Among them, Byron Jourdan, Senior Director, Product Management of Mozilla, under the Reddit username ComprehensiveDoor643 revealed that Mozilla plans to support Firefox on Windows 7 for longer. When asked separately about whether it also included Windows 8 and 8.1 too, Jourdan added that it was certainly the plan, though for how long the extended support would last was still undecided.
↫ Sayan Sen at Neowin
Excellent move by Mozilla. I doubt there’s that many new features and frameworks in Windows 10 or 11 that are absolutely essential to Firefox working properly, so assuming it can gracefully disable any possible Windows 10/11-exclusive features, it should be entirely possible to use Firefox as an up-to-date, secure, and capable browser on Windows 7/8.x.
Windows 7 and 8.x users still make up about 2.7% of Windows users worldwide, and with Windows’ popularity, that probably still translates to millions and millions of people. Making sure these people have access to a safe and secure browser is a huge boon, and I’m very happy Mozilla is going to keep supporting these platforms as best they can, at least for now.
For those of us who already consider especially Windows 7 a retrocomputing platform – I sure do – this is also great news, as any retro box or VM we load up with it will also get a modern browser. Just excellent news all around.
> Windows 7 and 8.x users still make up about 2.7% of Windows users worldwide, and with Windows’ popularity, that probably still translates to millions and millions of people.
Given that firefox’s marketshare seems to be just as low nowadays, wouldn’t that number of windows 7 and 8 users be within the same ballpark as the number of firefox ones?
That’s a fairly juicy potential customer base where the big competition isn’t fishing.
Mote,
That seems logical to me, but something tells me those users aren’t the type to switch. They’ll keep using whatever browser they’re already using even if it’s unsupported. Note: I’m not saying it’s a good idea, but users rarely change what they have.
Considering that Supremium has taken almost 1% of the desktop market (just chrome that works with 7, vista and XP) it seems unlikely.
And remember that all of china and north korea is mostly reported as whatever the government wnts it to be reported as.
If you have ever visited china you know… yeah there is mandatory spyware on everything, and it is illegal to remove, and only versions aproved by the government can be installed.
Yeah both claim to be communist, neither care about the collective NOR the individual, so i have no idea what they are now or ever were. Authoritarion, sure, but having the end goal to keep power is not an end goal that can be maintained.
Unfortunately, it’s only for the ESR version 115, so it’s going to run out sooner than later, they can’t keep maintaining that old codebase for very long.
kurkosdr,
I would expect most if not all the OS interfacing code is highly abstracted in the browser to keep it portable. In principal, if they’re not dependent on windows 10/11 features as Thom said, then the same win32 APIs should keep working without requiring much maintenance at all.
I figure most software remains API-compatible at the source level, however the problem I’ve encountered at work is that executables built under new versions of VS get linked to standard libraries that are not backwards compatible. MS does that on purpose to stop execution on older versions of windows regardless of whether the software could/did work before. It can be a nuance for software publishers who didn’t really intend to drop support “we don’t care what version of windows you use our software on”. I don’t know whether this impacts firefox specifically with the compiler & libraries they use.
The issue is that Firefox supports Windows 7/8/8.1 only in the ESR branch of version 115, so the problem is that the “master” version of Firefox will further and further diverge from the codebase of the ESR branch of version 115, so eventually the ESR branch of version 115 will have to be retired (unless Mozilla has infinite people to throw at ESR maintenance which they don’t). It’s why all ESR versions of Firefox have an expiration date.
kurkosdr,
Yes, but most users don’t care if they’re running ESR 115. Unless new versions of firefox are dependent on windows 10/11 features, then it’s shouldn’t be too hard to build the latest version of FF for windows 7. Mozilla might not support this, but since it’s open source somebody else could if there’s demand.
Do you trust binaries made by some random guy in a shed though?
kurkosdr,
Practically everything on windows comes as binaries downloaded off of arbitrary websites you have to trust, I’d say the answer is a definitive yes.
Sure, but there is a big difference between trusting Mozilla and trusting some anonymous guy in a shed pushing binaries to the world.
You can theoretically clone the source code repo and build it yourself, but let’s see how easy it is to do that for Firefox and whether a tutorial ever exists for it.
kurkosdr,
Tell that to the people running various browser forks.
Let’s say, hypothetically, that a browser maker pushed unpopular restrictions on the APIs used by adblockers. Some new fork might come along and remove those restrictions. You’d be free to criticize this fork and their users for “trusting some anonymous guy in a shed pushing binaries to the world” but at the end of the day it’s up to them whether to trust the new fork or not.
For better or worse all software binaries require us to trust the publisher and I for one don’t necessarily agree that the big brands deserve more of it like you imply.
That actually sounds like a good idea to me.
kurkosdr,
I found it…
https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/setup/windows_build.html
https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/setup/linux_build.html
>I would expect most if not all the OS interfacing code is highly abstracted in the browser
Oh, I wish. The firefox approach is “make assumptions first, #ifdef osname later”.
nia_netbsd,
I am curious, do you have examples? ifdefs aren’t always bad, but it’s hard to say without seeing it.
latest version of firefox now works fine on windows 7 with latest version of wine for windows. Have had no troubles so far.
No particular point.
YMMV, but from where I’m standing, the ONE remaining good reason to hold off on upgrading from to Win10 was removed when the data gathering frameworks from Win10 were backported into 7/8/8.1. Which was a good reason to try and migrate away permanently.
