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Mozilla ending support for Windows 7

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7

#31

Post by lurtbancaster »

whoopdedo wrote: post #19

Windows 7 is 12.9% of Firefox installs and the second most used OS. https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/hardware

Mozilla presumably collects this operating system version data on new installs of Firefox upon first run.

I wonder how the analytics of Firefox forks are tracked. If they can even be tracked.

Tor Browser, LibreWolf et al privacy friendly forks, block Mozilla's data collection on startup and they spoof the user agent to Windows NT 10.0 regardless of if you run them on Windown 7, 8, 10 or 11.

Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7

#32

Post by nicce »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #4
2h wrote: post #3

Earlier 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.

Aside from potential security issues newer versions of windows always provide new APIs and changes to old ones. Keeping support requires keeping track of that and testing, which costs resources.

There is actually dilemma about potential security issues; since the development has been stopped, no new features are introduced and hence no new bugs.

Windows 7 is quite battle-tested. Can the system be so stable that there aren't security issues anymore? On the other hand, one is too much if it is not fixed.

> windows always provide new APIs and changes to old ones

I don't think that is visible or significant. Windows changes APIs but always provides backwards compatibility. It is the major reason why it is dominating in many industry areas. You can run Windows 2000 apps in Windows 11.

Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7

#33

Post by nicce »

2h wrote: post #13
brucethemoose2 wrote: post #5

Earlier 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.

Long live the PowerShell. Yes, old control panel was much more manageable. Most of the important settings have been hidden from the end-user these days.

Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7

#34

Post by worthless-trash »

LordShredda wrote: post #29
mattl wrote: post #2

Why should these projects support things after the companies that make them do? Mozilla doesn’t support old Linux or macOS either.

Windows is much more stable than the Linux abi, xorg, or the various spaghetti libraries on unix systems

I keep hearing this, but my experience has been the inverse.

I have statically compiled binary here running from RHEL AS 2.1 (2005) running on el7, it would probably run on newer releases I just haven't tried it.

I get -all- kinds of bullshit even trying to get a same-age winamp (5.666) working on a modern windows.

Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7

#35

Post by Grom_PE »

That's a shame. Windows 7 is the last good Windows.

I'm not convinced that later versions of Windows have some incredibly useful APIs that cannot be called dynamically and need to be used unconditionally.

This chase after new APIs also makes the program harder to support in ReactOS and Wine.

Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7

#36

Post by dbg31415 »

If this means they'll have more resources to fix the horrible video streaming battery usage from Firefox running on MacOS... great.

Intel MBPs battery just goes from 100 to 0 when you stream a video call. Honestly even on an M1 Firefox uses a lot more battery than Chrome or Safari.

Makes it hard to recommend Firefox to people.

Now... as for people still running an OS from 2009... I don't have any comments on that, other than to say it's really hard to care about what people running a 14 year-old OS want. Imagine all the hardware is pretty much just running on luck at that point.

Remember how shitty it was to have to support IE6? And that was only really for like 10 years.

Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7

#37

Post by ocdtrekkie »

Grom_PE wrote: post #35

That's a shame. Windows 7 is the last good Windows. I'm not convinced that later versions of Windows have some incredibly useful APIs that cannot be called dynamically and need to be used unconditionally. This chase after new APIs also makes the program harder to support in ReactOS and Wine.

Running a 14 year old operating system in the world we live in today is dangerous and stupid.

If you don't like newer Windows, that's fine, don't use Windows. But operating systems that old should be relegated to airgapped machines for historical purposes.

Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7

#38

Post by Gigachad »

nikanj wrote: post #25
whoopdedo wrote: post #19

Windows 7 is 12.9% of Firefox installs and the second most used OS. https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/hardware

Neither Edge nor Chrome support Windows 7, so it's not surprising a lot of Firefox users are on Windows 7 - because the other options are no longer available on Windows 7

Steam also dropped windows 7 recently.

Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7

#39

Post by akira2501 »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #37
Grom_PE wrote: post #35

That's a shame. Windows 7 is the last good Windows. I'm not convinced that later versions of Windows have some incredibly useful APIs that cannot be called dynamically and need to be used unconditionally. This chase after new APIs also makes the program harder to support in ReactOS and Wine.

Running a 14 year old operating system in the world we live in today is dangerous and stupid. If you don't like newer Windows, that's fine, don't use Windows. But operating systems that old should be relegated to airgapped machines for historical purposes.

> Running a 14 year old operating system in the world we live in today is dangerous and stupid.

Forcing an upgrade treadmill on your users just to shake them down for a few extra advertising dollars in the world we live in today is dangerous and stupid.

> If you don't like newer Windows, that's fine, don't use Windows.

I don't believe that Windows 11 was at all necessary to achieve this security nirvana.

Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7

#40

Post by antigonemerlin »

csdreamer7 wrote: post #22

The Firefox data is interesting. It has been years since I daily drove a machine with 8 gigs of RAM which is 33% of their current users. Been even longer since it was a 32 bit machine, which is 15% of their current users. Win7 is the second most OS, followed by MacOS other as third. Linux is one of many at the bottom in the chart despite it being the default in (almost?) every distro. Makes me wonder what kind of pro…

Personally on Firefox since I got into an open source.

In my relatively short experience developing an open source browser extension, Firefox users are far more active than Chrome users, which makes sense given that for most users, Chrome is a default, while Firefox is a choice. They're much harder to please, but the analogy that comes to mind is that in terms of submitting tickets and issues, they're like the linux of browsers.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18845205

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