The people stuck using ancient Windows computers? BBC rip.

[ThaDood]

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250516-the-people-stuck-using-ancient-windows-computers?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us            Yeah... I know... Not really radio related, or is it? I still have many Icom commercial HT's, and mobile rigs, that still need WIN XP to update FREQ's and modify features. Heck, I still have Motorola MAXTRAC's, and a Radius, that require DOS-based programming. My CHIRP works with WIN 8. And, Zara Radio automation runs on WIN XP. VISTA, runs a 20-year-old 8GB Sansa MP3 unit, that I've used to run on-air, and it won't take MAC and Ubuntu. So, I'm still using older Windows for various radio-related gear. And, I suspect that I'm not the only one.

[Shortwave_Listener]

I’ve got one of those old Sansa 8GB MP3 players, mine works fine with Windows 11.

[uhf35]

2 x units with AMD 62/32 bits, WINs 7 Ultimate, 2/8 GB RAM. Writing local news site and working like bookseller management.

1 Debian XFCE server; also like destopk «emergency» computer.

Lots of free Open and old abandonware, secure, simple software, that not appears losing funcions over Time, and Im not have intentions of change.

XP Pro SPII in PIII 866 MHz with 384 (3x128) SDRAM, over Gigabyte GA-TUC Socket 370, upgraded HD to 500 GB PATA with big caché (2010), broadcasting my automated local weekend FM station (LPFM with 10 W), time to time in SW (9825 KHz, 32 W), since 2001!
"She" spended a lot of power sources, 2 monitors and obsolete  expansion cards (ISA, PCI, AGP and others.)
In fact, actual audio provider are still ISA Sound Blaster AWE 64.

There are lots of posibilities that last one survive me, in working   

[Charlie_Dont_Surf]

Microsoft ends support for Windows 10 this year and somehow all their threats to Windows 10 users (and previous experience with Windows "upgrades") do not move me to do anything about it.

[TRI International]

We still use windows XP machines for a few of our studio projects here as well with now problems. As a matter of fact we still have all of the disk all the way up to windows 8.

[RobRich]

I run CachyOS (Arch-based Linux) on my primary daily notebook, but I do keep various virtualized OS installs available on the system. Win11 is mostly for Windows software build testing where Wine does not always suffice, but I keep other Windows versions just in case... or perhaps some nostalgia. ReactOS can replace Windows in some roles, though admittedly, that can be a YMMV situation.




On the HPC side, my primary software build box is a Xeon 96-core 192-thread server with 256GB memory, enterprise-class SSD RAID storage, etc. Ubuntu Server for ease pf compatibility's sake with particular open source software I build.

BTW, I still even have an HP Itanium 2 workstation. It is mostly useless anymore, but there is a version of WinXP for it. I used Debian on it.

[europirate]

I've re-purposed an old Windows 10 machine and a couple of Apple laptops with Linux Mint (ubuntu based) - I've been very impressed at how far the Linux desktop has come since my early dabbling 10 or so years ago.