Call me selfish but I think it is more important for them to contribute to GNU/Linux and *bsd projects.

I know Microsoft has a contractual obligation to support 7 for a while but I think there's next to zero chance they will reset Windows 10 and go back to Windows 7. You will need to get away from Windows 7 at some point. Better start making preparations now.

I'm not sure how much you are following, but AMD is doing quite well on Linux/*BSDs (at least regarding graphics, but they haven't had any interesting CPUs for a while). Mesa 17 has just hit OpenGL 4.5 compatibility on last 4 generations of Radeons [1].

Radv, community-developed Vulkan driver supporting last 3 generations of Radeons, supports vkQuake, Dota 2, and The Talos Principle, which is pretty much everything there is on Linux [2]. Playing Doom 2016 over Wine using Vulkan is also working if one uses airlied's branch [3]. Performance is not on par with Windows right now, but I expect it to improve over time.

[1] https://www.mesa3d.org/relnotes/17.0.0.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_Vulkan_supp... [3] https://github.com/airlied/mesa/tree/radv-wip-doom-wine

At the moment Windows 7 is number one desktop/notebook OS, it dwarfs all other operating systems (all other Windows versions incl Win8 & Win10, macOS and Linux combined)!

Win7 is superb, looks nice and works rock solid and is supported until 2020 or beyond (see XP). And then in 2020s Fuchsia/Android, or what ever OS is available and make sense for end consumer needs. (Of course *nix driver support is important too, AMD knows that)

It seems like your data is outdated. According to Statcounter win 7 have 47.5% of the total windows market, you have to go back almost one year for a point when 7 had more than 50%. Netmarketshare says win 7 have 47.2% of the total market.

What is Windows 7 share on new devices? The total installed base numbers are meaningless here.

Windows 7 has less than 3 years of life left on it before Microsoft stops doing security patches. At that point the OS's vulnerabilities will never be patched, and no one will be able to maintain it, akin to XP, and in April we'll see Vista join XP in being unsupported.

If you want a platform you can ride ad infinium, Microsoft is the wrong boat to be in. We're using OrangePi boards for everything, since you can build Debian for them with a fully libre stack and no closed firmware.

Do you mind explaining why you prefer Windows 7 over 10?

I'm not OP but I'm using Windows 7 for playing Steam games which do not work on Linux natively or using Wine. My reasons for avoiding Windows 10, aside from having everything I care about on Windows 7 already, are described well by EFF [1].

None of the games I care to play are DX12 and Windows Store exclusive, so using Windows 7 has worked well so far.

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/08/windows-10-microsoft-b...

Grab a copy of Win10 LTSB-N and get rid of Win7. It has all that annoying crap stripped out.

You should be able to find a copy fairly easily floating around here and there.

Thanks for mentioning this, I didn't know the Enterprise version had all that removed. Do you know if it still sends data to Microsoft or not?

You can always 'unfuck' a standard edition: https://github.com/dfkt/win10-unfuck

It lists two other repos at the bottom for privacy and de-bloat. I version froze my only Win10 VMs, so not sure if the projects are current for post-Anniversary Update.

What is this magic you speak of? Know of anywhere to find out more? I'd kill for a suitable equivalency to win7

To quote Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10_editions):

> Windows 10 Enterprise Long Term Servicing Branch (LTSB) is similar to Windows 10 Enterprise but does not include Cortana, Windows Store, the Edge browser, Photo Viewer and the UWP version of Calculator (replaced by classic version), and will not receive any feature updates, gives companies more control over the update process. Windows 10 Enterprise N LTSB also lacks the same components absent in other N variants (see below), and it is the most stripped down edition of Windows 10 available.

Given that this is Enterprise stuff, you won't get it preinstalled on retail laptops/PCs and buying it separately is impossible - you only get it with a Volume License contract or a MSDN subscription (IIRC 1.1k $ per year).

The "-N" suffix is there since (IIRC) Win XP, it is a version of Windows without bundled Media Player and other stuff.

Edit: According to https://www.howtogeek.com/273824/windows-10-without-the-cruf... one could get Win 10 Enterprise as a $7/month subscription and via this also Win 10 Enterprise LTSB? Does anyone have more details on how and if this works? I'd GLADLY pay $7/month for this, even more.

I think the 7$/month option is only for managed service providers to resell to their customers, you can't get a single instance of it directly from MS.

If they are allowed to offer it to private customers and if any do I have no idea.

Ahh that's a bummer.

doesn't that require an enterprise license?

I think they were implying piracy or something