this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2026
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People have too much rose tinted vision about 7, it really wasn't that great. I don't see anything it does better than w11, and if you have modern hardware (I mean like 2015+) your computer is being held back by w7. Sure it's technically more light weight but it lacks support for modern hardware and any modern computer will by choked by w7 where w11 or Linux would run significantly better.
God I still remember how many people still screamed about Windows 7 and getting rid of XP. You can definitely tell the age of people based off of what Windows OS they claim is best.
For real I cut my teeth on vista and grew up largely with w7, I can't hold 7 on a pedestal though.
If you think that Windows 7 was overrated, you're naive and completely oblivious to the state of Windows during that era. XP came out in 2001 and Vista in 2007, during a time personal computer improvements were exploding. That'd be like 20 years nowadays. Vista was a bloated and slow mess that even modern hardware could barely run efficiently. Windows 7 righted the wrongs and made massive performance improvements that Vista lacked, and not just for modern hardware at the time, but legacy hardware was revived.
Arguing that Windows 7 doesn't support modern hardware is so asinine and a straw-man argument. No one was making an argument that Windows 7 is a good OS today, not a single person. What we are arguing is that every OS since 7 has been a half-baked mess with tons of bugs and annoyances.
"I don't see anything it does better than w11". You think the lack of unified interface is equal to windows 7? You think the disaster of a start menu is equal to windows 7? You think forced updates is better? You think the abundance of telemetry is better?
Honestly, have you even used Windows 7?
Ok but windows didn't make a good os with windows 7. Everybody thinks 7 was so grand because after years of updates they un fucked it enough to be good. Do u remember being stuck 2/3rds of the way in a w7 install for eternity? It simply not taking and having to start over? For the first 2 years I swear to God you couldn't use any printer with it. We kept a vista computer around because it fucking worked better till the 7 bugs got worked out. Windows 11 is now 4 years old, and I'd argue as solid as w7 was at that age too (if we look past the shoving unneeded crap down your throat bit that all can be disabled if you'd bother). I don't remember the early days of vista as that's what I grew up on, but early w7 days were rough too. I'm just trying to say that I don't remember a non half baked os being released from windows, not sure what you think im trying to straw man here.
Yeah nah mate i do not recall a single issue you're citing here. And i was literally sysadmin for a uni rolling it out at the time.
Sure, in some cases you had to do a little more driver work as they cut the "must natively contain drivers for fucking everything" mindset that caused XP to have such a massive footprint, but they were easy to install after the fact
Yea u can be ignorant all you want but windows 7 was a buggy mess on launch and no amount of nostalgia is gonna change that. Yes windows 7 wound up polished, but just because you fanboy over it with the rest of the echo chamber in here doesn't negate the fact that it was a steaming pile on launch that u couldn't even upgrade to from vista without nearly bricking your computer. Maybe u rolled it out on all new computers or something but it was quite buggy for at least the first 2 years until updated dozens of times. I have never had to fresh install w10 or w11 or Linux over stupid bugs and crashes and BSODS, but i remember having to do fresh installs several times with w7 in the earlier days.
I'm a bit confused by your criticism. Windows 7 came out in 2009, Windows 8 came out in 2012. And your criticism of Windows 7 is that it doesn't run great with modern hardware? Microsoft not optimizing an old operating system for new hardware when it's focusing on a new version, to me, isn't a reflection on the quality or design of the old operating system. To me that's like criticizing DOS for being limited to 640kb of memory. It was designed for the hardware available at the time.