Oh, there are multiple reasons to stay on Windows 7: It supports secdrv (you can enable it with a simple command), it has Windows Media Center (and accompanying CableCard support), it has first-party DVD-Video support, it doesn’t include a truckload of crapware, and the UI isn’t an eyesore. Also, Windows 7 doesn’t have an OS-wide login functionality, so any data they gather cannot be attached to an account, and doesn’t heckle you to provide an account.
Problem is, you can’t stay on Windows 7 for much longer because stuff races past you by the day. Everyone from GPU vendors to browser vendors dropped support the moment Windows 7 ESU expired. New GPUs don’t support Windows 7 and neither do the latest versions of Chrome and Firefox. Once Firefox 115 ESR stops receiving patches you are officially browser-less unless you are willing to use forks of Chrome or Firefox that go by the name of PaleMoon/NewMoon/whatever and whose patching level is questionable. Windows 7 is now a retro box much like Windows XP or Windows 98SE.
Quick retro lookup chart:
– Windows 98SE -> Last version of Windows to be backwards compatible with Windows 9x apps and games and with MS-DOS all the way down to MS-DOS 1.1 (you will have to reboot to MS-DOS mode for non-DPMI apps and games though), also, last version of Windows to be compatible with Windows 9x drivers obviously
– Windows XP -> Last version of Windows to be backwards compatible with Windows NT 5.x drivers and generally a good option for devices with 32-bit-only drivers (since most of them target WinXP 32-bit), also last version of Windows to support full-screen MS-DOS apps*, also, rarely some win32 apps won’t work on Vista/7 and need Windows XP specifically.
– Windows 7 -> Last version of Windows to have secrdrv and CableCard support (though Windows 8.1 with a Pro Pack can be used for that, in fact it’s what I did in order to avoid installing hacked Windows 7 ESU on my systems, and yes, I really purchased a Windows 8.1 Pro Pack from eBay)
*I know you can install XPDM drivers on Windows VIsta/7 to get full screen MS-DOS apps, but don’t, it will break apps that need WDDM drivers
kurkosdr,
Since we have a recurring discussion about windows application compatibility & support, I wanted to update you on a new development 🙂
Just today I had a meeting going over an application regression in windows 11. Some of the colors in a dialog box are missing. I have yet to diagnose it and have no idea why it would happen, I don’t use windows 11 and didn’t see it, but sure enough some of the colors are missing on windows 11. The software is supported, so whatever the issue turns out to be we’ll fix it, but the things that can break after upgrading windows are so surprising and mysterious, haha.
My luck has been good so far, probably because I use apps that don’t do weird stuff, but please notify me whether the issue is Microsoft breaking some part of the win32 api or the app itself doing weird stuff and chocking on the new Windows 11 visual style.
Also, a good thing with Windows is that it gives you a saving throw in the form of “compatibility mode” (which also allows you to disable visual styles). Obviously when it comes to supported apps telling customers to use “compatibility mode” is unacceptable, but for old unsupported apps it can work (I have only used it for Windows 98 apps though, there was also one obscure app that needed WIndows XP compatibility mode due to an uninitialized pointer).
My main gripe about compatibility mode is that Windows 95/98 compatibility mode doesn’t unbreak 256-color Direct3D support and DirectDraw support, but that has been a known issue since forever.
kurkosdr,
I don’t think theming is involved but at this point I simply don’t know the cause.
Anyway, I’m aware that I encounter more issues simply because my role increases my level of exposure to these problems. Part of my job is to take calls when things break. Those who aren’t having problems are not calling me to tell me they’re not having problems even if they statistically make up the large majority.
(forgot to say that the Windows XP box is the place you should run your win16 stuff on if you don’t have a Windows 98SE box, since your Windows 7 box will probably be 64-bit)
Excellent idea. Even if they just get 50% of Windows 7 holdouts to move to Firefox, this would increase the Firefox browser marketshare by 50%. And when/if these guys switch to newer Windows or to Linux one day, they may just decide to stick with Firefox.
I’m trying to think through the scenarios as to why some one would still be on them.
+ I bought it 15 years ago and still works crowd, who use it out of sheer inertia and no better reason.
+ I run customized software that is the lifeblood of my company and its too expensive to purchase a newer version for a newer version of windows.
+ My company ( or my family) has razor, razor thin margins and all hardware is on the verge of collapse and when something dies its ebay/facebook/craigslist replaced. Security is not a concern, a ransomware attack means I buy another barely functioning computer. I stay on windows because thats what it comes with.
I guess I’m sympathetic to the last two. I’ve lived both of those lives. Luckily the operating system in question for #2 was not network connected.
Why not sympathetic to the first one? They avoid producing e-waste as long as they can.
Because Linux exists and works great on older hardware. I don’t consider it to be very difficult to install modern linux distros. If you can graduate highschool you should be able to do it.
Bill Shooter of Bul,
I think there’s a bit of miscommunication here. It’s clear now you are talking about the OS, but I actually also read your comment as cevvalkoala did as a commentary on using old hardware rather than old software.
It’s better than nothing, but 115 is a dead end already. There are problems already when using this version of Firefox, for example with Facebook. Mozilla should have thought ahead and postponed dropping support for one more ESR cycle.
As for Windows 7, the more desperate ones can still patch Windows 7 using “borrowed” ESU patches (which I have done) and additionally partially patch Windows 7 with patches from its corresponding server version. This should be possible until September of this year. I haven’t tried this last one, but it should be noted that this method only partially patches the system by removing security holes common to Windows 7 and its server counterpart. A similar method exists for Windows Vista, so you can get a partially patched Vista up to January 2024 level. I tried this one and it seems to work for Vista, the Windows Vista Kernel then gets the version number 6003.22464. As far as Vista is concerned, the “key” is KB5034173 patch.