Not too long ago, Mozilla announced it was going to extend its support for Windows 7, and was mulling over extending support for Windows 8.x as well, without providing any time frames or details. Well, we’ve got the details now.
According to the Firefox Release Calendar website, Firefox 115 ESR, the latest Firefox version with support for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1, will continue receiving updates until April 1, 2025. Firefox 115.21 ESR is expected on March 4, 2024, which means users with old Windows versions have at least seven more months of support from Firefox.
↫ Taras Buria at Neowin
The same extension to March 2025 for Firefox 115 ESR also covers macOS 10.12-10.14. The reasoning behind the extension is simple: there’s still enough users on these older operating system version for Mozilla to dedicate resources to it, despite how difficult backporting security fixes to 115 ESR has become. Firefox is pretty much the only mainstream browser still supporting Windows 7 and 8, and that’s definitely commendable.
“unsupported devices” what does that even mean? Are they killing off firefoxOS? Firefox on windows 7 still works with certain compile flags and deleting some bullplop. Yeah they are doing this due to external pressure. I am posting this on windows 7 with firefox 130.0 to make a point.
If mozilla does not want to make the binaries, FINE but do not lie to us.
What do you mean by lie? They don`t support and that`s it – it doesn`t mean it won`t work.
they claim they can not provide binaries for windows 7, That is a blatant lie. I can do it!
I am runningh 130 right now on windows 7. So i do not get your point.
Official binary must be well tested, stable and I guess the same functions, so it needs money and I guess that it`s not profitable for them, Cutting things off also don`t seems providing the same. So they can`t, that`s all.
If you cut things off and it work then ok, it`s just not supported by them,
And i can run Windows 11 on a 1st gen Core i7. But that doesn’t mean Microsoft will provide support for it. Same applies here.
It might work for now, but you’ll get laughed at the moment you complain to Mozilla that it doesn’t any more.
Very good point. But as long as it builds there is no reason to fork it. Or should we prepare? Will this be another palemoon moment?
So to devils advocate here a little:
Is supporting an out of support OS just irresponsible?
Its encouraging/enabling people to continue to use an OS that no longer gets security updates and patches to remain functionally connected to the Internet.
When those machines are invariably compromised Mozzila will absolve themselves of any blame ofc.
Adurbe,
It’s a valid point. Although most computers don’t have inbound connections from the internet. And the browser is probably the main source of outbound connections to the internet. So if the browser is up to date, that covers a good chunk of all internet traffic and should be fairly safe.
However, I appreciate that some browsers may expose OS exploits to websites. For example, there’s been vulnerabilities in windows font rendering. There may be risks in using microsoft video codecs as well.
IIRC modern browsers are bundling their own font engines and video codecs. If so they’ll be updated along with the browser.. The old IE and netscape browsers used win32 GUI controls. When you changed the OS themes, the appearances of controls like buttons/edit boxes/scrollbars/etc would change in the browser as well. OS vulnerabilities with these controls would potentially be exposed on the web. But modern browsers implement their own controls, this makes them much more portable. As a side effect of making browsers portable, they’re typically designed to be more self contained and less reliant on the OS.
So IMHO there’s fairly good isolation, but of course it’s impossible to rule out vulnerabilities without security audits that aren’t really worth doing.
AmigaOS has technically been out of support since 1993 and BeOS has technically been out of support since 2001. Yes. support is vital. NetSurf and ladybird both builds and runs on OS/2 as well as the prevously mentioned systems.