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"Please DO NOT use Windows 7 for web browsing or other internet activities, even with Brave."

Retired IT director here...
Windows 7 is the last version of Windows that I trust. I simply do not trust any version after that. Long story short, after my experiences evaluating the upgrade to Windows 10 for the company (I oversaw all the upgrades in Windows starting with Window95.) I decided that the day we had to upgrade to Win10 was the day I would retire.

It was the trust issue, and because I was responsible for fixing things if Windows one day just decided not to work the same as it did the day before and critical software became unusable (yes that actually happened during the evaluation). That could shut the company down indefinitely while we tried to find a fix. That's the kind of thing that I had nightmares about. Fortunately for me, I retired before that day came. But I still had those nightmares for over ten years after I retired.

Every time I have to help my wife with problems with her laptop, I am reminded of why I still use 7. I did try Win10 on my laptop for a while (nothing critical on there) but went to Linux Mint after getting exasperated once too often. All the other machines, including my laptop are running Linux Mint, but on my main workstation, I have too much software that requires Windows and doesn't run well in a virtual machine. If I have to I'll run Linux Mint in a VirtualBox window and run Brave on that. (It's set up already)

Windows 10/11 is a hard HELL NO! and if pushed on the issue my language will get MUCH more "salty."

> Retired IT director here...

Greetings, FRiend and colleague. Full-time IT/DevOps/Eng here (72, apparently haven't hit my "Use-By" date quite yet).

I totally understand your attachment to Win7. As I've commented before on FR, Win7 has been my favorite release of Windows since it came out. To this day, I have a Win7 virtual machine running in VMware Fusion on my home MacOS desktop, and I use it for a number of non-internet Windows-only applications, including some that don't run on later releases. Fortunately they run well enough in the VM that I'm not annoyed. The local network is configured to avoid accidental connection to the internet from the Win7 VM.

I distrust Win10 intensely, and I distrust Win11 even more, despite my job requiring me to work with them every day and help users who are having problems with them. But I do not and will not use them at home. We will not mention the releases between 7 and 10, They Which Shall Not Be Named.

For web browsing and other internet activities I use Apple products (MacOS w/Fusion for VMs, iPhone, iPad), and Ubuntu Linux, either in a VM or on the metal.

If there's a website that only works properly with a Windows-only browser (Edge), well they just don't get my clicks. F'em, you should excuse the expression.

So for someone like you or me, an IT professional who is deeply aware of the dangers of conducting web activities with an insecure (unpatchable) operating system, I'm not going to judge. I assume you, like me, are very careful, stay away from dodgy websites, hover over all those links before you click to see the real URL, etc. etc. My bold recommendation to not use Win7 for browsing is intended for the 99.9% of users who do NOT take the high, nay extreme, level of care, caution, and outright suspicion that mark the IT professional.

What you describe, using Linux Mint, sounds very familiar of course, Mint being a sibling of Ubuntu. I commend your choices and decisions; I am doing largely the same. :-)

Incidentally, as you noticed, I run the FR Windows Ping List. Many years ago I saw that ShadowAce had a "Tech List" that was primarily Linux/FOSS, and Swordmaker had an Apple/Mac list, but there was no Windows list. That seemed odd and unfair, since the majority of FR members used Windows. So I started the Windows list even though I'm not primarily a Windows user these days. Just a bit of history in case you were curious.

Best FRegards,
Dayglored