basically debunks fearmongering regarding Win 7 EOL.

There is a glaring omission in this article: in the event that you are the victim of financial fraud, identity theft, a ransom attack, an electronic banking error, etc and your insurance provider(s) determines that you are using an outdated operating system, you will not be covered for any losses.

[j2mcgreg]

@j2mcgreg
Not necessarily true unless, of course, you don't have a secure router (most ISPs do ... change your admin password once in a while) and don't use good up-to-date web browsers like FF or Chrome with ad-blocking/no-script extensions (and KEEPING them up-to-date, which people often fail to check/do on Win7) ... setup a good firewall ... also try not do personal stuff when hooked up outside of home unless you're SURE the internet connection is secure ... most of what you say is true only if people do dumb things while on the net ... same things could happen on any OS ... wonder if insurance companies would cover Linux systems if any such things occurred? They'd probably say "Duh, huh, what, maybe that's the problem? Sorry ..."

Every insurance policy has a clause that requires the insured to practice 'due diligence' in the care of their property and that includes keeping things in good repair. Having a lapsed OS would fail the latter. And remember it's the insurance company's call, not the consumer's,that matters since they will look for any 'viable' reason to refuse a claim.

[entropyfoe]

I converted my Wife's Win7 machine (well it failed catastrophically and would not boot after 6 years of a good run) to MX linux. She is doing fine with it, like many non-power users, the browser is the center of the work, and firefox looks like firefox on MX.

She does some e-bay and needs to process images. I set up her cannon ink jet with the canon .deb, it works perfectly. Last week she urgently needed some docs scanned, I though now I have to go find a driver for that... but no it was so easy, type scan into the search box, select simple-scan. And all worked automagically.

The remaining thing is tax software...Will Turbotx keep running on Windows7? If so, I will reinstall it in a different case, and upgrade her 6 year old motherboard to a Ryzen for linux, with more RAM. If I can do turbotax a few years, just keeping Win7 around for a few years.

Or, can I run a VM, with windows and tax software? Does anyone do that?

[AA BB]

I was faced with the very same problem, but made the mistake of switching to Win10 before going to MX...
Going from Win7 /Win10 to MX is a big jump if your're not familiar with Linux OS.
Personally, I found the grueling 177-page MX user manual not very helpful as an MX 'quick start' for Windows converts.

That said, don't hesitate to jump to MX, its a great distro...you'll have to pay the price of a 'learning curve' but the MX Forum has a great bunch of folks that will help you make the transition.

[JayM]

Personally, I found the grueling 177-page MX user manual not very helpful as an MX 'quick start' for Windows converts.

Feel free to PM Jerry, who does the documentation among other things, about volunteering to write one.