Please support Windows 7
I've sold and supported MS Windows since version 2.1., back in the 1980s through to the 2000s. It's super easy to support both Windows 7 and Windows 10.
To quote a wise user from a forum, "well that was user abuse for profit on the part of microsoftie, but why did Blender's devs decide to go along with it; there really is no good reason. Especially seeing as programs written for 7 work on 10. There's no need to use 10 specific language in code. That's just bullying your users.
Many of us have awesome machines running 7. We don't need a new machine. We don't need a new OS; it works fine. We just need software vendors to continue to write code compatible with both OS versions."
5 Comments
Windows 7 is End of Life. It sure sucks to upgrade a complete system but Blender also needs to select what they use the time of the official Devs for. Support for an outdated OS that less and less users are using each day is not high on the priority.
That is more a problem of the lifecycle of Windows than a specific Blender problem, really. Don't know how difficult it is to maintain a running win7 branch but if you have people who are able to do it then you can create a separate fork of the most recents builds and create one for all the remaining Win7 users. I am sure they will be really happy. And I mean that without any sarcasm.
You can get a build of Blender 3.1.0 compatible with Windows 7 from here: github.com/nalexandru/BlenderCompat/releases
The difference between this and the official release is that my build links against a stub DLL instead of kernel32 for the functions missing from Windows 7.
Not providing support for an old system is bullying now?
Hey, you can and will always be able to get Blender for free. You can download any release at any time. You can also download the source code and make the changes you want. We are talking about a free opensource software here.
If you are interested in knowing why Blender dropped support for windows 7, maybe check why the BF did it instead of going into name calling and pretending they have no reason to do so.
devtalk.blender.org/t/windows-7-support-dropped-for-what-reason/22880
Take a deep breath and try to remain calm. I think you're over-thinking the quote (and maybe even misinterpreting it). Besides, the person who wrote it will probably never see your emphatic rebuttal.
Anyway, don't be surprised if there are a lot of Windows Blender users sticking with 2.92.
On the upside, I guess this is a real win for Linux.
I commented on your feature proposal. Please don't shift this into a weird remake of Good Will Hunting.