Prefer Windows 7 to Windows 8? Too bad: you're not far away from not having the choice, for some editions. Some wholesalers are already reporting they will no longer be getting Windows 7 Home Premium or Windows 7 Ultimate after October:
Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Ultimate will be EOL on 10/31/14. Please note: This is ONLY Windows 7 Home Premium and Ultimate editions -- NOT Windows 7 Professional. Windows 7 Professional will still be around for the foreseeable future... No EOL date has been issued on Pro as of yet.
If you have customers that will require Windows 7 Home Premium beyond 10/31/14, please plan ahead. We may purchase Windows 7 Home Premium & Ultimate up until 10/31/14, but once that date has passed, Microsoft will no longer sell the item. At that point - what we have left in-stock is final! Please also remember that downgrading from Windows 8 Core to Windows 7 Home on system builds will no longer be an option after this date, either.
Extended support for Win7 is available until
January, 2020. But given how hard it's been to get people to move to Win8, you can only imagine Microsoft is looking forward to pulling the plug on 7 Pro as well.
What you should be worrying about is the system resources to require to actually run the OS. Linux in general will still run on an i486, and with a Pentium 2 or so, you can even run X. Windows 7 takes HOW many GIGABYTES of RAM?
You can go for a minimal install of Linux or Windows if you want a small hard drive footprint, but the bloat is in the resource requirements to run.