off topic: setting up win7 was not fun

jbskaggs

I needed win to run one program on my wife's computer. Win10 ran very poorly on this system so I removed it and had switched it to linux, Now she wanted this one program Affinity Designer to run.

SO after messing with wine and various distros I gave up and decided to add win 7 to this system.

Microsoft has pulled most of the win 7 links and some of the files off their servers, and win 7 updates no longer work. So it was a pain to find all the links and manually build win 7.

Took three updates to get affinity to work. Also had to add a dll file for blender 2.93lts to work. blender 3 will not run on win 7.

Megalomaniak

@jbskaggs said: Took three updates to get affinity to work. Also had to add a dll file for blender 2.93lts to work. blender 3 will not run on win 7.

https://github.com/nalexandru/BlenderCompat

Comes with the dll included already and includes a 3.0.0 release as well. Worth starring the project/repository.

cybereality

I would highly recommend not running Windows 7. They stopped getting security updates, and there are several pretty huge vulnerabilities that are known. Your computer is basically wide-open to hackers. Windows 11 is fine though. I have it installed on a $200 computer and it runs okay.

DaveTheCoder

So booting up my old Win2K CD would probably be a bad idea too. :(

jbskaggs

@cybereality said: I would highly recommend not running Windows 7. They stopped getting security updates, and there are several pretty huge vulnerabilities that are known. Your computer is basically wide-open to hackers. Windows 11 is fine though. I have it installed on a $200 computer and it runs okay.

windows says 11 wont run on this system. I prefer linux. Once she learns krita / gimp/ blender I think we can drop win altogether on this system.

jbskaggs

@Megalomaniak said:

@jbskaggs said: Took three updates to get affinity to work. Also had to add a dll file for blender 2.93lts to work. blender 3 will not run on win 7.

https://github.com/nalexandru/BlenderCompat

Comes with the dll included already and includes a 3.0.0 release as well. Worth starring the project/repository.

Hmm I found the one for 2.93, Ill try this one and see as well.

fire7side

It's just windows 7 as far as I know they stopped updating. My computer was too old so they didn't update me to windows11. Still works fine and runs most games I play. It's an I3 with an GTX 750i.

cybereality

You can install Windows 11 on any PC. People even got it running on a Pentium 4.

Here is a guide to bypass the block:

https://www.theverge.com/22715331/how-to-install-windows-11-unsupported-cpu-intel-amd-registry-regedit

jbskaggs

@cybereality said: You can install Windows 11 on any PC. People even got it running on a Pentium 4.

Here is a guide to bypass the block:

https://www.theverge.com/22715331/how-to-install-windows-11-unsupported-cpu-intel-amd-registry-regedit

THanks! BTW my wife watched her first blender tutorial: Square Owl. She enjoyed herself :)

fire7side

@cybereality said: You can install Windows 11 on any PC. People even got it running on a Pentium 4. I read somewhere they don't do automatic upgrades if you do that. They're still upgrading my Windows 10.

cybereality

You get updates, at least right now. You are just not guaranteed support. But it's much better than running 7.

jbskaggs

@cybereality said: You get updates, at least right now. You are just not guaranteed support. But it's much better than running 7.

I found Win 10 to be mostly a negative experience. My last 3 win 10 systems I replaced with Linux. I personally have one I use so I can program in Windows environment for compatibility reasons. Otherwise I stick with linux. Win 11 would really have to change my user experience to get me switch to it. Especally since you introduced to me Stadia - now besides Affinity Designer and testing a game in windows envionment what need to I have for it?

cybereality

Well, I like Linux better for sure (specifically Ubuntu), and that is what I use for development (I have a Windows 11 machine as well mostly for testing games). But if you want to run Windows, then Windows 11 is the best version of it. I don't really do much on Windows anymore, but I need to test compatibility and there are certain games that don't work 100% on Linux, so I have it as a back-up.

jbskaggs

Ubuntu is great, I tend to use smaller distros aimed at gaming usually Sparky or Garuda. Ubuntu is probably a better all around everyday system though for out of the box just works.

cybereality

Yeah, I've tried other distros. Ran Debian for a while, then Ubuntu, Mint, KDE Plasma, and Manjaro. But mostly Debian based, since that is what I started with and was the most familiar. I wanted to like Manjaro, but I don't know. It didn't click for me. At least with Ubuntu there is tons of support, if you have a problem you will find a solution. The Arch wiki is great though, and most of the code there will work on Manjaro and other distro. But it was just more complicated, and I would prefer to get work done on my computer and play games, not try to troubleshoot weird issues.

jbskaggs

@cybereality said: Yeah, I've tried other distros. Ran Debian for a while, then Ubuntu, Mint, KDE Plasma, and Manjaro. But mostly Debian based, since that is what I started with and was the most familiar. I wanted to like Manjaro, but I don't know. It didn't click for me. At least with Ubuntu there is tons of support, if you have a problem you will find a solution. The Arch wiki is great though, and most of the code there will work on Manjaro and other distro. But it was just more complicated, and I would prefer to get work done on my computer and play games, not try to troubleshoot weird issues.

Well for gaming linux check out Garuda and Sparky- Garuda is better at windows games in general, and sparky seems to be better at cnc, 3d modeling and win applications- though Sparky Game Over edition it way ahead of other flavors but not asmuch as garuda. Things I could not use in wine on or proton in Mint or Ubuntu ran like a charm on Sparky and Garuda- though Garuda managed to get thig running that had a garbage rating on winehq.

Megalomaniak

@jbskaggs said: though Garuda managed to get thig running that had a garbage rating on winehq.

Plenty of those might have also been really old ratings tho. I'd expect most bleeding edge and many of the leading edge distros to do better than the rest, not just garuda.

cybereality

Yeah, and for the most part Linux is still Linux. There is not as huge a difference between distros as people think. It's mostly just the package manager and included software. But you can, for the most part, run anything on anything (assuming it's open source), so it's not a huge deal. I just like that Ubuntu is simple and gets out of my way. It's the Godot of operating systems. And that, especially for proprietary software, the developers might only distribute .deb packages, which makes your life harder if you're not on Ubuntu or another Debian-based distro.

jbskaggs

True.