6 ms·

Last year I was also in a Windows 7 rabbit hole. There's lots of ongoing stuff in the community, and even huge driver packs for Ryzen hardware. The website tha

Last year I was also in a Windows 7 rabbit hole. There's lots of ongoing stuff in the community, and even huge driver packs for Ryzen hardware. The website that led me down that hole was the one from "spacedrone808" [1] who appeared regularly in /r/windows7 mod posts and issue trackers. There's also the snappy driver installer project [2] which shares a 44GB torrent with all kinds of drivers, from SATA controllers to NIC to GPU. There's also driverpacks which is sometimes down, sometimes not. In the web archive of either of those you can still find the torrent links though. Oh and there's driveroff [4] which led me down the rabbit hole of Russian hacking communities that backport software to win7, which is amazing to see that there's this isolated modding community on the internet that uses hardcore win7 modded variants, with self-built firewall software, backported hash file databases for antivirus tools etc. [1] https://win7sp2.neocities.org/ https://win7sp2.neocities.org/ [2] https://sdi-tool.org/ https://sdi-tool.org/ [3] https://driverpacks.net/ https://driverpacks.net/ [4] https://driveroff.net/ https://driveroff.net/

AndrewDavis 2y ago
Similarly I went on an XP odyssey late last year. I acquired a retired workstation from $dayjob that I decided to turn into a retro XP game machine. It was very late for XP but within a generation or two before Intel, Nvidia and the motherboard provided drivers (Ivy bridge and GTX 660 GPU). But that didn't get you through the installer... I discovered a plethora of alternative install media with built in community drivers providing support for nvme drives, modern ACPI extensions etc. It's so complete you can install it on today's current hardware.
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  Care to share sources for those alternative media with modern drivers?
  - CursedSilicon 2y ago
    Likely the "XP Integral Edition" that is updated every now and again https://zone94.com/software/operating-systems/123-windows-xp-professional-sp3-x86-integral-edition https://zone94.com/software/operating-systems/123-windows-xp...
    - AndrewDavis 2y ago
      Yep that was it.
- xattt 2y ago
  > retro XP game machine This still gets me as I vividly remember when the family computer was finally going to move past Windows 98 in 2001.
- potato3732842 2y ago
  This capability exists in large part because large parts of heavy industry still run on software that only runs (right) on XP.
kotaKat 2y ago
I've been using https://www.ntlite.com/ https://www.ntlite.com/ for a while now for various custom/integration needs at home. Well worth it. It's also nifty when I need to slap hardware drivers into a Windows 11 ISO on the fly to bring up a new machine.
cosmic_cheese 2y ago
I’ve long suspected that a Linux desktop environment designed to closely mimic Windows 7 (with light modernization where it makes sense) would prove popular, and the existence of all this reinforces that idea. A rough facsimile can be built using KDE, Cinnamon, or XFCE, but many details will still be wrong (and aren’t practically fixable without forking) and I think that’s enough to prevent many users from considering Linux as a viable alternative.
- lynnharry 2y ago
  IMHO, what's important for Windows 7 is the established userbase and all the hardware that's already running on Windows 7, not it's UI.
  - cosmic_cheese 2y ago
    Maybe, but there’s no reason why a thoughtfully engineered Win7 clone DE on a lightweight Linux couldn’t run just as well or better on the same hardware.
    - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
      > but there’s no reason why a thoughtfully engineered Win7 clone DE on a lightweight Linux Why not a "thoughtfully engineered Win7 clone Desktop Environment" (without Linux :-) ). By the way: people are working on ReactOS: > https://reactos.org/ https://reactos.org/
  - listenallyall 2y ago
    Your opinion. Win 7 was the best Windows UI, both in looks (Aero) and usability. It was abandoned primarily because Microsoft was trying to achieve some hybrid desktop/tablet/mobile UI that worked poorly for all form factors. Win 11+ (or whatever the next version is called) would be well-suited to return to an Aero-like UI.
- nicman23 2y ago
  it is the other way around. ms copied heavily from what people where doing with compiz and gnome 2 back in the day
userbinator 2y ago
a 44GB torrent with all kinds of drivers, from SATA controllers to NIC to GPU My first reaction was "that's an absolutely insane amount of drivers", but then I realised that some GPU and printer drivers are already around 1GB.
- parineum 2y ago
  I didn't know what's in that package/torrent but those 1gb drivers are drivers AND applications which are frequently not required at all. How much of the Nvidia driver is just GFE?
  - WorldMaker 2y ago
    GFE and its replacement "nVidia App" are bloated and large, but the drivers themselves are still 600-900MBs each. That "optimized for Game X" thing where GFE/nVidia App brags that the driver has all sorts of custom relationships with all the recent exciting games is strangely literal in most cases because the drivers include a frankly wild amount of application/game-specific microcode/optimizations.

