I'm of the age where my earliest PC memories were of Windows 3.1 on an old 386(?) PC playing SkiFree and naively thinking the "Turbo" button on the front of the computer would actually do something.
But I
REALLY cut my teeth on Windows 95. Spergs, Apple/Linux cultists, and younger kids who werent there aside, it really did revolutionize the PC industry and made computers palatable to the vast majority of people, for better or worse. 98 was a step up. More of the same, but WOW, 1 plug for everything! (USB) and along with that, drivers were simplified and expanded memory support. I then had brief flings with Windows ME and XP, before moving onto Windows 7, which to me is the best modern day operating system Microsoft has ever had, as far as simplicity and compatibility for the largest number of people. I was vigilant and managed to avoid the Windows 8pocalypse (Tiles, so many TILES!), and the Big Brotherness/bloatware of Cortana and Edge on Windows 10. My personal use laptop is still a circa-2011 Dell with a modded 64 bit Win7 Professional setup, SSD, upgraded processor and maxed out RAM. It will run laps around most of the modern bogged down with bloatware PCs and laptops with their always-connected status, and endless dubious "updates" that may or may not brick your system in some way in the name of "security".
I still have an older 32-bit Win7 laptop that is almost always completely disconnected from the internet as well, because for some of the completely obscure and obsolete stuff I play around with, Dosbox and Wine just won't work, and sometimes you just need a computer with a real RS-232 serial port, and native 32-bit C86 architecture.
They're forcing people off of 7 by making every browser not work with it, they didn't do that to XP, oddly enough
Alot of modern software and browsers won't work with 7, but I've found that Firefox works great and at least in my case, I haven't had any issues with anything, other than the occasional pop-up from some websites urging me to upgrade my browser. No thank you. For other EOL'ed and forced incompatibility issues, thankfully there are some useful autists tweaking things to work, and software still sitting in some dusty corners of the internet that I use to keep things working smoothly.
Yes, the tools that I use don't work on an operating system that I've wanted to move to, so I don't move to it, because it makes my tools not work anymore.
It'll be a nice day when Adobe software finally works on Linux, and I'll never have to hear about GIMP ever again.
Same here. The people screaming "Switch to Linux!!1!!21!!" seem to forget that over 70% of the world's laptops and PCs use some form of Windows, and much of the software is catered to that market. Not to mention, the somewhat open-source nature of Linux is a problem in of itself. Switch to Linux! Well which version? There are forks upon forks, and distributions upon distributions that only the most discerning autist can figure out.
^^^ And if you expect the average normie computer user who just wants to check their email and watch funny cat videos on YouTube to figure that clusterfuck out, find the OS that works for them, download and do a clean OS install with no issues, much less partition their hard drive for a dual boot option if they want decent software compatibility??? Yeah, they're gonna go for a Macbook or Windows PC where everything just works.
I feel your pain brother, also I thought you were Ruin there with your Profile pic imao. Realistically Just install an older version of windows like Xp or 7 or 10. Those are the only windows operating systems that are universally beloved, or wait for Windows 12.
I think Microsoft has broken the Good-Bad-Good cycle with Win11 unfortunately. The TPM 2 chip forced implementation and forced updates without registry edits seems like something that they won't ever go back on. If anything, they'll crack down on it even more, and there will be no way around it with Win12 or whatever they'll call it.
