General Discussion • Re: Best way to update from win7 to win10?

Seeking advice,Tips,Tricks, and Any links that might be of help on updating from Win7 pro to Win10 (please no youtube vids as I have banned yt from my views).
-I would rather not have to update to Win11 if possible

The easiest way to make sure you don't get updated to Windows 11 by accident is to disable fTPM support and Secure Boot in the BIOS. Disabling that helps a lot with dual-booting anyway, but Windows will then think your PC doesn't meet the requirements for Windows 11 and simply won't give it to you.

-I would also like to eventually dual boot with a Linux distro, is that possible? (yes I think)

Yes, but you want to install Windows first. Linux distros are setup to make dual-booting with Windows possible, but installing Windows after the Linux distro is problematic.

-Would it be possible to dual boot win10 and win7? (likely not I think)

Actually, I think it is possible to do this and get a Windows Boot Manager to let you pick which version of Windows you want to boot into. I believe I have seen people at such a screen choosing whether they want Windows 7 or Windows 10. The Windows Boot Manager doesn't support Linux, but it does support the last few versions of Windows usually.

Will my "Legacy" programs still work? ie; Photoshop6, Cinema4D, Starry Night Backyard, Winamp,etc in Win10?

Mostly yes, but you may have to run them in compatibility mode and occasionally look up tips or tricks to get them working 100% correctly. The compatibility issues of Windows 10 are way overblown, IMO.

Also, will my older 'original' games (not Steam versions) that still work on Win7 like; Carmageddon2, IL-2 Sturmovic, and too many more to list.(I Had to use Win-XP compatibility in win7 for most of these to work so not expecting much)

It's quite possible they will. I've seen games from 1995 work on Windows 10. It really depends on how much you're willing to fiddle with it to get it working, hunting around for missing DLLs and messing with compatibility mode configurations, etc. I imagine there are edge cases where something genuinely just won't work on Windows 10, but mostly it's overblown by impatient people who just want everything to work as well as it did in Windows 7 with no fiddling.

I am mainly considering updating because Steam (of which I have 5 games from) will require users to have at least win10 very soon Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Yeah, that's one big reason why I was warning people off of staying on Windows 7... I know a lot of the people on Windows 7 are gamers, and that they rely on Steam. Steam doesn't have the best track record with supporting older operating systems long past EOL.

And also, in some twisted way, I would like to see just how bad (or not) it really is in comparison.

It's actually pretty much the same as Windows 7 under the hood. The main difference is you don't have Aero, and also a lot of the traditional control panel stuff is in different places. There's also a Windows Store and a lot of options to use a Microsoft account and integrate with OneDrive, which a lot of Windows 7 users hate. While Windows 10 does contain telemetry and some privacy advocates have legitimate concerns about that, Windows 10 does not have a "keylogger."
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