AndrewDavis 2y ago

Similarly I went on an XP odyssey late last year. I acquired a retired workstation from $dayjob that I decided to turn into a retro XP game machine. It was very late for XP but within a generation or two before Intel, Nvidia and the motherboard provided drivers (Ivy bridge and GTX 660 GPU). But that didn't get you through the installer... I discovered a plethora of alternative install media with built in community drivers providing support for nvme drives, modern ACPI extensions etc. It's so complete you can install it on today's current hardware.

FirmwareBurner 2y ago
Care to share sources for those alternative media with modern drivers?
- CursedSilicon 2y ago
  Likely the "XP Integral Edition" that is updated every now and again https://zone94.com/software/operating-systems/123-windows-xp-professional-sp3-x86-integral-edition https://zone94.com/software/operating-systems/123-windows-xp...
  - AndrewDavis 2y ago
    Yep that was it.
xattt 2y ago
> retro XP game machine This still gets me as I vividly remember when the family computer was finally going to move past Windows 98 in 2001.
potato3732842 2y ago
This capability exists in large part because large parts of heavy industry still run on software that only runs (right) on XP.

kotaKat 2y ago

I've been using https://www.ntlite.com/ https://www.ntlite.com/ for a while now for various custom/integration needs at home. Well worth it. It's also nifty when I need to slap hardware drivers into a Windows 11 ISO on the fly to bring up a new machine.

cosmic_cheese 2y ago

I’ve long suspected that a Linux desktop environment designed to closely mimic Windows 7 (with light modernization where it makes sense) would prove popular, and the existence of all this reinforces that idea. A rough facsimile can be built using KDE, Cinnamon, or XFCE, but many details will still be wrong (and aren’t practically fixable without forking) and I think that’s enough to prevent many users from considering Linux as a viable alternative.

lynnharry 2y ago
IMHO, what's important for Windows 7 is the established userbase and all the hardware that's already running on Windows 7, not it's UI.
- cosmic_cheese 2y ago
  Maybe, but there’s no reason why a thoughtfully engineered Win7 clone DE on a lightweight Linux couldn’t run just as well or better on the same hardware.
  - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
    > but there’s no reason why a thoughtfully engineered Win7 clone DE on a lightweight Linux Why not a "thoughtfully engineered Win7 clone Desktop Environment" (without Linux :-) ). By the way: people are working on ReactOS: > https://reactos.org/ https://reactos.org/
- listenallyall 2y ago
  Your opinion. Win 7 was the best Windows UI, both in looks (Aero) and usability. It was abandoned primarily because Microsoft was trying to achieve some hybrid desktop/tablet/mobile UI that worked poorly for all form factors. Win 11+ (or whatever the next version is called) would be well-suited to return to an Aero-like UI.
nicman23 2y ago
it is the other way around. ms copied heavily from what people where doing with compiz and gnome 2 back in the day

userbinator 2y ago

a 44GB torrent with all kinds of drivers, from SATA controllers to NIC to GPU My first reaction was "that's an absolutely insane amount of drivers", but then I realised that some GPU and printer drivers are already around 1GB.

parineum 2y ago
I didn't know what's in that package/torrent but those 1gb drivers are drivers AND applications which are frequently not required at all. How much of the Nvidia driver is just GFE?
- WorldMaker 2y ago
  GFE and its replacement "nVidia App" are bloated and large, but the drivers themselves are still 600-900MBs each. That "optimized for Game X" thing where GFE/nVidia App brags that the driver has all sorts of custom relationships with all the recent exciting games is strangely literal in most cases because the drivers include a frankly wild amount of application/game-specific microcode/optimizations.