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Windows 7 and 8 now dead for gaming, as new Steam update pulls support
(www.pcgamesn.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2024
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Who still uses windows 7 or 8? Who actually uses it for gaming?
I was using 7 right up to the point last year steam said they'd stop supporting it.
I run a computer into the ground because I'm broke.
Yeah, but then it kept working, so I kept windows 7 installed.
I'm not the only one to use this machine, and the message greatly upset the other person, so we just got a new machine over dealing with the possibility of it continuing.
I did the same thing, but mostly because my computer worked, did what I needed it to do, and I was too lazy to replace it until I was basically forced to.
After building a new PC and switching over to Linux I was like "why didn't I do this a long time ago?"
I was doing the same thing (I too run my computers into the ground, though I also didn't want to move to Windows 10 because of all the analytics at the OS level sending data to them MS added to that version, plus and frankly, it worked so I couldn't be arsed).
I also switched some time ago, pushed by Steam's impending end of support plus more and more stuff coming out without Windows 7 support.
However I took the dive and switched to Linux rather than Windows 11, to a great extent prompted by people here reporting good experiences gaming on it (since I already have quite a lot of expertise in it and I mainly just use my PC for gaming) plus it's part of a broader set of changes to avoid enshittification (such as replacing my TV-Box with a Mini-PC with Linux) I'm doing at home and am very happy with the result.
It's less heavy than Windows, even booting faster and seems to have extended how long I can keep going before that computer is totally run to the ground, though for that it also helps that once I started upgrading by changing the OS, I also went and did a few partial upgrades of the hardware, like replacing my old CPU with an equally old one but twice as powerfull - which used to cost 200 bucks but now was 17 bucks second hand - a more powerful graphics card and a more modern SSD disk for the games partition (it's actually a modern M.2 SATA on a 2.5 inch housing adaptor, and that's as fast as SATA ever got and to get better than that you need a PCIx M.2) - basically I did the upgrades I could do on the cheap without changing motherboard and everything else that depends on it (like memory and a newer generation CPU) and which would still be compatible with the Windows 7 boot partition I still have around (though I haven't actually been booting it). Since I went from Windows 7 to Linux rather than Windows 11, none of the hardware upgrades was wasted in just making up for the extra bloat on Windows 11 and the machine definitelly feels a lot more performant.
As for games, most just work, about 1/3 need extra tweaking to work well or work at all and only 1 or 2 so far I couldn't get to work at all.
Curiously at least one game - Borderlands 2 from Steam - that didn't work on Windows 7, works on Linux. Also I can now run games whose minimum Windows version is 10 which I couldn't before.
Also since all non-Linux games are running on the Wine compatibility layer, Linux is actually better backwards compatible with older Windows and DOS than Windows itself, which is nice for Patient Gamer types like me.
I think that with Linux in it my PC is actually compatible with more games than it was with Windows 7.
I seriously think it's one of my best decisions in years.
While I've thought about linux, actually making the switch is scary.
I can put together a computer, that part is easy. It's very fancy lego! The software scares me, and it often just gets weird on me. I'm unsure why. Tech support is also confused, because they'll watch me follow instructions and then it just explodes.
But with linux I would mostly be the tech support, and that seems dangerous for having a machine that works!
Maybe the windows 7 machine can be made into linux. It still worked, after all. I only switched because I wanted to still play games.
Which Linux distro are you using? I'm also considering switching because of Windows 10 going EOL, but there are a lot to choose from.
Not them but 9 months into Mint and I've had 0 issues with any games or programs that don't just not work on Linux (fucking anticheat)
Simple, supported, Community that isn't entirely filled with elitists telling you to use the CLI, good comfortable starting spot
I went with Pop! OS because it was recommended as being good for gaming and it has out of the box support for Nvidia Graphics cards, which is what I have.
It just worked, no fuss and a quick check on my personal Linux management and gaming on Linux notes folder shows no actual notes for my Pop! OS desktop system (for the games in it, though if do have a couple of notes), which means I've had zero problems with the actual system so far (I write the notes down if I a problem I need to figure out how to fix just in case I get the same problem again and have to fix it again).
Mind you I haven't mucked about with things like replacing my windows manager or using Wayland instead of X-windows since I don't see the point in changing what's not broken and works fine in a system which is supposed to be for relaxing, not experimentation.
I sincerely hope you weren't doing anything important with that machine.
There are a lot of reasons to not want to upgrade to Windows 10 or 11, so it's likely those people who defiantly choose not to move on. In the case of Windows 11, it also requires newer hardware just for TPM support.
I could not upgrade from 7 to 11 because the hardware was bad, yes. I did try to upgrade before this also, but it also didn't want to upgrade to 8? Or maybe it was 10. I forget why it refused to do those two systems though.