Windows 7 has now reached end of support for consumers. This is one of the operating systems I support with the initial version of DDRescue-GUI for Windows, so this post covers my support plan for Windows.
What does this mean for Windows 7 users?
These users will no longer receive security updates. This means this older operating system will rapidly become insecure and unsafe for general internet-connected use. It will still work, but most applications will stop supporting it in the near future, or already have. Users are advised to upgrade to a supported version of their distribution. Alternatively they could switch to a Linux distro if they wish.
Antivirus and antimalware software help, but without security patches, Windows 7 will still become increasingly insecure with time.
My support plan for Windows
Windows 7 is the earliest version of Windows I supported with my initial version of DDRescue-GUI for Windows. I fully intended at the time for DDRescue-GUI to be officially released and stable by now, but unfortunately due to numerous issues, this has not happened. Primarily this has been due to there being no version of wxPython for Python 3 in Cygwin, though I have been working to get it built. Between the general apparent lack of interest in Cygwin, and my lack of time to work through the issues, it is not ready yet sadly.
However, I still intend to support Windows 7 for at least the first release of DDRescue-GUI for Windows. I hope that this release can be done soon, but it remains to be seen. It also might not be possible to support Windows 7, if Cygwin drops support, but it is my hope that this will be possible.
Summary
Windows 7 support ended on January 14 2020, but I still intend to release at least one version of DDRescue-GUI that will run on it. That’s it for this post, but stay tuned for lots of quite different and (hopefully!) interesting posts coming soon.