- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Steam has now officially stopped supporting Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1.::95.57 percent of surveyed Steam users are already on Windows 10 and 11, with nearly 2 percent of the remainder on Linux and 1.5 percent on Mac — so we may be talking about fewer than 1 percent of users on these older Windows builds. Older versions of MacOS will also lose support on February 15th, just a month and a half from now. Correction: It’s macOS 10.13 and 10.14 that are losing support. Not macOS period.
Out of curiosity (I no longer run win 7 at all so can’t check), does this mean steam will give an error if you try to run it on win 7 and will refuse to run? Or is this just valve saying they are no longer committed to releasing any updates for win 7? Or a combination of the two where they aren’t deliberately making it incompatible, but they also aren’t deliberately making it compatible so some patch is expected to break it entirely, maybe even today?
End of support means no more security updates. MS already ended support for Win 7 which has numerous unpatched vulnerabilities.
Steam is basically a DRM system which means you won’t be able to run any of your existing games on Windows 7/8. It will break all your steam games either immediately or within days.
Citation needed…
No big. Just run everything in compatibility mode and pick Windows 10 or 11.
/s
Pro tip, set it to Windows 12 so you don’t have to worry for another decade or more
Please, that’s rookie terms.
Set it to 98, you won’t have to worry about it again for like, a century.
Get this set it to 2000, not even your great grand kids will have to worry about it.
I like how you think!
Lmao i only knew they could stop supporting windows 7, people uae more windows 7 than windows 8
Launching 8 for the first time was almost as bad as time I first experienced vista, so I can understand there being fewer 8 users.
WTF is Windows 8.1?
The un-fucking of Windows 8 release
It actually was a pretty useable OS most of the time
Yup, it was a very solid OS. It’s similar to how people remember XP, but what they really remember is XP Service Pack 2 which was the rock solid version.
I used 8.1 all the way until around 2019, when I finally relented and switched to 10 (on 11 now). Take Windows 7 and 10, and do a “greatest hits” edition, and you have 8.1. It was basically 7 with some features that went into 10 mixed in. A fine OS for daily driving.
I would have used it for longer; only upgraded because you’d run into random little issues and bugs with various programs cause no one used it.
What are the features that 10 has? A different separate control panel?
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Windows 8.1 was a major update that undid a lot of UI updates that people didn’t like after 7
I had already uninstalled and replaced it with 7.
Soon Windows 10.1
The fix for the god awful TileOS decision.
I didn’t conceptually hate the UI there was just so much room for improvement in implementation, if I recall correctly. I was only using a Windows machine for a short time during that era though.
That’s why the Win10 start menu was better.
Tiles where it’s appropiate and you could even nake the start full screen to top it of.And then the Windows 11 came in and replaced those sweet flexibility with generic row of icons on top with the app list now in the separate menu and the bottom of the menu is wasted on ads and other garbage
Geez thank you Microsoft, you guys definitely went backwards with this one
Not like there were sponsored tiles on Win10 (at a minimum 1803 when I started to use Windows professionally and saw lot’s of desktops)
I’m on Linux :)
How’s the experience, overall? I love the Steam Deck OS UI, so I’m thinking of building an AMD machine to run Chimera OS. I’ve heard nothing but problems when it comes to Windows 11.
I don’t intend on playing competitive shooters, so idc about kernel anticheat keeping me out of Call of Duty or whatever.
I play exclusively on Linux. Almost every game I tried worked flawlessly. The very few that didn’t, crashed on startup or a few minutes after. If you don’t play AAA online games with anticheat then you should be good. As a rule of thumb, if it works on the Deck then it will work on any Linux distro.
Hell yeah! I’ve only experienced a few crashes on SD, and so far only on 2 emulated games that I’m okay with just not playing. I love that Valve started really investing in Linux support to make it possible for idiots like me to have somewhere to turn when Microsoft phones it in.
