I use Github releases page to update Obsidian. 1.1.16 worked fine on Windows 7, the next one is 1.2.7. It says nothing about crucial OS support changes. Nevertheless, Obsidian fails to run after upgrade, displaying the error message as follows ‘The procedure entry point DiscardVirtualMemory could not be located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll’. Brief examination points to underlying Electron replacement (seems to be silently made by Obsidian team) that leaves out Windows 7/8 users who are quite happy with the way their OS works offline.
It is sad that you have allowed a situation in which a third party (Electron) segregates users into progressive and obsolete. So what is the latest version of Obsidian that supports Windows 7 to roll back, export data and start looking for a new data management application?
I would have sworn the Electron update was mentioned in the update notes because that’s why I reinstalled instead of just using the in-app update, but you’re right — it’s not in the announcement here. I’m not sure where I saw it.
Moved from Bug Reports to Help because it’s not a bug (and you didn’t follow the bug report template anyway).
Between 1.1.16 and 1.2.7 there are a few more intermediate versions of Obsidian. When exactly did Electron upgrade was introduced here? For example, if it’s 1.2.7, then it is more appropriate to roll back to 1.2.6, thereby getting a version with more fixes and improvements than 1.1.16 contains.
As for your logic “Microsoft does not support Win 7/8, neither do we”, it is deeply flawed. A good hammer still hammers years after its manufacturer has ceased to exist, it does not need support. Take a look around, there’s a myriad of useful apps that do not attribute their working efficiency to the desire of the hegemons of Silicon Valley like Microsoft to capitalize on forcing OS updates: Autohotkey, Foobar2000, Everything, IrfanView, KeePass, MPC-HC (MPV, PotPlayer, VLC), Sandboxie, ShareX, Sublime Text, SumatraPDF, Telegram, Tor, Utorrent (qBittorent, Tixati), Zim, etc. Whereas Obsidian, having fallen into a blind and vicious dependence on Electron’s pathological fascination with ‘progress’, has become a vassal who has lost sovereignty over what range of users can use it to solve simple tasks such as saving, sorting, and synthesizing thoughts. Users from all over the world, with well-established hardware and habits, and without the itch to replace processors now and then and to lose peace over some uncommon vulnerabilities discovered after EOL (because the common ones have already been patched). With one ill-conceived decision to upgrade Electron silently, you deprived not ten, not a hundred, not even a thousand users of the ability to manage their knowledge bases, without offering a single revolutionary feature that really needs that upgrade.
You can download and reinstall Obsidian 1.1.6 from https://github.com/obsidianmd/obsidian-releases/releases and rely on the internal update method (it does not update electron but just the core app).
As long as it works, fine, but we are not going it accept bug reports against this version and at some point something will break. When that day comes, please don’t post another rant here. We got the memo already.
The Electron update was in 1.2.7. Version 1.1.16 was the last public release before that; the ones between were Insider builds, which are beta versions.