I miss the magical feeling windows releases like XP and 7 gave you. Now it’s an exercise in crossing your fingers and hoping the next update doesn’t use more dark patterns to destroy your privacy and security.
freeAgent · 1h ago
You don’t even really have a legitimate reason to hope for those things at this point. It’s just a matter of how much worse MS are going to make it.
varispeed · 32m ago
The problem is virtually defunct regulators inviting all kind of toxic and exploitative behaviour from big corporations. Sure they _do something_, but it is ineffective and more like windows dressing.
alphager · 23m ago
You don't remember the controversies with XP and XPAntiSpy?
hnlmorg · 1h ago
Honestly, I can’t say I ever had that magical feeling.
In the 90s, it was more a case of “let’s see how much more system resource this new OS will consume when idle”. And the 00s was that and “let’s see how much more stupid this OS treats me”.
By the time 7 came and MS started taking resource consumption seriously, I’d already given up on Windows completely and had been using desktop Linux full time for several years.
I do have a Windows 10 floating about for gaming. But it’s really more of a chore to use than a joy. Albeit only because I seldom boot into Windows so I have to plan ahead to compensate for the two hours of system and application updates needed before Minecraft (Bedrock edition) will even start. A chore that’s hard to explain to my kids who, understandably, expect things to “just work”.
uz3snolc3t6fnrq · 1h ago
any particular reason you're on bedrock instead of java? don't you get both versions when you buy the game? i bought mine when java was the only version and i think they gave me bedrock for free when that came out. or is it because of the lack of crossplay? just curious
hnlmorg · 1h ago
That’s a fair question. You’re right about the crossplay part. Kids have consoles, which only support Bedrock. So if I want to play with them, then I need to play Bedrock too.
Which is a pity because, like yourself, I first played the Java edition too.
As an aside, I think Bedrock is the only version that supports VR. I don’t play VR Minecraft often, but sometimes it’s fun. Albeit only for about 15 minutes, then the motion sickness kicks in (curiously it’s the only VR game I’ve played that does give me motion sickness)
CalRobert · 2m ago
My kids play minecraft Java on a raspberry pi and I set up a server running GeyserMC so their friends on tablets could play with them. I'm still deeply annoyed that MS seems to want to kill off Java though.
If you do, have a look at CoreProtect and whitelisting the users you want to be able to play.
uz3snolc3t6fnrq · 54m ago
i've got possible good news for you then, there's a project that adds a translation layer between the two server protocols[0]. it has some limitations dealing with the different quirks and features that differ between both games[1], but it looks like everything else works fine. you could try that out if you find it to be a better option than wrangling with windows updates
as for VR, there's a third party mod for java[2], i tried it a couple years back and it felt pretty smooth, had no issues with it, but i don't have a point of reference to compare it to bedrock VR because i never tried it
In 2025, I can only think of two reasons to use Windows as a primary operating system:
1. You develop Windows software, exclusively to be deployed on Windows.
2. You play games that use kernel-level anti-cheat that are incompatible with Linux.
I am really really happy with Debian+KDE combo.
kstrauser · 1h ago
3. Your employer’s IT team refuses to let you use something else.
ronsor · 1h ago
At work or at home? At work, I'd argue the employer is mostly using it. Windows's problems are their problems then.
spacedrone808 · 1h ago
I am having Windows 7 not only at home, but at work also and successfully doing web apps and sites.
Sunspark · 36m ago
I booted into my 7 partition the other day because for whatever reason my frayed 10 partition wouldn't let me run an offline defender scan.
My suggestion is, install Microsoft Security Essentials (you can get a copy of the installer out of archive.org) and definition files are still published for it and are up-to-date. MSE is what became Defender in 10. The Defender in 7 is not the same and doesn't scan for the same things. MSE is needed to replace it.
throitallaway · 1h ago
Congrats on your vulnerable system. I hope you're not doing anything important at all on it.
