Why should these projects support things after the companies that make them do? Mozilla doesn’t support old Linux or macOS either.
Reachable users vs effort to reach them.
Mozilla ending support for Windows 7
11–20 of 77 posts
Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7
#12Unsupported operating systems receive no security updates and can be dangerous for you to use. I see that the paranoia-FUD pushed by the forced-obsolescence corporate-authoritarianism crowd has infected them too. Looking at how many new vulnerabilities are being found in newer and increasingly complex (often for zero benefit), while at the same time also more user-hostile software, should make you see what they're re…
I agree that the "BUT WHAT ABOUT UPDATES?!" hysteria is weird [1].
But realistically Windows 7 has a very small user base remaining, and an even smaller part of that uses Firefox. So what do you want Mozilla to do? Keep wasting resources on CI, testing, coding shims for missing OS features, and making releases for the benefit of the 12 people worldwide who depend on the W7+Firefox combination?
Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
why should Mozilla let Microsoft or anyone else dictate what they support? I agree that Windows 7 should be dropped, but only because its quite old, not because Microsoft has dropped support for it. Frankly Windows 7 is better than Windows 11, I think many would agree with that.
> Frankly Windows 7 is better than Windows 11, I think many would agree with that. I would not. Windows 10 has improvements to the compositor, scheduler, settings and seemingly other things that make it faster in many applications, even on low resource systems. It has other features (like HDR, DirectML) that make it far better for some more cutting edge apps. One could argue the "stock" config of Windows 10 and 11 is…
> settings
is this a joke? ever tried user management with Windows 10/11? its a hellscape of clicking through the Control Panel, the Settings app, and countless crosslinked pages with no rhyme or reason. same for microphone levels. same for device management.
Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7
#14Unsupported operating systems receive no security updates and can be dangerous for you to use. I see that the paranoia-FUD pushed by the forced-obsolescence corporate-authoritarianism crowd has infected them too. Looking at how many new vulnerabilities are being found in newer and increasingly complex (often for zero benefit), while at the same time also more user-hostile software, should make you see what they're re…
Who's forking Windows 7, though?
Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7
#15Unsupported operating systems receive no security updates and can be dangerous for you to use. I see that the paranoia-FUD pushed by the forced-obsolescence corporate-authoritarianism crowd has infected them too. Looking at how many new vulnerabilities are being found in newer and increasingly complex (often for zero benefit), while at the same time also more user-hostile software, should make you see what they're re…
I agree that the "BUT WHAT ABOUT UPDATES?!" hysteria is weird [1]. But realistically Windows 7 has a very small user base remaining, and an even smaller part of that uses Firefox. So what do you want Mozilla to do? Keep wasting resources on CI, testing, coding shims for missing OS features, and making releases for the benefit of the 12 people worldwide who depend on the W7+Firefox combination? 1. https://knowyourmeme…
Heh. My father is one of those 12. He called me yesterday and mentioned he was going to be trying out some Linux stuff.
Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7
#16Unsupported operating systems receive no security updates and can be dangerous for you to use. I see that the paranoia-FUD pushed by the forced-obsolescence corporate-authoritarianism crowd has infected them too. Looking at how many new vulnerabilities are being found in newer and increasingly complex (often for zero benefit), while at the same time also more user-hostile software, should make you see what they're re…
The problem with old OSes not receiving security updates is that they will be vulnerable to new security vulnerabilities. Having a smaller attack surface (like older OSes did) is important for security. But ultimately, older, unpatched OSes are trivial to hack, even using an off-the-shelf toolkit like metasploit; attack surface size be damned.
Also, a reason why there are fewer CVEs for older OSes is that we've gotten better at finding exploits and we care more about security because basically every system is networked now. In addition, people are still hacking older versions of Windows [1], they're just not filing CVEs.
In conclusion, even with the smaller attack surface, it seems silly to claim that a system written without any modern security mitigations (such as ASLR or W^X, which try to make stack overflows not trivially exploitable), suffering under the weight of years of unpatched vulnerabilities, is more secure than a modern system.
[1]: https://jumpespjump.blogspot.com/2014/05/hacking-windows-95-...
Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7
#17This allows Mozilla to trim away some of the cruft and have more time available to focus on actually improving Firefox for people living in this day and age. There will always be someone who feels left behind but to me this decision is a no-brainer.
Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Frankly Windows 7 is better than Windows 11, I think many would agree with that. I would not. Windows 10 has improvements to the compositor, scheduler, settings and seemingly other things that make it faster in many applications, even on low resource systems. It has other features (like HDR, DirectML) that make it far better for some more cutting edge apps. One could argue the "stock" config of Windows 10 and 11 is…
> settings is this a joke? ever tried user management with Windows 10/11? its a hellscape of clicking through the Control Panel, the Settings app, and countless crosslinked pages with no rhyme or reason. same for microphone levels. same for device management.
And you still can't open multiple instances of the settings app at the same time. God forbid you want to check your network settings and printer settings at the same time when trying to troubleshoot an issue with a network printer.
Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7
#19Windows 7 is 12.9% of Firefox installs and the second most used OS.
Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7
#20For those just reading the headline: Windows 7 users will be able to run Firefox until at least September 2024 through the the Extended Support Release all existing Firefox users on Windows 7/8 will be migrated to.
Newer web technologies won't be supported, but the browser will keep receiving security updates for another year.