If you are using steam, there’s protondb, where you can check how well game runs on linux
I appreciate the link, but I was more asking about the general experience than about game compatibility. I have a Steam Deck and am enjoying the game functionality, and I haven’t hit too many snags in general PC usage on it yet in desktop mode (but I’ve barely used it for that). I’m really just asking around as a medium level Windows user about fully replacing my Windows laptop with a Chimera build to see what concessions I’ll need to accept to have realistic expectations. I’m optimistic that frustrations will be mostly at the “dang it, oh well” level which I could either live with or find a layman level solution to kinda fix. So far, the only real concern I’ve found with my plan to build a modern Chimera steam machine is that the parts I want will cost me like $1500, and that’s pretty hard to justify when I already have a Steam Deck, PS5, and a 2015 Windows 10 laptop. It’s another expensive device that kinda just does what my current shit can already do, just all in one rig. If my laptop or PS5 died, I’d have a lot more reason to go for it.
If you already have a Steam Deck, then you are basically already familiar with Linux gaming. The software-side of things (Steam, Proton, etc) is going to be the same on desktop Linux.
If a game is compatible with the Deck, then it is also comaptible with desktop.
I’ve been a Linux gamer for about a decade now. I stick with single player games, so I generally don’t have any issues, other than a minor tweak or DLL override I sometimes have to do, but that’s no different than trying to run older games on Windows.
Only real issue would be installing mods, which is possible, but could require some extra work, such as manually setting DLL overrides. I’ve had trouble getting Reloaded II to work in Linux, for example, even though they claim they support Linux.
Maybe the opinion of someone who switched recently would be more useful to you. I’m probably a little biased since I’ve been exclusively running linux for almost 20 years now
and a 2015 Windows 10 laptop
It’s very easy to create a bootable USB stick to just try it out and, if you have enough hard disk to spare and your experience is fine, make it dual boot. This way you can assess if it works for you or not
Wow, I can’t believe I didn’t think of using a USB stick to try this out. I feel like an idiot lol.
But now that I think about it, I don’t think it will work right because my laptop is Intel/Nvidia and I keep seeing that Chimera doesn’t work great unless you’re running AMD/AMD. If it runs at all, I’m sure it won’t be representative of the experience I’d have with the build I would want. But that’s something pretty straightforward that I completely overlooked, so thanks for the suggestion!
Especially if you’re not gonna play stuff that the anticheat locks you out from, the experience is great. As other commenters have said, ProtonDB.com has resources for how well games on steam run under Proton / On Linux.
Although, I would recommend Nobara Linux over Chimera OS due to a lack of experience with Proton and other gaming-related tools (as in, Chimera developers’ lack of experience). Nobara Linux comes from the same developer as Proton-GE (GloriousEggroll). Proton is the tool that Valve developed to run Windows games pretty much seemlessly, and Proton-GE adds extra features and patches on-top of it that can help support more games or get the slightest extra bit of performance out of Proton. Nobara Linux extends this concept to the entire OS, with a stable Fedora base that gets a major update every ~6 months.
Nobara also consitently outperforms other Linux Distributions and even Windows regularly.
(This doesn’t mean that you don’t get updates for 6 months, just that major releases, e.g from 39 to 40 happen every ~6 months)
Ooh, I’ll look into that! I was interested in Chimera because of some articles and videos I’ve seen which were praising its similarities to Steam OS. I liked booting up into Steam directly via the controller like it’s just another console, but having the freedom to use it as a PC. And it seemed popular enough that if I hit a snag I could probably find somebody out there who had the same issue and already found and posted a fix. Plus continuing support, which is something I learned is not the case for HoloISO. I guess I was looking for the closest thing to Steam OS which is Arch based, so I thought I had to run an Arch Linux to have a good console-like UI/UX.
I’m always blown away by how well gaming on Linux is in this era.
It’s sublime. Pretty much every game you throw at it works perfectly.
Don’t stretch the truth and give them an unrealistic idea.
There are games that don’t work, Some due to draconian and oppressive DRM or invasive anti-cheat. Some don’t work just because.
