Mozilla ending support for Windows 7
blog.mozilla.org
Mozilla ending support for Windows 7
1–10 of 77 posts
Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7
#2Why should these projects support things after the companies that make them do?
Mozilla doesn’t support old Linux or macOS either.
Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7
#3Why should these projects support things after the companies that make them do? Mozilla doesn’t support old Linux or macOS either.
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.
Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7
#4Why should these projects support things after the companies that make them do? Mozilla doesn’t support old Linux or macOS either.
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.
Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7
#5Why should these projects support things after the companies that make them do? Mozilla doesn’t support old Linux or macOS either.
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 really trashy... Which is true. But its not really a fair argument, as OEMs loaded Windows 7 systems with bloatware (where Microsoft is doing more of that these days).
Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7
#6Why should these projects support things after the companies that make them do? Mozilla doesn’t support old Linux or macOS either.
If you want to get existential, why should Mozilla support users on any non-free platform? I imagine they're able to justify Windows because of the huge user base justified the additional engineering effort. The blog uses "we're the only browser still supporting Windows 7" as an excuse to stop supporting it, but to me that same sentence is also an opportunity and maybe even a moral argument to keep supporting older hardware/software. If for-profit entities won't do it and Mozilla is all that's left, what happens to those users when Mozilla backs out?
This may or may not be relevant with Windows 7, but I think the size of the user base is only loosely linked to the official software EOL. I still use an older MacOS release because software and hardware I depend on don't support newer revisions. Coincidentally Mozilla also just announced ending support for older MacOS versions. It almost seems like they're trying to divert eng resources from browsers to their other projects. Mozilla's strategy is super perplexing to me.
Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7
#7Windows 7, what a cozy time to be a developer. The runway is long and your code will run forever...
Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7
#8Why should these projects support things after the companies that make them do? Mozilla doesn’t support old Linux or macOS either.
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.
It's a dependency, and unless you're going to devote resources into testing and proving that support on your own, it doesn't make sense to extend it past what the dependency's support lifecycle is.
Which is why most places are dropping W7 this year. Microsoft's last extended security update was this year. The age is kind of irrelevant, if Microsoft wanted to support it for another 5 years, then places like Mozilla would continue as long as people used it.
Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7
#9Unsupported 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 really trying to do. Software that has been around for a long time has gotten far more bugs beaten out of it than the new stuff, and due to the way the industry is going, it will only get worse.
Fortunately there's a huge and growing community which has forked Firefox and continued making functionally-equivalent versions for older OSs.
As the old saying goes: "There are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns."
Look at the truth yourself if you don't (or don't want to) believe:
https://www.cvedetails.com/product/112/Microsoft-Windows-95....
https://www.cvedetails.com/product/343/Microsoft-Windows-98....
https://www.cvedetails.com/product/462/Microsoft-Windows-98s...
https://www.cvedetails.com/product/107/Microsoft-Windows-200...
https://www.cvedetails.com/product/739/Microsoft-Windows-Xp....
https://www.cvedetails.com/product/9591/Microsoft-Windows-Vi...
You can find the stats for (all the different versions of) Windows 10 and 11, and combine the yourself.
Re: Mozilla ending support for Windows 7
#10Why should these projects support things after the companies that make them do? Mozilla doesn’t support old Linux or macOS either.
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.
Windows XP was great. Windows 7 was best. The rest fall short of those two.