To be fair, it's not just a steam thing. My understanding of the situation is that chromium is dropping win7 support so anything using chromium will stop working on older operating system.

Win 7 really was the best of them all.

This is one of the things, that’s not only a colossal amount of effort to maintain, but also a colossal waste of money. Backporting security is expensive. Backporting features to an old is is even more costly. With the W7 platform shrinking into obscurity, it just doesn’t make sense

Minecraft is about to be a retro title.

You need to tweak a lot to get latest minecraft java version running on Windows7

It's surreal reading comments pining for win7

Oh no they've been in a coma since 2012!

I jest, but seriously I was in HS personally while whinging about 8 and wanting 7 back after my laptop auto updated on me like a jackass. Its actually the event that lead to me learning IT!

Valve pulled support for Steam at the start of January 2024 for Windows 7/8. I thought that was the end, but apparently it actually just meant "Steam may still run but we don't support it in any way". Which surprised me when I booted up the old Windows 7 PC a few months ago and discovered that Steam still ran and seemed to work.

Apparently this update is actually incompatible and now Steam won't run at all.

I believe in you! Personally, when I find someone charging me subscription prices for something that should have a one-time fee, I flip the bird and run to the nearest competitor, but I can't speak for your line of work. For my amateur needs, open source alternatives have gotten the job done, and I wish you the best.

People will mention Gimp, but check out Krita as an alternative to Adobe

Its hard because stop using adobe as graphic designe

Premiere Pro, Photoshop, and After Effects all worked when I tried them on Linux Mint 22 to see if they worked

Older versions from before the CC updates for those programs that you can use them for also work and work quite well, though I do understand that there are literally missing features for professional work in some of those older versions

A real Linux alternative (or proper fucking Support but fuck adobe) would be GREAT, but the change likely won't be as bad as you might be worrying

So far the hardest thing I've had to install was called YAD, and that was so I could install Morrowind mods specifically, a rather niche need all things considered, and I've made multiple audiovisual projects on my Linux workstation without having to do anything like that

I do keep a Win10 LTSC on a side boot drive for games with anticheat and any programs I might need there but so far that's literally only been handbrake, which I'm sure there's a Linux version/alternative for but I just haven't had to use it on that OS yet due to work flow

If you want to migrate to Linux, I would strongly suggest you set up a dual boot, and start playing with it to gain experience. Being able to switch back to something you know is a massive benefit when you are still learning.

While Linux has come a very long way, you are sure to experience some hitches along the way. If not because of Linux itself, then because you are not familiar with how to do "that one thing" on Linux.

I was using 7 right up to the point last year steam said they'd stop supporting it.

I run a computer into the ground because I'm broke.

There are a lot of reasons to not want to upgrade to Windows 10 or 11, so it's likely those people who defiantly choose not to move on. In the case of Windows 11, it also requires newer hardware just for TPM support.

how?

Not directly but I'd think they'd pull support for older system packages & kernels, which would eventually affect you. There's not really much of a reason not to upgrade your Linux distros though.

They don’t support new technologies (Wayland), why would they drop support for old ones?

Steam has only ever supported the latest Ubuntu LTS and Steam OS.