
Replace Windows 7 with Linux - baal80spam
https://vivaldi.com/pl/blog/replace-windows-7-with-linux/
======
asdfasgasdgasdg
If you're still on Win 7, presumably you are very change averse. Or you depend
on software that doesn't work any more on Win10. Those are the only obvious
reasons that come to mind. In either case, switching to Linux would be the
worst case scenario, and significantly worse than upgrading to Win10. .

~~~
thenewnewguy
Or there's option 3, which is the reason that I've had several people give me:
you don't like Windows 10, because of the spying/forced updates/etc. I've
converted several of these people to linux and they've been very happy with
it.

~~~
umvi
Or option 4, which is you signed up for the W10 update, but then it never
materialized. So you are still on Windows 7 and there is still an icon in the
tray telling you to reserve your free copy of W10.

~~~
mmphosis
Or option 5, the update is still running and I can't turn off my computer.

------
squeaky-clean
While I agree with the rest of the article, this bit isn't true

> Your Windows 7 is likely running on an older machine that might struggle
> with a resource hungry operating system like Windows 10.

> To run Windows 10, you need a 1 GHz processor, 1 GB for 32-bit or 2 GB for
> 64-bit RAM, 16 GB for 32-bit OS or 20 GB for 64-bit OS, and a 800 x 600
> resolution display. And that’s just a bare minimum.

Windows 7 has the exact same minimum specs. And in my experience, Windows 10
runs better on a system meeting the minimum specs than Windows 7. Of course
neither of them comes close to something like Lubuntu or Puppy Linux, but
that's a different tanget. They also recommend Ubuntu as a first distro (which
I agree is a good choice for newbies), but I moved away from Ubuntu to other
distros during 16.04 because of how bloated it was. The Unity UI was sooooo
slow on low end hardware. Is it still that way?

[https://support.microsoft.com/en-
us/help/10737/windows-7-sys...](https://support.microsoft.com/en-
us/help/10737/windows-7-system-requirements)

> 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor*

> 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)

> 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)

> DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

------
llarsson
If people really use computers with less than a gigabyte of RAM and a CPU
slower than a single gigahertz, they will surely not be happy with a modern
Linux distro either.

I am surprised that Windows 10 would have so low minimum requirements!

~~~
jolmg
> they will surely not be happy with a modern Linux distro either.

Depends on what modern Linux distro you're talking about. In fact, probably
any can run with much less. It all depends on how they're configured.

I'm running Archlinux on a Raspberry Pi Zero. It's using 38.9M of its RAM
right now.

------
superkuh
Funny, I was just thinking of switching from linux back to windows, after 20
years, because the backwards incompatibility and breakdown in modern linux
package management and C++x extensions has made things very difficult. The
proliferation of all the containerized solutions (flatpak, snap, appimage,
etc) tries to address it but just makes it worse. It's gotten to the point
where linux software written today can't be compiled run on a linux distro
more than 5 years old.

Progress is great but the rapidity of obsolescence is getting intolerable.

------
SahAssar
This is basically blogspam fueled by the Win7 EOL to get more people to try
vivaldi. Personally the Win7 part feels like FUD to get people to try vivaldi,
but that might just be my reading of it.

------
butz
With improved support for games (thanks to Proton from Valve) Linux is
actually the best alternative to Windows 7. And to get Windows 10 running as
you'd like (remove telemetry, crapware, etc.) there's probably even more work
fiddling with configuration than setting up Linux.

~~~
OrgNet
what's the easiest way to remove _all_ win-10 spying? I like to keep a windows
PC around for random stuff that is harder to use in Linux

~~~
still_grokking
An air gap…

This won't remove the spyware, but at least it won't be able to call home.

A "virtual" air gap a.k.a. "VM without network card" is a viable option, too.

------
Windows7_4life
>In less than two months, Windows 7 will enter end of life.

Not exactly, Windows 7 ESU[0] support ends in 2023 Moreover, stable release
date for Edge browser is January 15th 2020[1] and will support Windows 7 as
well.

[0] [https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-to-make-
windows-7-ex...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-to-make-
windows-7-extended-security-updates-available-to-all-business-users/)

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/4/20942038/microsoft-
edge-c...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/4/20942038/microsoft-edge-
chromium-release-date-new-logo-features)

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Only if you pay.

------
teunispeters
From working with multiple platforms: \- switching to linux is a good call if
upstream tools have been abandoned. In this case WINE is a good toolkit for
windows tools needed. Figuring out which linux is best - Ubuntu and Fedora
have the most industry support though. \- switching to Windows 10 should
probably be tested first. Performance-wise it's comparable to 7 in most
scenarios and while its UI with all the ads and "bling" is confusing it's at
least somewhat consistent and probably the shallowest learning curve. And most
of those features can be turned off.

Mostly I'd probably just try and find out why Windows 10 isn't a valid
solution. They've reduced its memory and CPU requirements to fairly comparable
to Windows 7, in most circumstances.

