Every time I start Tor now I get that doomsday warning about no longer supporting Windows 7 in September. It will be in September, won’t it? Well, it is a very unfriendly step. Not that Tor is my friend, necessarily, but it would be nice if someone was, among all the censors and geolocation discriminators. I don’t have any statistics about the use of Windows 7 with Tor, but I think it is still quite a popular system for a simple reason: later versions of Windows are practically unusable. Like myself, many people will find switching to Windows 10 a non-starter. Someone on these boards has written that later Windows versions are better for security but worse on other counts, and it’s frustrating. Well, calling it frustrating is like saying that swimming in cement shoes is inconvenient. The migration to Windows 10 is not going to happen. Privacy is nice, but for everyone except an astral projection of embassy-age Julian Assange, rope-jumping through the jungle with CIA bullets whistling around and a Tor-peeling laptop strapped to the back his only clothing, basic usability comes first. So there is that. I don’t see why you couldn’t keep a fork with simpler security updates, not requiring later Windows, available to the users of early versions, but if you won’t, kindly allow me to turn off the warning and the update feature. I’ll take my risks rather than be herded to an official stable of force-fed standards. I believe opting out of the “thou must” and “thou may not” game was the point of privacy software a long, long time ago.
then acknowledge the message instead of just closing it
I’ve never said this… ever. Maybe you should switch to Linux. Ugh! There I’ve said it.
I really don’t see what the stink is all about. Yes there is a lot of junk in 10 and 11 when you click start. Just get rid of it. Uninstall Teams, Skype, Weather, Highlights, etc, etc, etc. Don’t use Edge. Install Firefox. My 11 looks like my 10 and my 10 looks like my 7 did. Agreed why is not a simple Windows available.
Windows has about 73% of desktop OS usage and 7, 8, 8.1, and XP have about 4% of that. So that’s 3% of all desktop OS usage. I have no idea what absolute number this represents but not a lot. Do we really think they are going to take time and money to retro-fit security updates for that number. Would you if you owned 73% of desktops? I bet AVs don’t support that 4%. Less and less browsers support the 4%.
Search for desktop OS usage stats using DuckDuck. There will be a site near the top of the results with the word statcounter in the domain name. This is what I used for these numbers.
There is a link here where the writer projects the number of Tor Windows 7 users and I quote: “then we’re looking at roughly 66,000 Tor Browser users still on Windows 7” And when Mozilla stops supporting 7 then Tor will follow he says.
There are technical issues with security updates not requiring later Windows. I think it is in that thread I posted. All done by volunteers. Hmmn all that work for 66,000 users world wide. I would prefer donating my time to the masses of my users.
How about those 33 people still using Windows 98
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