Getting back to running a weather station

Win 7 only has about 3 years to go before end of life so not good to be getting into now. No way I’m going Win 8 and Linux is barely OK if you only need to run Linux software. It’s good for servers but I find it difficult on the desktop (and I have a few Linux ‘desktop’ systems that I have to use from time to time so that opinion is based on experience and not prejudice).