I don't mean to come across as being snarky or patronizing or anything like that, but I am just quite a bit baffled.

Apparently, there's still a very sizeable subset of people who are using Windows 7. As an example, recently, news dropped that newer updates of Cyberpunk 2077 may not support Windows 7. Like, I would've thought that anyone with a PC strong enough to play Cyberpunk would have already switched to a newer OS.

Using Windows 7 is basically begging for hackers or malware to take over your system. Windows 7 has not received security updates in, like, 3 years. It's a massive, gaping security hole just waiting to be taken advantage of by any half-decent script-kiddie.

If you don't want to use Windows 10 or 11, which I understand, why not install a Linux distribution like Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Arch Linux, etc.? So much more lightweight, user-friendly, less bloated, and they are receiving security updates, which Windows 7 is not.

Thoughts?

The speed of hardware improvement has decreased by a lot.

In the 90s, the speed of computing increased by a whooping x36 factor. Recently, when I compared my computer to what I had 10 years ago, it's more like 5x maybe. Unless they come up with something groundbreaking, I'm not sure the computer I buy in 10 years time will be more than twice as fast as the computer I have now.

Realistically, someone that got a computer that was top of the line 8 years ago might still have an ok computer now, especially if it was a desktop and they upgraded parts. If so, they might not want to pay for a Windows license until they get buy a new computer. Depends what you do with it. If you are conservative with it like I am with my Windows gaming box and only use it to play games and nothing else, the security risk is still quite low.

For hackers to compromise your system, there has to be some point of access (either you have exposed ports to the internet that are not behind a NAT or you access something from your machine that is not 100% trustworthy). If there is none, it doesn't matter if you are running decrepit garbage, hackers can't compromise you.

Just ask banks that are running god awful legacy systems that most programmers don't want to touch with a 10 foot stick inside closed networks. Yeah, people who are still using Windows 7 now for anything meaningful would probably be better off with something like Ubuntu. Then again, there is a learning curve, so I guess it is not for everyone.

Absolutely.

As for the OP's question, the real world risk for home users is exaggerated. Far more so for knowledgeable home users who play it safe and also have security software (that still supports Win 7) running.

And after a lifetime on Windows, switching to Linux is daunting to say the least. More so for those who want easy gaming out of the box.

Maybe Windows 8 scared them from upgrading. Not that I should laugh, not like I'll upgrade to 11 anytime soon.

On the other hand, there are tasks that are much easier on Linux out of the box, like software development (particularly of web and server software) and running servers. Then again, computers running servers are generally not used for running games at the same time. (Game servers here count as servers rather than games; unlike a single player game or a multiplayer client, a server doesn't handle fancy graphics, and therefore doesn't (usually) need a GPU to function.)

Well, when an OS is EoL, it usually becomes untenable to support it, because not only does it become increasingly difficult to obtain the OS, but it may be impossible to get your end user's OS in a state that is reproducible.

With an OS that is still maintained, you can upgrade to the latest patch, ask your end user to do the same (a reasonable expectation) and then you are synced troubleshooting the problem at the same patch.

With an OS that is unmaintained, if the patches between what you have and what your end user has don't match, you are out of luck.

I think the best you can do with an OS that is EoL is what you alluded in the second part of your post... Basically, you provide a version of your product that was known to work on that OS before it became EoL.

That becomes the last version that is "supported" (as in "it was shown to run, please don't come to us with your problems") for that OS.

Any future update of your product are only for OSes that are not EoL.

Windows 7? I'm still using Windows XP.

I got sick of malware a long time ago and switched to Linux for most things. I triple boot between linux, Windows XP and Windows 7. So, I use Linux for anything that requires the internet, Windows 7 for games that need it and Windows XP for games that work best with that. I keep both Windows versions off-line.

I mostly play older games though, so. . .

Because Windows has been largely downhill in UX since XP, but especially after 7. Most of the things "not available" in 7 (vs 8+) or 8 (vs 10+) were done arbitrarily, with no good technical reasons, just marketing reasons.

That's not to say there haven't been tech improvements in the OS -- there have. but that they've come at considerable cost that might be considered to outweigh the pros.

And the risk of using an EoL OS by a savvy user are exaggerated. (Combined with many of them just reimage monthly no matter what.)

Likelihood of malware infection depends a lot more on the user than the OS. Someone visiting shady sites, clicking on shady links and attachments and running suspicious .exes are still very likely to run into malware issues no matter what OS they use.

