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Congratulations on nearing graduation. I graduated several times with multiple majors but what you will realized is it really doesn't get you anywhere and it is just a piece of paper. The journey of exploration picking the classes from a list of acceptable ones to fulfill the requirements is where the fun is and where you have the most control. If you are truly a CS major and completing your BS then I suggest you continue on to your Master program if you have the funding or worst case get a school loan. A BS degree is like a High School Diploma of yesteryear when it was required to get a job now it's like okay what makes you special you got a BS so does everyone else. Even with a MS in CS at least you'll get a bigger foot in the door. You'll have to amaze the people you're wanting to work with as the other big piece of the pie is who you know and connections. So if you've got that part down you'll be fine. But if you are one isolated super geek you might have a harder time getting into the job due to personal skills unless the entire place is full of them. But I'm not kidding when I say a BS in CS is not enough today. Employers expect more when there are so few positions and so many programmers with a Master's degree vying for the same job. Now if you're actually completing your Masters in CS then I wish you luck and find your job quick hopefully in less than 6 months before your school loans start kicking in and they want their money.
"Which is my entire point, your thinking short term... even if it takes 5 years or 10+ years, eventually nobody will be running XP or Vista or whatever. It's like someone using DOS today, technology changes to fast to stay on something so old."
That's not true. It really depends on the needs of user. If you're using the computer for web browsing and word processing can you honestly tell me the user is going to go out and buy another computer in 5 to 10 years when the computer works perfectly fine with the OS installed?
Hell I wouldn't recommend going back to Windows 98SE because it constantly crashed and was unstable. But when Windows 2000 Professional came out stability was improved dramatically and XP was the eye candied version of it which became popular. Release date was 2001 and it is almost 2016 making it close to 15 years so that definitely beats your argument that of 5-10 years. It's not short term it's what's logical. Why would you upgrade a computer that does what you want to something newer that may do the same thing or might be worse.
Let's say we go with your assumption and upgrade a person who uses a computer for web browsing and word processing.
Ivy Bridge Quad Core and running XP SP3 and runs smooth as silk.
Convince me why that person should upgrade to say Skylake and install Windows 10 and then rebuy a new version of Microsoft Office for 64bit just to do what they did before?
And convince me how the Windows 10 interface is even more efficient than XP's Quick launch interface.
The only reason why anyone would decide to upgrade to Windows 10 and even upgrade their CPU to a newer generation is to get a feature they are lacking by not upgrading.
The only thing I can come up with for your side of the argument just to help you out is unless they are a gamer would they need to upgrade to Windows 10 just to take advantage of a game that requires DirectX12 but this will do nothing for the user who is just browsing the internet and word processing.
If you're all about upgrading constantly to whatever MS puts out regardless if you understood my point if they decided to make W8 the final OS (hypothetical) and it being a bad OS and disliked would you expect people to force upgrade instead of stick with W7. Also the other point of GOG is about DRM Free. Why would you insist going to Windows 7 and 10 if you know both are heavily DRM infested as compared to XP and Vista?
If you're really a good programmer or have an eye for good code then you would see XP's user interface better than what Windows 7 or 8 put out and you can even compare the installation size between XP and 7 which is huge difference and what real benefits are you getting for all that wasted space? Vista was the only one which kept the Quick launch interface so I gave them another chance when I realized what 7 had done after being hyped so much.
As for your statement, "These two OS's are not even supported by MS anymore," -- XP and Vista
As far as the last and only Service Pack for Windows 7 it was nearly 6 years ago so I would say that's a long time without a new Service Pack and even the little patches they release now and then they could have released a SP2 by now that contained all of them in the last 6 years.
Now why are you you even using Linux Mint as a second OS when your original complaint is that supporting XP would be a waste of resources for GOG to spend time on for the Galaxy Client when the market share I've shown proof of puts Linux (not even at 2%) and that's all Linux flavors not just Linux Mint, which is only a small fraction of XP's market share (almost 11%) and yet they've started a pending Linux Galaxy client?
http://www.gog.com/wishlist/galaxy/release_the_gog_galaxy_client_for_linux Linux at one time did have a chance to rival Windows probably during the Redhat era early 2000s but guess what happened XP squashed it by its total market share dominance nearing 80% at its peak when MS screwed themselves with a buggy Vista launch which kept people from upgrading and it took until Windows 7 arrived and when most computer hardware had caught up to specs to run this OS without it feeling like a snail next to XP. Don't get me wrong I've tried Linux before on multiple occasions and I just felt it wasn't ready for prime time yet. Although Linux Mint was getting there and I've tried Puppy Linux and a few others that don't require a hard drive installation but nothing has yet compared to XP's user interface and I'm not saying it's the best either as if I had the source code I would refine it even further with my own ideas but at the moment its the best Windows interface and most stable.
Windows 10 share is only 9% at the moment which is still beaten by XP.
And not only that I did somewhat agree with your logic and proposed that the GOG Client team just might as well skip Windows 7 support and go right to Windows 10 and just support DX 12 titles (Most Windows 7 and 8 users can upgrade to Windows 10 free which is probably where most of the surge of Windows 10 users are coming from) only according to your previous statement if the OS is outdated and Windows 7 is already 6 years old, 9 years if consider the fact it is actually Vista with service packs and an extra patching of an eye candy interface to make it look different. This would save them time from working on a Windows 7 version when Windows 10 has gained enough footing and possibly will continue to increase unless somehow it becomes another Windows 8 in disguise and rejected once again. But most likely with Xbone supporting DX 12.0 it will probably not fail.
To put into perspective your Linux / Windows 10 combined market share is about equal to XP right now.
https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0 Market Share
Windows XP 10.59%
Linux 1.62%
Windows 10 9.00%
Windows 8.1 11.15%
Windows 7 56.11%
your statement:
" Comparing XP to MAC OS or Linux is nonsense... these OS's have always had a small market share, so all they can really do is go is up. And with Valve pushing Linux, this could change a lot. Windows XP has been on a constant decline for a long time and will continue to do so, XP is not going to magically regain market share, it going to continue to lose support until it fads away. How long will it take? Nobody can say, but at the rate Windows 10 is gaining market share, and considering most people update computers on average at-least every 5 years so anyone running XP or Vista is going to be ready to buy a new PC... it will continue.
"
How is it nonsense? Do you really believe that MAC OS and Linux are going to somehow dominate the desktop market share all of a sudden which has been primarily dominated by Windows? That's a silly statement. Even at it's peak around 80% XP was already dated beyond its 5 year life span. There is no other OS that has shown so much undying resilience that XP has to this date. And if given the choice are you really that naive to believe if Valve Steam released titles on Linux as well that most would prefer to setup a standalone system with Linux to play it rather than use their Windows OS or in this case we can both agree Windows 10 would most likely the the OS of choice for it.
Obviously there probably would not be a constant surge of XP installations going forward but there hasn't been any new computer or laptops sold with XP preinstalled because Microsoft put a stop to it or else it would have continued hurting Windows 7 sales. However there are people yes they do exist that buy up copies of XP on eBay to install on their modern computer because of how fast and efficient it runs and how the user interface surpasses Windows 7 and 8. And you may not know this but people have found a way to allow XP 32-bit to use up to 64GB of memory now beyond the the imposed 4GB limitation that was software based not hardware and done intentionally by Microsoft so they could market a server based OS.