MrRadar · 1h ago
Seriously. Also less and less software is supporting 7. Importantly, Firefox ESR 115 is the last modern browser to support Windows 7 and it's entering EOL after this month[1]; Chrome dropped Windows 7 support in 2023[2].
that's quite a bold statement. i am doing all my stuff without any problems.
If you check ms bulletin you'll see that quantity of bugs in recent Windows is waaaay above old crony, just see ghacks for comparison. I'm applying patches from 2008R2 which are still coming (till 2026). Having two firewalls, h/w and s/w, all unneeded services are stripped off or disabled. So the chance is slim to none.
throw7 · 4m ago
The site disables the scrollbar. I have both "Always show scrollbar" enabled and widget.gtk.overlay-scrollbars.enabled set to false... disappointing that firefox has poor controls for the user.
p1mrx · 1h ago
Note, you can click "plain txt file" near the top to read without flickering:
You won't be able to use more than compatibility modes if any with hardware newer than about 2015, because the drivers were built to a newer kernel ABI. It's great for legacy gaming, I still maintain an install for that purpose, but the idea of using Windows 7 in 2025 for a legitimately compute-bound workload is rather silly. Good heavens, even your disk IO is likely to run at half or less the speed it could!
The aesthetic here slaps, though. The sort of overcooked reheated Geocities fantasy of what I assume an Eastern European teenager would imagine American kids having access to - well, there are two Georgias in the world and I grew up two states over from the other one, and in some ways I think I get it. After all, the rich folks back home lived in their own little world, too. Cobbling together what we could, dreaming of bigger and better...who'd we have believed, telling us then how fondly we would come to look back on those days now?
spacedrone808 · 43m ago
I am on Ryzen 7950X/64Gb[swap in RAM]/1Tb 980 PRO NVME/24Gb3090Ti. Blazing fast.
And yeah NVME operations are actually faster than on windows 10.
throwanem · 40m ago
Blazing fast where? I may have overlooked some GPU and memory benchmarks.
spacedrone808 · 37m ago
For example Blender rendering is faster than in windows 10, but slower comparing to Linux.
throwanem · 33m ago
I'm surprised, but maybe I shouldn't be. And maybe if I put more work into picking a motherboard for a new Windows 7 build, I could even have working USB-C ports! It can't be as hard as a Hackintosh, probably...
Still, it's hard to see Windows excelling at anything but gaming, and if it's possible to get DX12 support on Win 7, I've never been able to find a working explanation of how. Compute loads I already have targets for.
5950x, 1050 Ti I am still using Windows 7! (Alongside with latest Linux Mint for actual important stuff).
Unfortunately now the quality of software is only going downhill.
spacedrone808 · 22m ago
Nice config. Yeah, software going downhill and not only on windows.
postexitus · 1h ago
That red mouse pointer on the web page - it's from Amiga Workbench!
spacedrone808 · 1h ago
That's correct.
laweijfmvo · 1h ago
i’m sorry, there may be useful information here, but this web page is unusable in its current form
guizadillas · 1h ago
for real, at least on FLOORP (firefox fork) it is a buggy mess
Springtime · 1h ago
I'm kind of surprised that Chromium blocks audio on autoplaying videos except when clicked but allows audio on mouseover interactions (encountered here). Takes me back to early 00s era sites with random surprises (in a good way here since its quirkiness is communicated with the design).
spacedrone808 · 1h ago
there are two audio Easter eggs on the page: Fallout 2 narration if you hover on the header image of the man watching tv from "Brazil" movie and if you hover "Unlisted Retrograde Holdout" text you will hear voice from "Human Traffic"
amiga386 · 1h ago
Strumming the main menu makes pip-boy sounds too.
On Firefox, you have to click on the page at least once before mouseover plays audio
Horribly designed page. Why does everything need to blink? Why is the text so poorly rendered? You can accomplish a retro design while retaining some semblance of readability.
hnlmorg · 44m ago
It’s clearly a personal pet project where they’ve heavily leaned, hard, into some creative ways to present traditional documents.
We all complain about dull corporate themes and walled gardens making the web stale. But you can’t have a creative fun web without having the odd site that breaks some readability conventions.
