Especially since it is free, for me it is about keeping my options open for the future (specifically post-2020 or so when Windows 7 support ends). So if this PC still works then and I still wish to use a supported Windows version on it, Windows 10 it is. Of course I have that Windows 8 Pro license bought for it too which I presume is still supported at that point too, but meh...

However, if this free update requires me to upgrade (and stay) in Windows 10 within the first year, then I probably don't see the point. In that case I'll probably miss the opportunity to upgrade to Windows 10 now, and instead I'll use Windows 10 in the future when my next PC comes preloaded with it. This PC will then probably remain as a Windows 7 PC for the rest of its life, maybe Linux on its side at some point.

I don't have any real urge to upgrade to Windows 10 as soon as possible, I consider OS only as a launch pad for my applications and games, not some kind of "oooh how it glimmers" item that has any other intrinsic value. A bit how I consider GOG Galaxy, I don't feel the necessity to use it as my GOG games work great even without. Good to have the option to use it, though.

Call Of Cthulu : The Dark coners of the earth is one of them! and there is others

Does Call of Cthulu: dark corners of the earth run fantastic on win 10?

It has very little to do with tinfoil hat behavior, and everything to do with the fact that multiple governments around the world have been trying to pressure companies to get backdoors and exceptions put into OSs, security software, and the like. Until the final release version has people pouring over the features, pen-testing, and what not there are a lot of unknowns.

I'd be very surprised if DX 12 doesn't come to 7. IF M$ doesn't do it then someone will find a way to make it work. I was really impressed when I first tried the 7 pre release. 10 doesn't really impress me and it gives me eyestrain.
As a Windows power user, I found the lack of features quite troubling.
Maybe not exact, but if you want to try Linux I'd say go with Mint or something.
Most of the features are customizations and control settings as well as even some dot net stuff. If you Google it or look at the wiki you'll find more details. but in short, they trimmed it down so that it would fit on tablets. As a power user I knid of need these features.

Yeah, it's good to keep options open. In my case I have a Windows license that is shared between 3 computers via a family-pack, and 2 of the other licensed installations are being used by someone else off-site with their own priorities, so it's one license key for 3 installations. Presumably it's an all or nothing upgrade which everyone has to agree to I imagine or nobody gets it. I could theoretically reserve it, but I know with certainty I wont use it until any sooner than 2020 and only then if I absolutely have to do so.

The biggest problem I have with it is that new versions of Windows always try to strong arm you into forcing the upgrade whether you are ready and willing or not, whether it is pressure like this temporary free upgrade, dangling the DirectX 12 carrot or some other feature that is exclusive to the new system, or by forcing computer makers to stop supporting the older systems with drivers and stop selling the old OS to people standalone or other factors. I'm not one to throw my hands up in the air lightly and say "gosh, ok you got me, I'll upgrade then". I'm more likely to ignore it and fight tooth and nail to avoid it so that I am in control of what I am using and I am meeting my own needs than on a constant forced upgrade cycle bandwagon.

I know all of the common pros and cons, ups and downs to upgrading versus not upgrading. Things such as new motherboards coming out without drivers for older OSs, or other hardware doing similar, but that works both ways in that new operating systems often don't have drivers for older hardware either and you end up losing out on your old hardware or having to buy new hardware, not to mention usually having to upgrade your computer itself to handle the increased demands of the new operating system. Been through it all dozens of times both in Windows and in Linux for that matter and ultimately the choice that I have found works best for me is to try to be as content and happy and productive with what I have right now at any given instant in time that works for me acceptably.

As time passes of course certain issues become more and more of a concern and eventually at some point natural changes will cause me to have to make a decision such as whether to keep running Windows XP in an unsupported state with no security updates, or to upgrade the OS to Windows 7 to ensure my OS is supported. I chose the latter because security is very high on my list of personal values. So sometimes something does come along and force the issue eventually, but I am extremely patient for that shotgun to eventually get pointed at my head, and even then the decision I make may surprise the gun holder. :)

My last PC came into existence in 2004 and I used it until 2013 along with a number of other PCs the newest of which was 2004 era. All of those old PCs are still in active working order but no longer run Windows on them, the XP machines now running Linux. When I built the new PC in 2013 to replace the aging and inadequate primary desktop box from 2004 I built it with the future in mind, so I put 32GB of RAM in it, tonnes of disk space, and a beefy 8-core CPU. For my own purposes including for gaming, this will run a very very long time for me with little to no upgrades. I will likely buy a new GPU point in a few years or so, but other than that this system will probably be running for a good solid 10 years for me, running Windows 7 from 2013 when it was built until 2020. It'll either get migrated to Linux at that time, or to a new version of Windows, maybe Windows 11 or 12 or 15 or whatever is current. A lot can change over 5 years afterall. I know I can't decide with certainty right now what I'll do in 5 years though.

