Comment by TheJoeMan
1 month ago
This is not good to hear, at my work we have the production technicians activate the occasional Windows 7 PC via the phone. We do it this way as these are specialized embedded PC’s that won’t connect to the internet. Flippant comments to “just use Linux” are not understanding the realities of keeping 20yr old software in the medical, offshore drilling, etc industries.
"Just use Windows" seems to be more problematic than "just use Linux" here. Though there is hope that WINE will reach enough feature parity for many applications, accessing external hardware is the hardest thing to emulate.
Building products on top of Windows seems to limit the lifetime of the product to whatever support Microsoft seem to be willing to provide.
The best time to migrate off Windows was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
Windows 7 activation was cracked long ago and you already paid MS for it, so I would just go that route.
The phone activation process has moved to a website instead of a phone number. It doesn’t mean the OS to be activated needs an internet connection. You can still activate offline systems.
It's Neowin so the information posted is half right. The device you are activating doesn't need internet. https://visualsupport.microsoft.com/ has the enter code from pc and get activation code
AFAIK Windows 11 IoT, which is intended for exactly these kinds of environments, can be activated via phone and LAN without internet.
Microsoft isn't abandoning these markets. They've been min-maxing consumer software enshittification for years now and doing an extremely good job, but they still have good options for enterprise.
Using windows 7 in 2025 for those industries seems a massive liability ?
> Flippant comments to “just use Linux” are not understanding the realities of keeping 20yr old software in the medical, offshore drilling, etc industries.
I make such comments. Tell me: what exactly is problematic about medical, offshore drilling, etc industries which makes it difficult or impossible to switch?
... wanna hire me to work on that? I am convinced that, whatever the cost is, it will be cheaper than using software on a very-outdated very-proprietary operating system for another couple of decades.
To name a few (presumably): drivers, proprietary protocols, vendor warranties/support, licensing/relicensing, paying you to do the work, waiting for the work to be done/tested, paying for workforce re-training, justifying this to management etc.
All these reasons suck, but they’re all reality in one industry or another sadly.
It was the same reality 20 years ago when they ditched DOS for Windows XP. At least now it's far easier to run most things in a VM.
> drivers
Linux kernel is open source and really easy to read, and also fairly easy to write drivers for.
> proprietary protocols
I've written many network softwares, and proprietary protocols aren't difficult to me.
> vendor warranties/support
Fuck vendor lock-in. Move to Linux.
> licensing/relicensing
Fuck vendors.
> paying you to do the work
...is cheaper than paying vendors.
> waiting for the work to be done/tested
Here, let me demonstrate that it works... with many many many automated tests.
> * paying for workforce re-training*
Not really important if it's well-done.
> justifying this to management
A lot of business management can't see past their own nose until it comes to money. Do some maths and show them the cost savings in a presentation. They'll listen.
9 replies →
The issues are not technical, they are documentation and certification. Here is the specifications for medical device software [1] [2]. You can either keep using a legacy (windows-based) software package, or find the need to verify/validate the entirety of linux and all drivers and packages (software-of-unknown-providence aka. SOUP). You then have to devise a patching schedule/methodology, as right now you just tell the end user to apply the Windows security patches if they’d like. This is a high-cost that is hard to argue for despite the obvious advantages.
[1] https://www.iso.org/standard/38421.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_62304
Great. Let me know where you're going to find someone to certify it.
Point me at the certification requirements and we can figure something out.
20 year old software is probably also going to have a hard time running on windows 11, even with all their compatibility layers packed up