Particularly, why are they so desperately pushy about it? WHAT COULD POSSIBLY BE IN IT FOR THEM???
I would understand if I was having to pay for the upgrade. Then, ya know, they would be MOTIVATED by the fucking PROFIT MOTIVE.
But it's an apparently entirely free upgrade. So please, could someone fill in these blanks for me: "Microsoft wants me to upgrade to Windows 11 (and then 12) because _______. They will directly (or even indirectly) benefit in the following ways: ______________________"
Now, I'm not a complete fucking moron. I realize that they want to close out support for Windows 10. But that doesn't explain the out-and-out salesmanship that's going on, every time the fuckers try to get me to upgrade.
A couple other things, before you even start yapping at me:
First off, I will only upgrade to Windows 11 or 12 when I am absolutely forced to do so, on the day that Windows 10 becomes unsupported, and will therefore become a security risk.
NOTHING will convince me to "upgrade" my operating system before that date. Nothing. I don't care what you have to say. You WILL fail to persuade me. Don't even make the attempt.
In my opinion, Windows 7 should have been the last version of the OS. It should just have been patched forever, until some kind of major revolution in the whole basis of computing finally made its entire architecture fundamentally obsolete.
Updating an operating system is beyond drudgery, and each "upgrade" adds completely counter-productive, worse-than-useless bloat and nonsense. There is nothing to be excited about, when a new version of any operating system comes out. They should literally stop coming out.
Second, I'm not switching to Linux. I have used Linux in the past, for specific tasks and specific situations, but it will NEVER be my primary operating system, on my primary PC.
Do not bother trying to convince me to switch. Again: you WILL fail to persuade me. Do not waste your time. Linux is always 80-90 percent of the way toward being a true turn-key, user-friendly solution, especially for someone who has a long history of using Windows software, for both work and gaming. And 90 percent good simply isn't good enough.
The learning curve isn't worth it. No, I don't want to hear anything you have to say about that. I'm not interested in how good the current version of whatever Linux branch has gotten. Do not bother. I promise you, I will not be reading it.
EDIT: if you even mention Apple, I will just laugh in your face.
Windows 7 is 15 years old. That's a long time to go with no new functionality. You may not care, but Microsoft is gonna need a critical mass of people to want that to make it economical to maintain a release for 15 years.
If you don't want to use something like Linux, which does offer more flexibility to keep UI the same, then I'd probably try adopting software packages that aren't going to change so that an update has less impact on you. Don't use the OS's bundled file manager or text editor or music player or whatever; use a third-party package that's maintained UI consistency and been around for a long time.
Did I say they couldn't add new functionality? They could add whatever the fuck they want. There just wasn't any reason to change the core system. Nothing about actual computer system architecture has changed over the last 15 years that would warrant that.
New CPUs? They will have drivers. New GPUs? They will have drivers. No problem. Anything else you can possibly think of? Drivers. Drivers will handle it.
There hasn't been any need to majorly change anything about the core functions of any operating system, for the last 25 years. Conservatively.
Microsoft's decided that they want to make changes. If what you want to do is vent about it, then you can vent about it, but it isn't gonna change that. Nobody here is going to change Microsoft's policy on the matter.
You've already looked at changing OSes, decided that you don't want to do that. Okay, fine.
You've decided not to disregard security updates and compatibility with new software. So you are gonna have to upgrade at some point.
So then your options are to suck it up, which it doesn't sound like you're happy with, or to try to figure out what UI you can keep consistent across releases. I'm just suggesting that given what you've said, I'd probably consider doing the latter if I were you.
I don't much like UI change myself. On Linux, I used xdm (login manager from the late 1980s) until I recently switched to Wayland and emptty (a terminal-based login manager). I do some work in bash (dates to the 1980s), a bunch in emacs in a terminal (1970s) and use a Web browser for a lot of the rest (which mostly depends on changes in remote websites). It's not that I don't agree with wanting to keep muscle memory and expertise intact. It's just that yelling into the void isn't gonna get you there. You do have the ability to partly mitigate what you don't want, if you're willing to put some effort in.
If you don't like the touchscreen-oriented Metro stuff in newer Windows releases, I know that you can back much of that out. googles Here's someone doing that, on a forum dedicated to backing out Microsoft's UI changes:
https://winclassic.net/thread/328/tools-win10-11-get-classic
I disabled all the touchscreen nonsense the VERY DAY that was forced to install Windows 10. It's still bloated and inefficient and inferior to Windows 7. And 11 will be even worse, even if I can make it look mostly like the current version.
And yeah, I guess I was venting. I was also genuinely wondering if there was some specific benefit that Microsoft would gain from me upgrading, that I hadn't thought about. The answer seems to be "nah, they just want to be able to advertise to you more effectively, and suck up your data."
Whatever.
A lot of the long-term support for OSes are for security updates. I'm sure they haven't added new features in a decade or more but security patches keep rolling out. These cover not just actual bugs in the code but also addressing evolving standards for encryption, hardware insecurities, etc.
https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-26/product_id-17153/Microsoft-Windows-7.html