I Want to Keep Windows 7 Forever

William2020 said:

U guys switching over to Linux... BEWARE:

Years ago, I stopped using Ubuntu coz I noticed right around midnight everyday, Ubuntu would upload 100's MBs worth of data to some unknown address. I wouldn't have noticed had I not been checking network activity around that time. This incident freak me out, so I stopped trusting Ubuntu, Mint etc. Who's to say NSA didn't pay those guys to install "backdoors" in their distro. Sure the projects r open source, but can u really trust the files u get that have been pre-compiled???

Now, don't lose hope, anyone thinking of Linux I can recommend this Deepin Linux (v20 next major release out on around Jan 20,2020):

Deepin v20 Taskbar Preview (In case the above vid doesn't work in your browser)

The reason I trust Deepin over Ubutu/Mint/etc. are four-fold:

1. Deepin already sold with Huawei laptops. Imagine the repercusions to Huawei if Deepin was found to contain backdoors.

2. Chinese gov PCs gonna be Microsoft (and Apple) free starting 2020. They've only got 2 choices: Kylin OS or Deepin. Imagine the fit the CCP gonna have if they discovered some company in China was installing backdoors stealing data from the government...

3. It looks like a Win7 clone, new users should adapt to the interface pretty fast.

4. Available in English and other languages.

NSA backdoors??? pfft....Conspiracy theories aside, what you said just isn't true of Ubuntu today or Mint or most any Linux distro. Ubuntu at one time had hardware type reports that were optional and went to Canonical which is the company that develops Debian and Ubuntu and other Linux OS. Ubuntu changed the setting. Mint never had it. This 5 minute video explains better than I can. The Lack of Spying in Linux Mint

Just for your FYI look up 'Deepin and telemetry' you'll see that Deepin was called out for including telemetry in a prior build.

Rokkor said:

NSA backdoors??? pfft....Conspiracy theories aside, what you said just isn't true of Ubuntu today or Mint or most any Linux distro. Ubuntu at one time had hardware type reports that were optional and went to Canonical which is the company that develops Debian and Ubuntu and other Linux OS. Ubuntu changed the setting. Mint never had it. This 5 minute video explains better than I can. The Lack of Spying in Linux Mint

Just for your FYI look up 'Deepin and telemetry' you'll see that Deepin was called out for including telemetry in a prior build.

Lies lies and slander. Western media r quick to slander anything coming out of China. Huawei 5G telecom devices have backdoors to the PLA. Puleez. The telemetry in question was Deepin collecting info about the types of computer used when connected to their app store. Just general info any website would have collected about anybody.

Deepin even went so far as to remove this telemetry immediately after a few websites whined about it. Thus the 'Deepin telemetry' in question no longer exists.

As I said before, the Chinese gov only got two choices left after saying no to Windows for 2020 and beyond: Kylin OS and Deepin. The companies behind these two are gonna b in serious deep trouble if the Chinese gov ever finds any backdoors in them...


(BTW, a little OT, but it seems Huawei is not only leader of 5G connectivity but Wi-Fi 6 as well. I read somewhere Huawei currently has the most enterprise Wi-Fi 6 market share coz Wi-Fi6 rocks -- it leaves no deadzones where devices may get faint/little signals.)

Lady Fitzgerald said:

Nice article but there are better ways to get to Linux Mint. First, I recommend watching this video by Joe Collins an installing Linux Mint. Joe has many other videos on Linux and has an excellent forum where you can go for advice. There are many other excellent videos but this one I found to be best for a rank newbie. It's what got me started. I've also received excellent advice from members of the forum.

Joe Collins is great. I also highly recommend this video series to anyone switching to Linux Mint - YouTube
I found it extremely helpful!

Lady Fitzgerald said:

Not all hardware and peripherals will work on Linux. Printers are notorious for that.

That's true... but I was very surprised when I started Linux Mint for the first time, my networked Brother printer was already installed. I didn't even have to do anything at all. Linux Mint found it on the network and took care of everything. I was especially surprised because Windows 7 had made me jump through hoops to install the drivers for that same printer and get it connected. It depends on the particular brand and model, but I've noticed Linux Mint users are often surprised that their printers are set up automatically like mine was.

