For those just reading the headline: Windows 7 users will be able to run Firefox until at least September 2024 through the the Extended Support Release all existing Firefox users on Windows 7/8 will be migrated to.
Newer web technologies won't be supported, but the browser will keep receiving security updates for another year.
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.
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
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.
I'm no windows sysadmin but I think windows 10 is a big step up in terms of security and corporate administration, from my distant memories of being in IT.
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 profile is the common Firefox user. A corporate shop where the IT head insists on Firefox? The browser you install for your parents and tell them to only use this icon? I have seen FF and Chrome on the free computers at my local library.
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.
This allows Mozilla to trim away some of the cruft and have more time available to focus on actually improving Firefox for people living in this day and age. There will always be someone who feels left behind but to me this decision is a no-brainer.
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.
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.
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.
Unsupported 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:
The problem with old OSes not receiving security updates is that they will be vulnerable to new security vulnerabilities. Having a smaller attack surface (like older OSes did) is important for security. But ultimately, older, unpatched OSes are trivial to hack, even using an off-the-shelf toolkit like metasploit; attack surface size be damned.
Also, a reason why there are fewer CVEs for older OSes is that we've gotten better at finding exploits and we care more about security because basically every system is networked now. In addition, people are still hacking older versions of Windows [1], they're just not filing CVEs.
In conclusion, even with the smaller attack surface, it seems silly to claim that a system written without any modern security mitigations (such as ASLR or W^X, which try to make stack overflows not trivially exploitable), suffering under the weight of years of unpatched vulnerabilities, is more secure than a modern system.
I agree that the "BUT WHAT ABOUT UPDATES?!" hysteria is weird [1].
But realistically Windows 7 has a very small user base remaining, and an even smaller part of that uses Firefox. So what do you want Mozilla to do? Keep wasting resources on CI, testing, coding shims for missing OS features, and making releases for the benefit of the 12 people worldwide who depend on the W7+Firefox combination?
jeroenhd|2 years ago
Newer web technologies won't be supported, but the browser will keep receiving security updates for another year.
whoopdedo|2 years ago
https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/hardware
lurtbancaster|2 years ago
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.
ororroro|2 years ago
nikanj|2 years ago
flangola7|2 years ago
Grom_PE|2 years ago
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.
ocdtrekkie|2 years ago
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.
unethical_ban|2 years ago
csdreamer7|2 years ago
Makes me wonder what kind of profile is the common Firefox user. A corporate shop where the IT head insists on Firefox? The browser you install for your parents and tell them to only use this icon? I have seen FF and Chrome on the free computers at my local library.
BoorishBears|2 years ago
antigonemerlin|2 years ago
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
slome|2 years ago
eviks|2 years ago
pcdoodle|2 years ago
dbg31415|2 years ago
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.
mattl|2 years ago
Mozilla doesn’t support old Linux or macOS either.
LordShredda|2 years ago
Rebelgecko|2 years ago
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.
toast0|2 years ago
eviks|2 years ago
2h|2 years ago
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.
Gigachad|2 years ago
mrmincent|2 years ago
userbinator|2 years ago
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.
1710522266|2 years ago
Also, a reason why there are fewer CVEs for older OSes is that we've gotten better at finding exploits and we care more about security because basically every system is networked now. In addition, people are still hacking older versions of Windows [1], they're just not filing CVEs.
In conclusion, even with the smaller attack surface, it seems silly to claim that a system written without any modern security mitigations (such as ASLR or W^X, which try to make stack overflows not trivially exploitable), suffering under the weight of years of unpatched vulnerabilities, is more secure than a modern system.
[1]: https://jumpespjump.blogspot.com/2014/05/hacking-windows-95-...
tredre3|2 years ago
But realistically Windows 7 has a very small user base remaining, and an even smaller part of that uses Firefox. So what do you want Mozilla to do? Keep wasting resources on CI, testing, coding shims for missing OS features, and making releases for the benefit of the 12 people worldwide who depend on the W7+Firefox combination?
1. https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2202720-coomer
nsajko|2 years ago