My Univega has a 7 speed freehub on the back and friction shifters. Works fine.

I have a (admittedly unfair) bias against indexed shifting. Back in the late '80's, I bought my wife and I a pair of bicycles with indexed shifting. Being fairly early in the development of indexed shifting, it flatly didn't work well. I ended up adjusting those things every time before we went for a ride, and it drove me batty, as it still usually had issues during the ride.

To be perfectly honest, I don't remember what brand the bikes were, but I remember that they weren't "department store" bikes, they were low-end bike-shop bikes, purchased from the PX in Germany.

I've pretty much hated indexing since.