Of course, you can test your hardware while using the live USB to make sure everything works.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

I'm at the point now, the only time I even fire up a Win 7 machine is because I haven't moved all my data to my Linux machine (yet, it will take time because I have a lot of windows related docs that will need weeding out) or there is a hardware compatibility issue.

I got to that point very quickly, and find myself avoiding starting up my Windows 7 laptop. The only thing I haven't really tried on Linux Mint is backing up DVDs and converting the video, only because I like the Windows programs I've been using for that for the past decade. Old habits. (And if I ever get my computer with the TV tuner card working again, I will probably prefer Windows 7 for Windows Media Center.)

Lady Fitzgerald said:

I totally agree. Just don't over research in it. Many things will be difficult to impossible to grasp until you roll up your sleeves and dig in.

Oh definitely! The videos are great but nothing beats actually trying it out for yourself.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

One of the best pieces of advice Collins gives is to get an older computer to start out with so you still have the machine you are used to to bail you out.

I did that. After trying live USBs and also trying various distros in VirtualBox, I ended up installing Peppermint OS on a fifteen year old Windows XP laptop with a broken screen (had to use a monitor) and only 1gb of RAM! It was great to play with and have a bit of experience before I went ahead and bought the new computer I was planning to buy for Linux.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

One good reason is that dual booting between windows and Linux is fraught with complications and unreliability. Someone very familiar with both platforms can (and often do) do so successfully but most people will eventually have problems dual booting, especially at the beginning. Who needs that added complication when first learning how to use Linux?

Yeah, I originally thought I would set up a dual boot, but then decided it wasn't worth the added complications. As it was, I found Linux Mint (and Peppermint OS) very easy to use and haven't had much of a learning curve at all. That video series I linked at the beginning of this post was super helpful, and I just watched a bunch of other videos, read a few articles and asked a few questions in the forum... and never looked back.

Rokkor said:

NSA backdoors??? pfft....Conspiracy theories aside, what you said just isn't true of Ubuntu today or Mint or most any Linux distro. Ubuntu at one time had hardware type reports that were optional and went to Canonical which is the company that develops Debian and Ubuntu and other Linux OS. Ubuntu changed the setting. Mint never had it. This 5 minute video explains better than I can. The Lack of Spying in Linux Mint

Just for your FYI look up 'Deepin and telemetry' you'll see that Deepin was called out for including telemetry in a prior build.

That's been my understanding, too.


Edited to Add: This is also a great video for Linux Mint beginners. It's only 21minutes long and well worth a view -- YouTube

I've tried Mint myself but only from a bootable media. Maybe two years ago-ish. I remember being pretty impressed with it given that I've virtually never used Linux before (except for an experiment where I installed some fork of Ubuntu onto my spare drive in an attempt to dual-boot several years back... I remember being profoundly bewildered, and I only even remembered the attempt when I tried to reuse that drive in my new machine last week and had to format the disk). So I'll definitely look at some of the guides/vids linked here for Mint. Good to know there's always a back-pocket option.

That being said, I'm sticking with 7 on the new machine until it becomes unfeasible on a software level first (mostly the browser as there's nothing else I care to run that actually requires regular updates).

I don't have too much to contribute to the "backdoors" discussion, but for whatever my peanut-gallery opinion's worth... seems to me that if a dev installed backdoors or telemetry, it's gonna be damn near impossible to trust them again even if they do take it out when they get called on it. I know I'm not alone in feeling that way about MS.

Other than that, I mostly share the OP's opinion. I consider Win7 the last good Windows (a line that maaaaybe includes XP and definitely includes 2000, 98se, 95 and 3.1 before that). I upgraded my laptop to 10 a couple years back just to give it the college try, and I can't stand all the crap it does. Lucky that I happened to have Pro on it so I could kill the auto-updating by group policy or I'd have probably hurled it into traffic by now.

Seeing many of us already have Android phones, why not ditch MS and get a Chromebook?

I can do almost everything that I do on my Windows laptop on my Galaxy phone. A bigger screen and a keyboard would help.

Better to have just one company stealing your data :)

most windows 7 programs work with windows 10 anyway so whats the problem?