There's close to a year left for people to learn about all the details of how the Windows 10 upgrade works and whether they are interested or not though so it's low priority for me to even think about ATM. As the cut off date comes near I'll review the facts at the time as well as all that is known about the OS itself, the popular opinion people have of it and whether it is a dud like Windows ME, Vista, and 8.x, or it is more of a winner like 98SE, XP and Windows 7 were (relatively speaking in all cases). I'm very particular about my OS and it's features and capabilities and other factors, probably much more so than 99% of people so I'm rather reserved about changing it out from under my feet even if it is universally praised to death.

We do seem to share a lot of common ground on the idea of a new Windows though. I live the same process with my Linux installations both on servers and desktops though too so it's a general process rather than an OS specific thing, although I'm more strong minded about it with Windows. ;oP

TTYL

Start preparing to be surprised I guess then, as Microsoft has officially announced that DirectX 12 will be Windows 10 exclusive. ;oP

This is no surprise because every single Microsoft OS that has previously come out has had a new version of DirectX which was exclusive and none of them have ever been made available at a later date as an upgrade for their previous operating systems, at least going back to Windows XP which had DX 9.0c IIRC. Not sure about Vista but I think that one was DX 10.x and then DX 11.x on Windows 7.

They've stated somewhere that the redesign of DX12 touches many parts of and depends on the Windows 10 kernel and other infrastructure and could not easily be retrofitted into their earlier operating systems. As a developer I know that this falls into the category of "it would be a massive effort of major structural changes to our older operating systems that we are not willing to make for a system we now consider legacy and that we want people to upgrade away from to our new OS" rather than it technically being impossible. Thats something they mostly had to decide while designing DirectX 12 from the start really. If they wanted to make it avalable for Windows 8.x or 7 or older they would have had to make purposeful design changes to accomodate the code to the different platforms structurally.

Likewise, nobody else will find a way to make it work as it isn't a matter of copying some files around and twiddling the registry, it's a matter of having the source code of the operating system kernel and driver infrastructure and other parts of Windows and completely redesigning them at that level to add the necessary functionality. The only thing external parties could possibly do would be to write wrapper libraries that act as a shim, converting apps that make DirectX 12 calls into making OpenGL or Vulkan calls instead much like how other wrapper libraries have done in the past. We wont see a native DirectX 12 implementation for Windows Vista/7/8.x however, not the direction Microsoft has chosen for it, which is the same decision they've made every Windows release.

That brings up an interesting question though, which is - has anyone else ever implemented a DX11.x wrapper for older Windows OS's, or DX10 for XP for example, and wrapping them to what in that case - to OpenGL? There has to be some other API with similar functionality to wrap too, and that requires video driver support also so for it to work, the OpenGL drivers of the old OS from AMD/nVidia/Intel/whoever need to support similar functionality to DX12 in their Windows 7/8 OpenGL stack in order to get hardware accelerated functionality similar through a DX12->OpenGL or DX12->Vulkan wrapper.

It's theoretically doable, I just haven't seen anything out there that does it personally and have my doubts about someone doing it for DX12 as well. Where it is more likely to happen is in Linux where there is a much higher demand for that. The Wine project just recently announced increased support for DX11 state tracking which ultimately allows games on Linux to use DX11 and get mapped at the OS level to OpenGL for example, but I'm not aware of anything similar for Windows although I'd love to know about it if there is such a thing.

Good to hear. I'm on the fence if I'll upgrade from 7 to 10. Probably wait a bit and see how it shakes out. I'm also of the camp of liking an ISO for any future rebuild rather than having to install 7 then upgrade again. Seems to be that would be a way of getting unnecessary baggage into your install.