Most of the rest of the comments I've seen here are FUD (fear, uncertainty and
doubt) arguments based on fallacies. I know people have reasons to dislike
windows or linux (I personally cannot stand working in windows 10 except for
to play video games), but that's personal bias and it has no place in giving
advice.

~~~
still_grokking
> And most of those features can be turned off.

This is extremely misleading. The most dangerous (the build in spyware) or
most annoying (ads!) "features" can't be turned off at all in consumer
versions of windows.

You can get rid of some of the annoyances but this is nothing that can be done
by the average Joe. It's even hard for dedicated computer experts to disable
all the crapware in Windows 10 (and even one manages to do so, the cap will
come back with the next forced update).

> Mostly I'd probably just try and find out why Windows 10 isn't a valid
> solution.

I have to admit this "advice" is almost as ingenious as it is diabolic… Parent
is speculating here that someone who goes through all the hassle of upgrading
Windows won't do the same work again to switch to some other OS afterwards.

------
wayneftw
For new users and really for anyone - I'd recommend Manjaro over Ubuntu.

I've been giving Linux desktops a shot for over a decade and I finally
switched a year ago because installing software on Manjaro is so easy compared
to any other distro I've used. It's also been rock solid on 2 of my desktop
systems and 1 laptop, with all the features that I want working, including
power management and advanced touchpad gestures.

Recently as an experiment I tried Xubuntu again when someone here pointed out
how you can't get .NET Core 3.0 working on Manjaro yet - however, after
(painfully) setting up Xubuntu with my standard kit of software including
docker, vscode, beyond compare, programming languages, and UI tweakers like
xdotool, wmctrl among very many others - after 1 or 2 weeks - it wouldn't boot
(due to a bad update?) Not the first time I've had this happen with Ubuntu.
Then I replaced Xubuntu with Manjaro, did the same setup in half the time in
order to figure out which .NET Core 3.0 packages to install without messing
with my other machines. I figured i out -the correct packages end in -bin,
e.g. [https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/dotnet-sdk-
bin](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/dotnet-sdk-bin) . Everything has been
fine for a few weeks now, just like my other 3 machines...

Maybe I setup Xubuntu incorrectly. I didn't use the Snap software
distributions available through Xubuntu's default GUI installer. I used the
command line at first and i installed Synaptics, added separate repositories
for various publishers... I might have used a mix of CLI and GUI to install
stuff. If I had only used what the default installer offered, things might
have been stable for longer... But I used both CLI and GUI to install stuff on
my other Manjaro stations and didn't have any of these problems, so that's why
I recommend it.

Also, XFCE does a clean and simple Windows style GUI better than Windows 10,
where I normally have to install "7+ taskbar tweaker" to get the taskbar
features that I like, such as middle clicking to close a window in the taskbar
or allowing me to drag and drop taskbar items to arrange them instead of
forcing them into groups.

------
ocdtrekkie
Windows 10 performs better than Windows 7 in most cases on lower end hardware.
The only upgrade you'll want is a cheap $35 SSD: Windows 10 runs terribly on
spinning disks in particular.

------
downtide
Yep, managed an afternoon with 10, and I'm not one to usually give up, but due
to my chipset not being supported which made shutting down difficult, I turned
it off and have never booted that drive since. I have Win 8 and 8.1 on other
devices, that have seen similar neglect. I have no desire to boot Windows at
all. I've got a print queue stacking up mind.

------
bureaucrat
Fun fact: Engineers + Linux costs more than buying a bunch of Windows 10
copies with basic sysadmins.

------
agounaris
You are all too geeks to get that people who are still on windows 7, they
don't access hacker news, they have no clue what vivaldi is and probably will
never update to anything else, they will just throw the machine away and get a
new one.

------
52-hertz_whale
2020\. The year of the Linux desktop.

~~~
jdnenej
Thanks to valve this has been the decade of the Linux gaming desktop

~~~
windsurfer
This is true. With Valve's Proton improvements you often get even better
performance with Linux than Windows.

------
weystrom
Call me when there's hardware video acceleration in browsers available.

~~~
zelon88
Could you elaborate?

~~~
kcb
There's no hardware video acceleration in browsers on linux.

~~~
toun
There is in Firefox, but you have to force it via about:config because it's
disabled by default.

~~~
baal80spam
Well, guess there is a reason for it being disabled by default - like
compatiblity or stability?

~~~
dx87
I think it's unstable. I had to disable it because it was causing frequent
reboots that wouldn't stop until the computer was powered off long enough that
the memory cleared out. Even if I booted into Windows after the forced reboot,
it would still continually reboot. I don't know what the issue was, but it
stopped after disabling hardware acceleration.

------
FpUser
Here we go again. The support will end. The mayhem will ensue. The world will
fall apart.

But thou shalt be saved if adopts to my (insert your pet piece of technology
here ).

People will figure what they need and why without FUD articles.

------
nikanj
”Almost any computer running Linux will operate faster and be more secure than
the same computer running Windows.”

Mostly not true in my experience. Microsoft has teams doing boring whole-
system benchmarking and holistic optimization. No similar central authority
for performance exists on Linux.

A feature-equivalent KDE Desktop runs like a pig compared to Windows.

~~~
dijit
You're going to have to back that up; like, a lot.

Aside from the few obvious things (OpenOffice being beastly and MS Office
being C++ && h/w acceleration being disabled in browsers by default) there's a
lot in linux that makes it largely outperform windows in equivelant tasks.

Opening files, reading from network, multi-threading, even rendering 2d
windows with Wayland are demonstratively faster than on modern Windows.

~~~
sz4kerto
Generally UI is smoother on Windows due to the really mature desktop
compositor that's light-years ahead of eg. Xorg. WDDM is actually a very good
display driver model, UI crashes are really rare nowadays compared to eg.
Linux (and this is not just driver quality).

So Linux is definitely faster for my development tasks, but slower when I'm
scrolling in the browser.

~~~
dijit
I’d urge you to check out the latest gnome and Firefox or chrome with video
acceleration enabled.

The latest gnome uses wayland/mutter which is lightening fast for compositing
the UI.

