Mozilla won't abandon Microsoft's tried and tested platform anytime soon:
The Extended Support Release (ESR) of Firefox will keep supporting Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 until at least until 2024. Mozilla programmer Mike Kaply confirmed the decision through the Bugzilla platform, stating that the corporation "will not be ending support for Windows 7/Windows 8 before the release of the Firefox 115 ESR," and that the Firefox 115 ESR release will support the aged operating systems "at least until 3Q 2024."
Mike Kaply also hinted at the fact that Mozilla still has to decide exactly when support for Windows 7/8 will be finally removed. Firefox ESR is stable release of the open-source browser which Mozilla supports for an extended period of time compared to regular, "rapid" releases coming out every month. During its one-year support cycle, each Firefox ESR version only gets incremental updates containing security fixes with no new features or performance enhancements.
As stated by Firefox's official release calendar, Firefox 115 ESR should come out on July 4, 2023. The Firefox Public Data Report also reveals that Windows 7 still provides a sizable portion of the overall Firefox userbase (13.44%), while Windows 10 is the leading platform with 71% of users. The much-maligned Windows 8.1 is still used by 2.3% of Firefox installations.
[...] Windows 7 was already abandoned by Google Chrome (and other Chromium-based browsers), which doesn't run on the OS anymore starting from Chrome 110. Microsoft ended support for Windows 7 and Windows 8 in January 2023, and Valve will do the same with Steam on January 1, 2024.
Are you one of the 13.44%?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 04, @10:52PM (3 children)
> Are you one of the 13.44%?
Yes, thanks for running this story (I probably wouldn't have seen it otherwise).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 04, @11:30PM (2 children)
I'm wondering where the hacks are to trick Chrome into updating on Win 7. While I don't use Chrome very often, one big customer b2b website needs it.
A first pass of Googling turned up some info--
These sites report on trying some obvious things and didn't get very far,
https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r33595763-Getting-rid-of-that-GDamn-Chrome-notification-to-update-windows-7 [dslreports.com]
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/01/18/here-is-what-happens-when-you-try-to-install-and-run-unsupported-browsers-on-windows-7/ [ghacks.net]
This one might be interesting, has anyone used the Thorium fork of Chromium on Windows?
https://thorium.rocks/win7 [thorium.rocks]
Are there any other Chromium forks that plan to support Win 7 going forward?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05, @01:31AM
Check the MSFN forums, if there's a place where such forks would be advertised it is there.
(Score: 2) by liar on Wednesday April 05, @04:59AM
Yes, I'm wondering that myself. What is there about new versions of Chrome that won't run on Win 7? It was a long time ago, so the details are fuzzy, but years ago I used a program called Orca, I believe, to edit an 'install msi' to add an entry to the allowed list so I could install windows anti-virus of some sort to my Win 2k machine (it would only go to xp without giving a 'not for this version of windows' message), where the antivirus program worked happily. Is it just a question of 'we said no' like the anti virus, or is there some... real thing?
Noli nothis permittere te terere.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Tork on Tuesday April 04, @11:15PM (8 children)
I am curious... is there a reason why, especially considering that Windows is fairly decent at maintaining backwards compatibility, that something like a web browser wouldn't be practical to maintain? I mean I can kind-of-sort-of understand games needing it since the 3d calls are handled by the OS, but what is it about a browser... is it just the time needed to run the tests on an old OS? I don't have Windows machine anymore to try this on but couldn't I install and run an old browser like Netscape and mainly just worry about how it interprets modern HTML?
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05, @01:39AM
Just intentional sabotage. You can always have fallback using older API and query the presence of newer API via GetProcAddress. This was a staple of Win32 development back in the 90's and early 00's when developers actually cared about ensuring their stuff is compatible with as many versions as possible whilst not sacrificing newer features on versions that supported it. Using this approach you can write programs today that will work fine on Win9X (see a bunch of Nirsoft tools as an example of this still being practiced).