I'd probably do a fresh install anyway. one or two custom things I did with 7 I wish I did differently.

I'm not, as Windows 7 is already past the "new features" phase. MS only brings fixes to it anymore, and DX12 can be considered as a new feature.

Did DX 10 or newer ever come to Windows XP officially? I know there were some hacks to bring it to XP.

I don't really mind either way. Even if new games support DX12, they will have DX10/11 support also for Windows 7 users, as long as Windows 7 is relevant in their eyes with enough users and MS still supporting it.

Unless someone tells me next that it is impossible to make a game which supports both DX12 and older DirectX versions... I recall quite many games which let you choose between a couple DirectX versions. Many some years old games had DX10 and DX9 as the options, and even something like Nocturne (1999) had an option for a couple of different DX versions, e.g. DX6 and 7, or was it DX5 and 6, not sure.

i know but i dont want to deal with bugs and get less fps than on windows 7

It is good to hear, that Gog is making games compatible with windows 10. One of my computers is capable to run windows 10, but i don´t know, do i want to update my windows 8.1 to 10. have to think it!

Well, it really is something like ~95% Debian and ~5% Valve like I wrote earlier. But that doesn’t mean in any way that it will be similar for the final user.
Even little differences, if they are mostly in the user interface like they are for SteamOS (same for Ubuntu by the way), could mean a system that is used in a totally different way. A Debian administrator should be able to maintain a SteamOS easily because the "skeleton" is pretty much the same, but a Debian user might be at a total loss at first facing its interface.

In some ways "it’s just Debian" and "it isn’t Debian at all" both at the same time ;)
That’s why while I don’t plan on using SteamOS I still follow updates about it, because it might have consequences on Debian, like Valve sharing patches to have them integrated upstream (and even a couple patches can mean a great deal). It’s in Valve’s best interest to have Debian being as rock-solid as possible to ensure they build their OS on a stable base, and the best way to achieve this is an active participation in Debian development.

Same here. I want to know the details of Windows 10 first - you know, the small print.

If I were to have to state one single operating system feature as my absolute number one top desired feature of all time, it would have to be for the system to be designed specifically to never ever need to be rebooted for any kind of software updates whatsoever, including OS kernel level changes, drivers, core components and libraries, administration tools, hypervisors, and userland software.

After 3 decades of using computers, and excluding the ones that booted purely from fixed firmware such as many of the orphan computers of the 80s, rebooting for updates to things has grown to be the biggest annoyance not just in personal terms but in practical terms of the impact on the various applications running on the system at the time when a reboot is needed and the need to close them all down safely and restart them all and reload their data and state where possible. It just seems so archaic, however I also understand why this is the way it is currently also.

Mainly it is because out of all of the potential things that an OS designer could prioritize, it has never been a priority on the types of end user and even business/enterprise level operating systems I've ever used compared to other much more high priority features that affect a wider audience in a way that has more impact. In a nutshell anyway.

Sadly, while it is possible to design and build such a system (see Minix 3.x for example), it requires a rather different approach to the design and at least in the case of Minix 3.x it comes at a system performance cost which is non-negligible (5-10% of system performance if I recall correctly). I imagine that modern operating system vendors/designers as well as both business and personal users of those systems might not be willing to give up 5-10% of their system's overall performance simply to never have to reboot again and to gain the ability to replace drivers and other core kernel components on the fly in the running system, as well as gaining automatic crash recovery. Those features make a lot more sense on hardware that handles life support of hospital patients where life matters more than performance of a CPU.

Nonetheless, despite the unlikelihood of us seeing such a feature on a Windows product any time in the remote future, it is the one big feature that would make me foam at the mouth.

There are at least two different solutions available for the Linux operating system that provide some of this functionality but it is more or less limited to being able to upgrade the kernel and drivers in-place to avoid an immediate reboot and tacked on to the existing Linux design rather than designed in from the ground up. As such it is not on the same scale or scope as the features provided in Minix 3 for example. Nonetheless it is a good start. :)

Someday things will come around eventually, but I'll likely be dead by then. :)

Reference:
<span class="bold">MINIX 3: a Modular, Self-Healing POSIX-compatible Operating System</span>