To be totally frank I’d say that in the depths of my unconsciousness Windows 11 will be the one to honor my next PC. Should I be younger that I’d consider the challenge as exciting but seems I’m enduring an increasing cerebral laziness as years increment. I still don’t know but, given, 1- I’m not a techie and 2- whatever the huge differences between a Win7 and a Win11 … there are Microsoft standards which remain and to which i’ve been used to (Win 3.1 -> Win7). Linux? Once i’ll have decided to move on (new PC and new OS) it’ll be Win11 or Linux.

What bothers me are two things : 1- updating device & peripherals (new OS), 2- getting used to the new OS (I have all to learn again). Installing “Windows 8.1 + Classic Shell which is superior to Windows 7 in every possible way” is perceived as the hassle of a new install of an old OS, whatver younger than Win7. “, because that’s near tomorrows, doesn’t thrill me. Switching to 91 ESR, “though this one will be abandoned security-wise around the time of Firefox 104 or so” together with what you wrote in your answer above to user Anonymous, “Firefox will drop Windows 7 AND Windows 8.1 support sometime after January 2023. A win-win for Heart, several opportunities indeed but remains the unavoidable : time, times bringing to its knees sooner or later obsolescence, that of the device (PC here), that of the OS, that of software (Firefox), and, moreover, all three tied.Ģ022 appears for users as myself (old PC, Windows7) as the limit. For instance, WireGuard (VPN protocol) for Windows initially refused to install without SHA-2 so I ended up discovering TunSafe which was even easier to use than WireGuard official.

Now if a program really insists on SHA-2 or nothing I’ll just find a portable version or an alternative. I’m not too keen on updating my few remaining Win7 systems because the first time I installed the SHA-2 update it borked the bootloader which has never happened with any update before.

Including both SHA-1 and SHA-2 signatures doesn’t hurt but whatever.

“Weaknesses” in SHA-1 are greatly exaggerated as there has never been a practical exploit, and even if you could craft say, a malicious Firefox installer with the same hash as the official installer, it would be extremely difficult to get anyone to download and use it since everyone gets it from Mozilla’s site anyway, and all the common mirror sites get the binaries directly from Mozilla too.

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