MS's new APIs rarely add anything that couldn't be done with older APIs, but they're designed in just the "right" way to make interopt between new and old APIs difficult/annoying to maintain. See for example the old and new cryptography APIs (BCrypt vs. the older WinCrypt interface). BCrypt supports everything WinCrypt did (+ some new things), but it's designed in such a way that one can't just call BCrypt functions with the same parameters and parameter order that would've worked for WinCrypt functions. This is guaranteed to be by design because otherwise you could just invoke the corresponding functions via a function pointer and use BCrypt when it's available and WinCrypt when its not (this would've kept programs jumping onto the former bandwagon compatible with XP for example).
MS also retroactively tampers with their documentation insofar that you get awkward knowledgebase entries that ascribe 9X era bugs to Windows 10 because they just blanket replaced every mention of older versions with Windows 10 at some point. This means that to reliably develop code for older versions you absolutely need an offline copy of era-accurate versions of MSDN too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05, @08:15AM (1 child)
If you need to recompile from source etc it would still be considered too hard already for many "desktop users". More so if changes to the source code and or build process/environment/tools are needed.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday April 05, @03:21PM
Why would you want to, though? The whole thing about Linux is that it's always being updated for free (to the user), so the problem of Windows updates stopping doesn't apply...
Nobody enjoys reinstalling when your LTS goes out of support, but 2009, c'mon :P
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday April 05, @02:54PM (1 child)
An old browser like Netscape, could theoretically function. There's several large buts in there, including this one, but you'd be stupid to use an out-of-date web browser on an out-of-date OS. Especially on today's Internet. Yesteryear's Internet was the high seas as well, but there are a lot more guns blazing nowadays.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday April 05, @02:56PM
Also, it's much easier to get old windows programs to function using WINE on Linux. Screw the "backwards compatibility" of Windows. In the event you want something to run as intended and it's not an game that's been released for modern OSes. Just use Linux.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ShovelOperator1 on Wednesday April 05, @06:20PM
OK, let's describe it this, quite simplified, way:
- OS is a wall, in which various buttons are present. You press a button, and something happens. These are system calls. Thanks to them, it is possible to write the software without knowledge that, e.g. this particular place in memory does this, and the next one is another program's place and we should not mess with it.
- These buttons influence operation of a very complex machinery called "device drivers". This is a piece of software which directs what devices should do. Thanks to it, the program pushing a button does not need to know is it pushing button for AMD or nVidia video board, for AC99 or HDMI audio interface or for networked or local printer, the button works well.
- Because pressing buttons doing such elementary things makes programs difficult especially when the program has to support different walls, there are buttons which press other buttons in specific ways to obtain something else. These are libraries. It then does not need to be known that the wall behind is called Linux, Windows or Mac OS, the only certain thing is that our wall is called Qt, or GTK, or XUL.
The problem is that being indeed a terribly written interpreter, the browser needs to pinch through many of these walls to achieve any sane performance. It has GPU acceleration, so the button called "Put the bitmap on the screen" must be overridden. It has network connection management far from the wall called "sockets", so the button "Open the connection to server x and pour the data thru this hole" must be re-done. It has WebGPU and, recently, direct access to the filesystem from the web application (Good luck with security).
The amount of work to keep new interfaces reaching thru walls of buttons is significant. Behind these walls, nobody can expect what will be. Maybe it's Radeon GPU? Or GeForce? Or maybe the old good S3 video card with 3D acceleration support being a parody of early Glide implementation? All of these have to be considered. And another OS means another way to access these internals in stable and fast way.
Another solution would be to finally send the JavaScript to its primary role Netscape made for it decades ago, but it looks like it's too late for it ;).
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday April 05, @07:23PM (1 child)
considering that Windows is fairly decent at maintaining backwards compatibility
You have GOT to be kidding! I have 32 bit programs that barely run on a new Windows, and no eight or sixteen bit program will run on a new Windows computer. Adding a couple of emulators on their already bloated OS could make sure that any Microsoft program from 1983 on would run on your brand new PC. I'm told by folks here that those old 16 bit Windows games I have will play on Linux under Wine, but I haven't tried it yet.