A lot of people prefer the less bloated, simpler Windows with the same UI across all menus and without annoying auto-updates and self-reinstalling ''apps'' from the MS Store. Linux won't cut it when it comes to software compatibility and newer versions of Windows offer no positive additions over 7 so I understand why people still use it.

A lot of those users are also probably non-tech savvy people who only use their PCs for select tasks and don't want the headache of a smartphonified OS disturbing their MS Word editing.

I agree, except for the last sentence.
Non-tech savvy people were all forcefully upgraded to Win10, you had to manually check & install updates to avoid bad ones.

How are people still even using Windows 7? Quite easily. I have two rigs, one is using W10, the other dual-booting W7 & Linux. Despite being "old", if you do not own any DX12 exclusive games (and I don't) there is literally no functional difference at all for a gaming rig for my entire collection of +2,000 games. Nor has there been any difference in security either. 99% of the 70,000 PC games using DirectX 5-11, OpenGL or Vulkan API's work flawlessly, which just goes to show how little the "core" of Windows has changed, and how much W8, W10, W11, etc, is more about endless unwanted UI makeovers than some radical under the hood changes. I have simply noticed zero practical difference in gaming on the W10 vs W7 computers, even today in 2022. The only games that need DX12 exclusively, ie, it's DX12 or nothing with no alternative Vulkan / DX11 / OpenGL renderer tend to be the same AAA's I don't buy because of DRM. This is factually incorrect. W7 ESU (Extended Support Updates) are available until 2023 (there's a simple tweak that allows anyone to download them, just as with the previous 'zeffy' utility that unlocked Microsoft's fake locking of updates on Gen 7 Intel / Ryzen CPU's). Whilst I wouldn't use W7 today as some outward facing financial server, "security" issues (most of which use fringe attack vectors), are laughably overrated for a simple (mostly) offline gaming rig. "Hacking" in the real world does not involve hackers performing 100m individual attacks vs 100m individual consumer PC's sitting behind a firewalled NAT + dynamic IP one by one, they target online corporate databases containing millions of records (and they still get hacked despite running Windows 10-11 Server) then rapidly "flip" the database on the dark-web for Bitcoin. That is real-life hacking.

^ This. Someone who disables a lot of unwanted services on W7 + runs a whitelisted firewall is already more practically secure than the average W10 user sitting there with Remote Desktop Configuration, Remote Desktop Services, Remote Registry, Secondary Login, Windows Remote Management all enabled + "everything gets to talk through the firewall without question by default" firewall settings. 2FA / SCA for banking has done far more to stop account hijacks than Windows Updates ever did (the same ones that delete users data once, twice, three years in a row...)

As for the train-wreck that is W11, compulsory TPM for W11 is far more about gradually introducing Remote Attestation (hardware DRM, already visible on some new anti-cheat software that locks games to TPM chips) than "protecting" Windows users. Same goes for "Smart App Control" a shiny new "security" feature that "uses AI and Microsoft's cloud knowledge base to check every app that runs, blocking anything unsigned, unfamiliar, or known to be malicious". Sounds great for morons who open "Free Money.exe" e-mail attachments until you realise you've just added an OS level DRM remote kill-switch that can mass block thousands of unsigned DRM-Free older game, game mods, source ports, etc, at the flip of a single switch far more than Denuvo / SecuROM ever could. This stuff is far more about "bait & switching" hardware DRM under the guise of 'security' than it is 'protecting' anyone from real world threats.

I've never used anything besides Windows, because: 1) I wouldn't know to handle anything else and haven't got time to learn about other OSes, and 2) I want to be able to play each videogame I want effortlessly.

Also, I have Win7 because I don't play only recent games. Recently I finished Arx Fatalis.

Don't ask me, I voted for Konos!

More to the point, I was already starting to pack my metaphorical bags as far back as Windows 7. Having first tried Ubuntu back either back in version 6 or 9 (It was a long while ago, aye, back when they were offering free LiveCDs), I was already Linux curious and had been finding out which Distro fit me best.

Debian? Nope.

Arch? Definitely not at the time.

Slackware? I've thought about it. No.

Mint? That's just Debian, except they're only now getting to that article admonishing Debian, basically. It's an LTS of an LTS. No.

So I've spun up and tried various distros before settling into Fedora, sometime in 2016 (Just after 25 launched), with a soft launch around Fedora 17, according to an old image I found. Which I found out was the last edition before the split.

Not that hard to learn about them these days. Spin up something like the XFCE spin of Fedora, (which should be familiar enough yet self-descriptive), poke around in a virtual session, maybe research a little into things like i3/Sway, most applications either exist for Linux these days or have some equivalent.