Get Win 10, be happy. You have the same crowd saying no to it that say no to Steam and other things collectively. You can always partition a Linux drive and dual boot. Or you can turn your old XP hard drive into a Linux drive for your new build, or your Win 10 storage drive for music/videos/images.

Basically you have options and can do whatever you want.

At this point, I would get 7 but also try to pick up a copy of 10 since that's supposed to be the last OS Microsoft is coming out with. You might as well pick up a free copy before MS starts charging for it.

I ended up going with 7 Pro for the XP virtualization for the build I did about a year or two ago.

It's more that Win7/Win8 will not be supporting Skylake than vice versa. If I understand correctly, they've decided to ditch a lot of the duct tape/backwards compatibility that is happening right now so as to actually focus on making use of the new hardware features. I don't think it's going to be an all or nothing straight away as some people are suggesting.

I agree that it should be up to you whether you want to upgrade or not, and I'm not overly fond of only the Pro editions of Win10 officially allowing you to disable/manually manage updates. That being said, I kind of understand where they're coming from, with a seriously fragmented market and people clinging to old versions with fervour. It's a nightmare in terms of patching things and supporting all of it, and having a unified user base and platform will go a long way (which I think is also why they're promoting the whole The Last Version Of Windows angle).

Yeah, maybe I am lucky, but I can't say Win10 has been buggier for me than 7. That's not to say I haven't had any issues; When I first upgraded it actually did fail due to a software incompatibility, but instead of breaking everything it reverted to its Win7 backup allowing me to sort things out before (successfully) trying again. That was positively surprising to me since similar situations before HAVE led to a complete reinstall being necessary. I'm sure there are plenty of people who have had system breaking bugs but to say this never happened with earlier version of the OS is... well. On the compatibility front, I haven't had any issues with Win10 as of yet that couldn't be fixed, beyond those that were already a thing with Win7.

Completely agree with some of your worries re: Microsoft's business models, although I think at this point, anyway, the 'spyware' angle is slightly exaggerated considering most people up in arms about it use software such as Chrome and/or any of the mobile OSes out there, which are way, way worse in this respect. And for some reason, are perfectly fine with it then? There are ways to stop it from doing it - a lot of it is in the config, there are tools to go the rest of the way, and if you have Win10 Pro you can pretty much control all of it from the management console. If by the end of that you're still concerned, I recommend traffic inspection to see what happens.

My fear is that in the long term Win10 Home will become an intrusive, ad ridden experience by default, and Pro will no longer be available as a one time upgrade but a periodic license to skim a consistent flow of money from users. Seems like the way things are going in the industry, regrettably.

Like floppy drives, the old IDE hard drive format usage.

I understand sometimes ditching old technology, i mean I remember when hard drives you had to specify how many cylinders, heads and sectors there were for your 300Mb hard drive to work properly (you could lie and tell it to go above and beyond, and then risk your hard drive literally breaking), while today that's been basically abandoned, both in API, BIOS and other stuff. Maybe it's still present but silently and internally, although the sheer size of drives suggests it's probably just sector count and the drive's on board chips deal with the logic of it all.

Dropping effectively all old 16-bit code (Real Mode) and going full 32bit makes perfect sense, and buggy code that they couldn't remove, as there's far too many people who rely on the bugs and program around them that you can't fix the code without totally throwing it out. Linus Torvals spoke of that problem of fixing kernel bugs and then removing them when so many people said they relied on them, and Linus understands since when he can't watch kitten videos on youtube, he gets upset :P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmHRSeA2c8#t=540 (don't break userspace code)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmHRSeA2c8#t=2645 (flash and youtube kittens, kernel bugs relied on)

If it's a modern computer (ca 3-rd gen Intel and on), get Windows 8.1 with Classic Shell if you need the old style start menu.
Better support for SSD-d, newer Driver API-s for GPU-s and after some updates last year rock solid. Also it'll work as an introduction to future Windowses (the app system, which unlike W10 you can uninstall and so on). AND Windows Update is better without messing around in Group Policy editor (I need to do it for some laptops because 10 downloads drivers automatically, but it fu**s up sometimes with the drivers, especially for Quadro cards)

Nah, I did some haltura (side-job or off-the-books work for those who don't speak Russian) some time ago. Upgraded a laptop from Win7 Pro to Win10 Pro and then did a clean install of 7 Pro to an older laptop with the other laptops 7 key, both work and are activated. Seems like Microsoft doesn't care YET.

I'd go with Linux.
But if you mandatory need mircosoft then go with w7.
Good luck!

Interesting. One would assume they'd deactivate the old 7 key. Although they may do that once you have to pay for 10.

I thought that had to do with those being pro-versions. There's also a grace period where they'll let you switch back.

Of course, they might also have not deactivated the keys yet in an effort to see how many people move back to the previous version.

Yeah, the 30 day period is over already. Still haven't had a call from the guy that Windows 7 is not activated, so it seems to work atm

I suspect that they aren't going to enforce that against people with Pro versions, but who knows. I think most likely they want to see how many people are going to go back to their previous version. Also a lot of those previous versions won't work on other computers anyways.

By all means, go ahead and install a 7 years old operating system.

I'm going with that if you don't mind :P

As I've said on my comment, this is my personal view, since the day I've made the switch from XP to 7 I've tried to make the best use I can from all of what the system can offer and if it ties in with some new hardware functions the better.

For example, I use my PC a majority of the time for gaming so I'm looking forward DX12 or any tech that can make my experience better, I also use the USB 3.0 a lot when I'm not gaming, so there's that. I'm fully aware that the newest system is often quite buggy (I've had some problems not to long ago) and it's not recommended for everyone, but still, it a thing that depends of what you are looking for.

Also, I just use windows because gaming, otherwise, I would ditch this bloody system and switch to Linux without even thinking.

:)

Well what they're saying is that they're putting all their eggs in the Store basket and hoping that by forcing their constant stream of updates (and the constant forced restarts at inopportune moments) they can kill off concerns about supporting legacy versions and therefore the resultant reduction in support costs coupled with the Store revenues will more than comfortably ensure the funding of Windows' continued development.

What they're not taking into account here, which is surprising after 8's launch, is that they're prone to making an unholy mess of things on a very regular basis. Updating in particular is something that epitomises this. And it is updates upon which their long term plans rest. So they're really not playing to their strengths here. After a while Win 10 will wind up where Win XP was. Bloated, antiquated, slower and less user friendly than the competition. Only so many of these things can be rectified with service packs. Even 8.1 was only able to go so far.

So there will at some point have to be a new version. Whether or not they incorporate it into their program of forced updates remains to be seen. But they can't stay with 10 forever.

Also, don't forget that Microsoft have a habit of taking a tough stance initially then caving in to consumer demands soon after.

Honestly I would go with 10. MS has the ability to access your info even on 7, so the backlash about privacy is a logical fallacy because they can get that information and have had access to it all the way back to Win 95. 10 is better than 7 in many respects - the only reason I'd get 7 over 10 nowadays is if you have programs or games that won't run on it; however, saying that, there are more games that run on 10 versus 8.1 compared to compatibility lists from 7. (In other words, more games that run on 7 will run on 10 than 8.1)

Just my thoughts. I was heavily anti 10 until I got around to monitoring it and actually using it on this new build. It's not that bad. If it were actually sending as much info as some people claim, my internet would be throttled 24/7. It's not like that.