Take a gramophone record from a FULL CENTURY ago and it will play it on your new stereo turntable. THAT'S backwards compatibility. Engineers used to sweat blood seeking it. Microsoft doesn't even try.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday April 05, @08:05PM
My metric was about how many games I lost for good, which is reaaaaally low. I see your point, the way I framed it was misleading. My bad.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday April 05, @03:53AM (1 child)
2024 is next year. That sounds like soon - especially considering how old Windows 7 is.
Kudos on Mozilla for continuing to support the platform. It was one of the last versions of WIndows that wasn't totally hell-bent on stealing your data, feeding you advertisement and serving as a platform for Microsoft's subscription-based cloud products. That's worth something.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05, @02:46PM
> one of the last versions of WIndows that wasn't totally hell-bent on stealing your data...
Yes, that's why I keep using Win 7. Another reason is all the people I see locked out of their computers when MS decides to push an update to 10 or 11 -- losing computer access at random times would be a real disruption for my small business. Unfortunately I'm stuck with Windows since my customers use it.
A few years ago I bought some lightly used ThinkPads that run Win 7. These are backup laptops should my current laptop die. They weren't very expensive and in some spare time I loaded the software I normally use, so they are ready to "hot swap".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05, @12:17PM (3 children)
Desktop Linux is also crap.
Android keeps heading towards Apple style walled gardens.
Quite disappointing actually.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Freeman on Wednesday April 05, @05:47PM
Considering you don't actually call Android crap, I've got to wonder about your delusions.
Desktop Linux is very usable. While seriously old hardware is being left in the dust with regards to up-to-date Linux OSes, I was still able to get a couple of decade+ old laptops to function reasonably well. What isn't supported anymore are the ancient proprietary drivers for the NVIDIA cards in one of those laptops. While the open source driver works, it doesn't work as good as the old proprietary driver. It was good enough to browse the internet and stream videos, though. All with an up-to-date install of MX Linux. Using an old SSD in both laptops "just worked" and made them actually usable. As waiting for an old 5400rpm (or slower) laptop hdd makes the expereince very un-snappy. What didn't "just work" DOSBox. Both laptops had serious trouble getting X-COM:UFO Defense to function. Perhaps some of it was an issue with the Steam copy, but at least one of them had issues with resizing the DOSBox window. As in, the entire screen was garbled. I spent quite a while down that rabbit hole, but no luck finding a solution. I did download FreeDOS, but haven't gotten around to trying it out on either machine. Then again, perhaps I should have just gone with Puppy Linux instead of a big 'ol fat distro like MX Linux. TinyCore has also been an intriguing OS, but a fairly user hostile experience last I tried it out.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Troll) by mcgrew on Wednesday April 05, @07:26PM
Desktop Linux is also crap.
Says the AC who has never even seen a Linux installation before.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday April 05, @09:13PM
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05, @03:16PM
Now nobody can continue using Firefox for a long time lol
(Score: 5, Funny) by sigterm on Wednesday April 05, @03:27PM
Indeed I am, and I intend to remain so for the forseeable future.
My main problem with the more recent offerings from Microsoft, is the ads. While I'll be the first to admit that ad delivery in Windows 7 is abysmal (there's hardly an ad to be seen anywhere!), I do feel that Microsoft could try harder when it comes to improving the Consumer Pestering Experience in Windows 10 and 11.
For instance, the ads don't even cover two-thirds of the Start Menu, and the menu itself leaves large swathes of the screen unmolested. Surely, they can do better than this? Also, while the Microsoft Account nag link at the top of the Settings screen is quite persistent, it is also rather unobtrusive. Fortunately the Windows 11 installer has become much more insistent that you sign up for this data collection service.
Which brings me to my other issue, which is privacy-related: Microsoft has consistently failed to disclose which personal information they collect. How am I then supposed to know which additional information I should send them? They don't provide an e-mail address for this either, but I guess I can just put my credit card numbers, my Social Security number, and all my passwords in a document called "Confidential.docx" and put it in my OneDrivel folder; I'm confident Microsoft or one of the three-letter agencies would pick it up.