Generally, the ones that work dont just because will eventually become playable. I’ve had a few games I had to back burner for a while, but a few months later became perfectly playable with proton updates and such.
But on the flipside I have Day 1’d quite a few games, some perfectly (Mostly games with older engines like Starfield), some not so perfectly (Like Cyberpunk 2077), but they were all very playable with patience and understanding.
@MrVilliam I suggest you hit protondb.com and check the games you commonly play. If they are gold or higher you should be good.
As for Distro, I’d personally recomend Nobara for gaming on Linux. Its a great experience, smooth, and has pretty much everything you need packaged in the install already, so you don’t have to deal with any tedious bullshit like having to compile something if its not packaged for your distro.
I dont mean to repeat myself, but patience and understanding is going to be key in successfully getting it going. You’re gonna be learning a completely new OS, and new procedures, from scratch. There will be moments where it may be frustrating trying to figure things out, but you don’t have to be a Tech Savant to get through it, and once you get your head wrapped around it… installing and playing will pretty much be as seamless as you’re used to on windows. Its not perfect by any means, regardless of what anyone says, but its pretty god damn good where its at now, and is rapidly getting better.
Translating into Linux terms, Steam has dropped support for:
- Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Hardy Heron
- Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolian
Which came out more than a decade ago, for those who aren’t keeping score.
I’m on windows 11 :)
That is up to you of course. Luckily I left Microsoft Windows 12 years ago. No more.
For 90% of what I want to do it’s fine. I mainly code in c# so it’s actually better supported on windows then anywhere else.
Everything else I have WSL setup.
Nobara Project is another good Fedora based build for those wanting to try Linux that will work relatively smoothly for gaming.
Ow… and Windows 11 also have stronger hardware requirements, making your laptop not usable in the future if Windows 10 is also deprecated. Causing more and more e-waste ;( just because of software from Microsoft.
Steam would be smart to package their steam deck OS as a dual boot installer for PCs. Boot right into steam when you want to play games.
They’re eventually going to release SteamOS onto desktop platforms, but for now you can just install Linux.
SteamOS has so many deck and handheld specific features that it’s not really a good OS for desktop hardware. HoloISO is something you can install, though, as long as you don’t have a Nvidia card, which is just SteamOS packaged in a way that let’s it run on other hardware
SteamOS has a normal linux desktop, its only in deck mode where everything is deck specific
Yeah, it’s just Arch with KDE plasma
I think StreamOS has been around longer than the Steam deck, actually; but I’m sure it’s been tailored somewhat for the hardware.
SteamOS was scrapped and rebuilt. SteamOS 2 and 3 aren’t related at all.
Yes, but the previous version has been based on Debian.
I, for one, am glad that from a security standpoint that companies like Valve are stopping support and giving patches and stuff to people using such outdated operating systems. If you are forced to use an old OS for work because of software limitations, that’s one thing, but there should be no reason you use an old OS as your daily driver if you ain’t getting any more security updates and patches. I don’t care how long it would take to reset everything and get things set up again, upgrade your damn OS when it’s not being supported anymore!
Microsoft doesn’t even support Windows 7 or 8 anymore, so hardly a surprise. Affected customers can switch to either Windows 10/11 or Linux.
Gotta wonder how that affects older games that haven’t been updated since…
When no longer supporting Ubuntu 16.04: No big deal, just update, duh…
When no longer supporting Windows 7/8: How dare you!
People paid for particular product on a particular platform. That’s what they will get sued over. People made a contract with steam for product that runs on a platform. That’s just contract law.
Valve are the ones who require tethering to their magical drm cloud - not my copy of ‘Monkey Island’.
so just like they were sued over axing Windows XP support, right?
“Valve Software has joined the ranks of Microsoft, Sony and Electronics Arts by requiring Steam users to waive their right to file a lawsuit against the company in order to use the digital distribution platform. The company made the announcement on Tuesday, saying that Steam’s new dispute resolution terms allow customers to only bring individual claims, not class action claims.”
Exactly.
On a particular platform - that platform is Steam, not Windows 7/8