Personally, I’d rather see more personal sites like this and fewer stuff on Medium or using boring React/Vue/whatever themes. But each to their own.
spacedrone808 · 23m ago
I prefer plain js/scss and sometimes pug backed into webpack.
spacedrone808 · 34m ago
Everyone has it's own opinion.
And if i tell you that it is just one of four different projects i have?
And yeah, do you have any projects to showcase to us?
shortrounddev2 · 1h ago
Beautiful website
spacedrone808 · 1h ago
design matches 90s era
bitwize · 1h ago
The design is so much cooler than actual 90s websites were. More like the professional titling for a 90s cyberpunk flick like Hackers which was out 30 years ago next month.
spacedrone808 · 1h ago
I'm doing web projects during my free time. The website is based around Hugo framework, but since Windows 7 support was dropped i continue to maintain it with custom js/scss
And yeah, love this movie, despite it is a bit childish these days.
In the 90s, it was more a case of “let’s see how much more system resource this new OS will consume when idle”. And the 00s was that and “let’s see how much more stupid this OS treats me”.
By the time 7 came and MS started taking resource consumption seriously, I’d already given up on Windows completely and had been using desktop Linux full time for several years.
I do have a Windows 10 floating about for gaming. But it’s really more of a chore to use than a joy. Albeit only because I seldom boot into Windows so I have to plan ahead to compensate for the two hours of system and application updates needed before Minecraft (Bedrock edition) will even start. A chore that’s hard to explain to my kids who, understandably, expect things to “just work”.
Which is a pity because, like yourself, I first played the Java edition too.
As an aside, I think Bedrock is the only version that supports VR. I don’t play VR Minecraft often, but sometimes it’s fun. Albeit only for about 15 minutes, then the motion sickness kicks in (curiously it’s the only VR game I’ve played that does give me motion sickness)
If you do, have a look at CoreProtect and whitelisting the users you want to be able to play.
as for VR, there's a third party mod for java[2], i tried it a couple years back and it felt pretty smooth, had no issues with it, but i don't have a point of reference to compare it to bedrock VR because i never tried it
[0] https://github.com/GeyserMC/Geyser
[1] https://geysermc.org/wiki/geyser/current-limitations/
[2] https://www.vivecraft.org/
Thank you for sharing.
1. You develop Windows software, exclusively to be deployed on Windows.
2. You play games that use kernel-level anti-cheat that are incompatible with Linux.
I am really really happy with Debian+KDE combo.
My suggestion is, install Microsoft Security Essentials (you can get a copy of the installer out of archive.org) and definition files are still published for it and are up-to-date. MSE is what became Defender in 10. The Defender in 7 is not the same and doesn't scan for the same things. MSE is needed to replace it.
[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-users-windows-7... [2] https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/7100626
https://trackerninja.codeberg.page/doc/win7eol.txt
The aesthetic here slaps, though. The sort of overcooked reheated Geocities fantasy of what I assume an Eastern European teenager would imagine American kids having access to - well, there are two Georgias in the world and I grew up two states over from the other one, and in some ways I think I get it. After all, the rich folks back home lived in their own little world, too. Cobbling together what we could, dreaming of bigger and better...who'd we have believed, telling us then how fondly we would come to look back on those days now?
And yeah NVME operations are actually faster than on windows 10.
Still, it's hard to see Windows excelling at anything but gaming, and if it's possible to get DX12 support on Win 7, I've never been able to find a working explanation of how. Compute loads I already have targets for.
Unfortunately now the quality of software is only going downhill.
On Firefox, you have to click on the page at least once before mouseover plays audio
We all complain about dull corporate themes and walled gardens making the web stale. But you can’t have a creative fun web without having the odd site that breaks some readability conventions.
Personally, I’d rather see more personal sites like this and fewer stuff on Medium or using boring React/Vue/whatever themes. But each to their own.
And yeah, do you have any projects to showcase to us?
And yeah, love this movie, despite it is a bit childish these days.