Win7 came out 12 years ago. By the way, look at Ubuntu's improvements over that same 12 years.
There are some special use cases where updating win7 to 10 or Linux would be problematic, like where it was used in a CNC lathe or embedded device (the embedded version is a special cut down version, at least the one in point of sale machines was).
There are no security updates available anymore from MS so using win7 connected to the Internet is obviously a really bad idea.
So for use as a standard desktop Internet connected computer Win7 is dead and encouraging anyone to still use it as such is just irresponsible.
GeneFC wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 2:21 pm
I find this planned obsolescence annoying, but that's the way the world works.
I agree, whether or not you (or I) like this obsolescence or not is a whole separate conversation with good points on both sides. The point is it is here and what do we do about the situation that has been forced on us by others.
We have a similar issue with Ubuntu LTS support where we have repeatedly found that trying to support the oldest then supported LTS in the latest FreeCAD is extremely complex and in fact close to impossible. That is with opensource and only up to 5 years old. We had to give up on supporting 12.04 (or maybe it was 10.04, the problem then was lake of support for a C++ version in the compiler's, I did eventually get it to work but doing so was ridiculously complex and invasive and cause other problems with compatibility of other applications) and now 16.04 in the last few months before they were EOL.
looo wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 2:36 pm
So what would be the best dependency mix for windows. I can work on a occt7.5 python 3.8 0.19.1 version if this helps people to run freecad 0.19 on windows 7.
So I would argue that
1) doing so is irresponsible since it encourages people who don't know any better to keep using a desktop OS with no security updates.
But I feel less strongly about that than my next point.
2) I insist that FreeCAD not be held back for "normal users" just because of a few "corner cases" (many but not all, of which are unjustifiable) want to keep using an obsolete, unsupported OS. I very much doubt that MS will keep supporting Win7 for much longer with their dev tools.
So I would say, if you guys insist on still supporting Win7 and you are happy to spend your time doing so, then make a single one off special clearly labelled version of FreeCAD 0.19 for only Win7. But definitely do not try to offer the regular "master" snapshot releases etc. Make it very clear that this is a one off special version of FreeCAD to support an old "end of life" OS and defiantly not the standard or official FreeCAD.
It also needs to be clearly labelled as such in the "Help About" ... version data to make life less confusing for those of us trying to support users on the Help forums.
If you guys are interested, I could tell you a story of an extreme example of old hardware/software support that I did once, where a factory used an old 386? 20mb HDD green screen display machine to run one specific job with custom code in a very old spreadsheet application with a no longer supported file format running in DOS etc. I did get most of the data out but had to rewrite the spreadsheet formulas much to the delight of the factory owners.
Jim