Parmind Posted February 22, 2023 Report Share Posted February 22, 2023 (edited) I was wondering if the .NET 7.0 update is going to be the only option in the future or if there will also be binaries compiled for .NET 4.0. I run windows 7 so there will be no support for the newest .NET version. Edited February 24, 2023 by Parmind Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Solution Streetwind Posted February 22, 2023 Solution Report Share Posted February 22, 2023 (edited) This is currently under very active discussion on Discord, and a lot of people have a lot of opinions about this. On one hand, both .NET 4 and Windows 7 are extremely old. Using Win7 with an internet connection in this day and age is a major security risk for the user, and building software on an outdated framework makes that software slower and less safe. .NET 7 in particular has significant performance optimizations under the hood that would really benefit people using older hardware. Additionally, the Steam user survey, which is a fairly representative global sample of PC gamers, suggests that fewer than 2% of all Steam users are still using Windows versions older than Win10. On the other hand, reducing the scope of supported platforms without prior announcement is a dick move, even with an essentially unlimited refund policy like Vintage Story has. The team is well aware of this, and Tyron aspirationally wants to continue shipping old framework builds for multiple future releases. On the third hand, shipping multiple builds in parallel is fraught with issues, both when it comes to developing the base game, and when it comes to mod support. Maintaining support for the old framework costs development time that could be spent on improving the game instead. Modders would have to choose between supporting and debugging two separate versions of each of their mods, or to pick just one and not service the other. This risks a split in the modding community that'll get worse the longer the base game decides to maintain support for the outdated framework and Windows versions. It has been confirmed that 1.18 will be shipping on both .NET 4 and .NET 7. Anything beyond that, nobody knows for sure. Meanwhile, good lord, update your OS. Please don't tell me you habitually do online banking on this machine... Edited February 22, 2023 by Streetwind Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
l33tmaan Posted February 22, 2023 Report Share Posted February 22, 2023 What are they supposed to update it to? Certainly not another Windows! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parmind Posted February 24, 2023 Author Report Share Posted February 24, 2023 I would argue that updating to windows 10/11 is also a major security risk for the user seeing as how it is full of spyware/telemetry. I will not submit myself to that so I guess I will have to use linux. Anyway I am glad 1.8 will work atleast. Thanks for the detailed reply. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Streetwind Posted February 24, 2023 Report Share Posted February 24, 2023 Oh no, Microsoft is streaming telemetry from my OS, I will avoid that by letting everyone else but Microsoft get into my system through huge gaping holes that no antivirus can keep closed anymore! Sorry for putting it like that, but the argument is nonsense. Sure, if you want to make a point of protesting Microsoft's corporate strategy and its greedy collecting of your private usage data, that's entirely fair. But please don't pretend it's about being security conscious, because if you really were, you'd be aware just how vulnerable Windows 7 really is these days. And you would have migrated away long ago. Linux is an option, sure. But if you'd like a familiar environment, there are ways to beat the phoning-home out of newer Windows versions too. Either through tools you can install when Windows is already running, or through custom pre-built sources that install slimmed-down versions without all the telemetry and bloatware. Ghost Spectre Windows is one such. (But as with any ISO you download off the internet, I encourage you to not blindly listen to me and rather look into it yourself to determine if it looks trustworthy to you.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thorfinn Posted February 25, 2023 Report Share Posted February 25, 2023 In my case, there is proprietary software that I use in my company, the software company went out of business, and I can't justify the expense of having perfectly useful software replaced by something we will likely spend thousands of man-hours working the kinks out of. So I recently bought another pallet of old Win7 boxes to have replacements on hand. Anyway, we'd have to quit LAN gaming, or start making everyone bring their own machines. I'm kind of committed to Win7 for VS multiplayer. I'll still probably play some VS singleplayer, but it just is not the same thing. We'll probably find something else if/when .NET 7 becomes required. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parmind Posted February 25, 2023 Author Report Share Posted February 25, 2023 Sorry but I don't enjoy having candy crush ads and LGBTQ pride flags in my start menu after every forced update that could also potentially brick my machine. Nor do I enjoy allocating multiple gigabytes of RAM to the Bill Gates spyware doing god knows what with it. Don't try and pretend it is more or less secure either. I have read countless articles on various zero day exploits since it's release; some attack vectors being through the automatic update system itself. Also as you pointed out windows 10+ makes up some 98% of the userbase for microsoft apparently, making it the larger target for malicious attacks. Why bother trying to exploit the disparate systems of the 2% win7/xp users when you can attack the 98% homogeneous windows 10+ systems? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thorfinn Posted March 18, 2023 Report Share Posted March 18, 2023 (edited) @Parmindyou should give it a shot. While it has been discontinued, they supported Win 7 right up until the day they dropped support, so the current version should still work for you, for sure until the next .Net7 release. No, future updates probably won't install on your machine, or they might, but would crash when the program calls functions not in the current version, but you might get by with that version until your machine bites the dust. If the current pre-release works on your machine, you might want to stash a copy of the current .Net7 install somewhere safe, BTW, just in case your hard drive goes, but the box does not. Edited March 18, 2023 by Thorfinn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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