Franc Gossin Blog: Use Windows 7 in 2024 as a nerd

As we all know, Microsoft no longer has ended its extended support to Windows 7 since 2020. However I have a low-end laptop with i3-6006U, which is not fluent when running Windows 10. I have tried several linux distributions but none of them works perfectly. So I turned to Windows 7. Although the end of support of this system means that the potential safety and privacy issues may occur, I have no other choice.

First step, of course, is to install the system. However, in 2024 some USB stick may use USB3 or newer standard. So if you use a Windows 7 original image and flash on it, errors may occur like the one below:

So you should follow some solutions on the internet. For example, this one offered by Intel.

After the installation, I started to think about which VPN client should I use to bypass GFW. I tried several clients that is still updating on Github, only Clash Verge worked. V2rayNG wouldn't open, and Clash for Windows failed to load.

Then, install those updates. The newest update pack you can find on the Internet is Updatepack7R2. But after you installed MS Office, there may still be some updates for Office needed to be installed.

Of course, vc runtime should and .NET should also be installed.

After that, I started to download many daily software I use. Here is the list of version that work on my Windows 7 Ultimate SP1, and with all updates available installed.

Software	Version	Download
Chrome	109.0.5414.120	https://squirrelistic.com/blog/how_to_download_older_version_of_google_chrome
Firefox	115.17.0esr	https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/
Anki	2.1.49	https://github.com/ankitects/anki/releases/tag/2.1.49
calibre	3.48.0	https://download.calibre-ebook.com/3.48.0/
Python	3.8.10	https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3810/
weasel	0.14.3	https://github.com/rime/weasel/releases/tag/0.14.3
Visual Studio Code	1.70.2	https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_70
OBS Studio	27.2.4	https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/releases/tag/27.2.4