Thanks, it seems I have only heard the bad things about Windows 10.

very good and valid points, Cavalary

Yeah, I think we've all read situations like this. I remember something about a university or lab running a long-term experiment had W10 force a reset and the experiment / data was ruined. Thanks Microsoft for the Operating System which refuses to Operate 24/7.

The same thing you do when running an unstable program like Adobe: You save and save often.

When Microsoft drops Windows 7, I'll use Linux for surfing the web instead.

That's about the only impact it should have on me fortunately.

I guess I'll use it until it will work for me. I gave up XP say 1 year ago once web browsers that worked on it - kept having problems with opening web pages...

windows 10 isnt that bad as ive said before yo ucan customise it to look like windows 7 which is what i did if you put in a bit of work.

You can also get a Porche body kit for a VW Beetle.

How effective is the compatibility mode of Win 10 for old games which worked natively in win 7? same for those who worked natively in XP?

This is a first thing to consider.

Another possibilites are a) having a working Linux for daily purposes and play games which work with it, b) having a dual boot with win 7 offline for those games which aren't supported in Linux, c) use a virtualization for an XP/Win 7 for those games which are not so much demanding for your hardware.
Well, shame on them for running Windows instead of Linux for science purposes

Ah, about as much of a crapshoot as it ever was, mostly. But now with the caveat that there will likely come a time when x32 gets the axe.
When you say "solid?"

Fedora comes with firewall-config built in, but it mostly just stays out of sight and does it's thing.

Thing is, there's probably a few hundred ways to firewall a connection in Linux, and it mostly depends on what your desires and purposes are.

Let's remeber that even when Microsoft end the support for Windows 7 isn't like it turns immediately into a turd.
Just follow a few basic rules, keep your antivirus updated, if you feel like it install an anti malware, don't go to dubious sites and download/open unknown files coming from unknown sources.
If you follow these basic rules you should be 90% safe.
Clearly down the line the lack of security updates IS a problem but you never know what is going to happen.

I mean something very much like Comodo Firewall is for Windows. Can create both global and application rules, whenever something tries a connection that doesn't match a rule I get a prompt, can say from the prompt whether the answer applies just for that connection or a rule is to be created, have customizable rule types which I can use to set rule parameters in 2 clicks either from the prompt or manually, can further customize each rule in detail manually if I care to, decide what gets logged, see at any moment each connection, with process, destination, source, protocol, port and traffic made in and out, also allows to block sites/IPs...
And major bonus, has HIPS too, in the firewall that is, without also installing the antivirus, so you can pair it with a proper antimalware solution (since CAV isn't that highly rated), which is quite a Swiss army knife for that as well for anyone who cares and knows how to use it. I tend to largely use it to learn what programs try to do, set it to auto-allow signed or trusted programs but then check the rules it creates just for curiosity. And when I do get prompts for non system stuff I tend to try to block and see what happens. One thing I do block in general is for example allowing games to check network settings, since I don't want them to connect, so I block some from even trying even before getting to firewall, or block some that try inter-process memory access for some reason. Didn't have them crash so far due to those things, so keep wondering why they'd try.
But yeah, that's largely curiosity, though a proper HIPS mostly makes another antimalware solution quite useless. But a proper firewall like that is something I will not use a computer without.

Thing is though, they often don't have a choice when other proprietary hardware involved in the experiment isn't compatible with Linux.

I think that WH40k: Chaos Gate is one

Except it does, and it's not a myth. It's happened to me, repeatedly, on my laptop while I was working with no prompting to reboot, and kept doing it after every update until I finally found a way to disable the Borg-like regenerative update permanently.