Chrome: Sunsetting support for Windows 7 / 8.1 in early 2023

For what it's worth, we are making a system utility for Windows and our user base in the desktop segment is:

  Windows 11       18%
  Windows 10       71%
  Windows 8.x / 7  11%

That is, the percentage of 8/7 is still very much non-trivial. Though our user base is probably skewed towards techy people.

Might be interesting for China. Pretty sure Windows 7 is still the dominant OS there. Or is Chrome not heavily used there?

FWIW, I'd think people buying and using system utilities are more often than not users that run old machines for business reasons. More the "XP machine in the basement to control the boiler" situation rather than "I don't want the free update to Windows 10" situation.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Windows 8.1 is still supported by Microsoft for another three months. Windows 8.1 is not outdated yet, not even according to Microsoft. Chrome's support will end a month after Microsoft's support ends, I'd think because very few people actually use 8.1 compared to the rest of the world.

In case your customers ask, Windows 7/8.1 users may be able to use Firefox (ESR, if necessary) if they want a maintained browser. The current Firefox ESR should be supported until at least August of next year and if Mozilla includes 7/8.1 support in version 115, then support should last until at least the end of next year.

Windows 8 was an utter failure of a UI design for anything but tablets. I'd go back further.

Windows 7 was the last user friendly OS Microsoft has released, in my opinion. Windows 10 was a desperate attempt to take the 8 framework and stuff it into the desktop, but I don't think it's all as well-integrated as Windows 7 was.

It's a shame. The Windows 10/11 kernel is a marvel of technology. I just wish I could run the Windows 7 UI on top of it (and disable all the obnoxious tracking).

Electron (accidentally) broke Windows 7 support last month, and as a result a number of applications broke for Windows 7 if they used that Electron version (e.g. VSCode). Lots of people complained. It was a fairly minor thing and was quickly fixed by the Electron people.

My favourite comment in one of the threads about it:

"Related "MS ended support for Win7" - sorry, how it corresponds to development?! Does your operating system gone away from SSD? Or Windows become rusty? Not. SYSTEM WORKS AS BEFORE, so please don't write stupid reasons "MS doesn't support" - nobody care of it, system works as usual and nothing prevents you from using Win7 (as I do now)."

I kind of like the no-nonsense honesty of it; made me smile :-) I don't think it's necessarily smart to keep running on Windows 7 given the support status, but they're not entirely wrong either: Windows 7 is a fine system. It works. Why "upgrade"?