Firefox to Drop Pre-Windows 2000 Support

cyclomedia writes "While more and more platforms are getting (or aiming for) Firefox ports, the trunk itself seems to be going the other way. In an effort to clean up the API calls used and reduce the codesize a patch was posted at Bugzilla removing support from pre-W2k versions of Windows. There's a fiery discussion going on over at the Mozillazine forums about this after a counter bug was filed. The official position appears to be that Firefox 3.0 will maintain this un-compatibility, but developers are, obviously, free to work on a separate Win 98 compatible 'port.'"

Comments

Why not?

[milamber3]

MS has basically stopped supporting pre-2000 so why shouldn't firefox? Anyone using their computer to browse the web with firefox should probably make sure they have 2000 or better just to keep the nasties out of their system.

Re:Why not?

[LiquidCoooled]

Nasties can only get in your system if you expose bad ports or use an insecure program to run it.

Up until now, the most secure thing for win 98 users (for whatever reason they are still using it) has been to sit behind a router and use firefox.

Knowing that firefox won't support them will be bad news in my eyes.

Additionally, aren't Win 2000 and Win xp less secure than running an old OS which doesn't have the available OS features which l33t virus people exploit?

Re:Why not?

[truthsearch]

... for win 98 users (for whatever reason they are still using it)...

'Cause they don't want to pay for a new version or bother getting a pirate copy, or deal with the headaches of upgrading, and maybe it simply works for them and feel no obligation to change?

Additionally, aren't Win 2000 and Win xp less secure than running an old OS which doesn't have the available OS features which l33t virus people exploit?

All versions of Windows have holes which Microsoft will never fix. But no updates at all will ever come for very old versions. Holes in 98 will forever be there while with 2000 and XP you can at least still hope for fixes. AFAIK most significant exploits and virii are applicable to all versions of Windows since they share the majority of their code base (especially the Win32 API).

Re:Why not?

[SiChemist]

I would say the main reason you don't see many machines running that vintage of Linux is that they could be upgraded to a newer version for free. I don't think there will ever be a large number of machines running an extremely obsolete version of a free operating system.

Re:Why not?

[Dan Ost]

For Linux, the increase is negligible.

While that may be true of the kernel, it is not true of the desktop
environments (Gnome, KDE, etc) or of any apps that make use of the
large widget libraries (qt, gtk, etc).

Re:Why not?

[misleb]

'Cause they don't want to pay for a new version or bother getting a pirate copy, or deal with the headaches of upgrading, and maybe it simply works for them and feel no obligation to change?

I've personally never met anyone for whom Windows 98 Just Works. But I guess maybe that has something to do only being brought in when the Windows 98 shit hit the fan. Seriously though, who could still be running an original installation of Windows 98? Standard operating procedure for Win 98 pretty much dictates a fresh reinstall every so often anyway. Why not upgrade while you're at it?

What is it with Windows and legacy support, anyway? Only in the Windows world (it seems) do you get a significant number of people who stubornly refuse to give up their applications and OS from 1995. Well, I guess there might still be some Amiga users out there... ;-) IF they're happy with an OS from before 2000, they should be happy with a browser from 2006. Can they really expect developers to continue to support them?

-matthew

Re:Why not?

[misleb]

I use Windows 95 OSR2 on several boxes at home, and nasties don't happen. Why? Because OSR2 doesn't support many of the infection vectors present in newer Win32 flavors. It's too old.

You use them or just happen to have them sitting around gathering dust? There is a difference. I used to "use" and old HP 9000 server in my house until I realized the difference between using a computer and simply being an ubergeek with a tendancy to collect crap.

-matthew

One way to go...

[truthsearch]

Deciding on when to drop compatibility can be a tough problem. I think a good policy would be to drop support for an OS when support from that OS has been dropped by the vendor. In Windows' case I believe the majority of home users are on XP while the majority of office users are on XP or 2000. So it would seem reasonable to drop support for the older OSs.

The last version of Firefox to support 98 and earlier should be kept up for easy download.

Typical Microsoft mindset

[hausmaus]

It seems to me that the developers of Firefox have fallen down the same pothole-filled path that Microsoft has - forget about your past, focus only on the future. As an guy who does quite a bit of home-based computer repair, I see a lot of people who are NOT using Windows XP and are using older versions of Windows (pre-2000 - I use W2K myself). What's happening to Firefox is that it's getting splintered apart slowly. I wouldn't be suprised to have four or five distinct versions of FF in the next few years (note I'm not saying ports, but distinct versions).

Firefox is already much slower-loading that it used to be a few years ago, loaded with a lot of things that probably aren't really necessary. Not all of us require the latest and greatest thing to do what we need to do and I feel that the developers of FF have lost touch of that, being driven by feature creep and "keeping up with the neighbors" mentality.

Re:shrug

[Nutria]

I NEED MUH FIREFOXEN!

There's no logic bomb that says that NEXT YEAR when FF 3.0 is realeased, FF 2.0.x suddenly stop running on Win98.

Re:Pre-2K ?

[Spad]

Windows Millenium can barely be considered as an Operating System.

Good!

[misleb]

What's wrong with this? Does anyone care if Firefox runs on 7 year old Linux distributions? No. Do Mac users care if an application still runs on OS 9? No. There is no reason why anyone should be running anything less than Win 2k. If they are, they certainly shouldn't expect to be able to run the latest and greatest of software. If they are OK with an OS older than 2000, they should be OK running a browser version stuck in 2006. I say clean up the code and drop legacy support. Don't make Microsoft's mistake.

-matthew

Re:Good!

[Nimrangul]

You're wrong, people do care about if something still runs on Mac OS 9, the people who have hardware which is still perfectly fine and an operating system that still does everything they need. These people see no reason to upgrade to a new machine with new operating system because it hold no benifits, it's just a bunch of money they'd rather use on something like bills.

The same is true for many Windows 95 users, they have machines that will still run fine for years and will do exactly what they want - their e-mail and some web surfing. I have met these people, when I can I upgrade their hardware so that it's able to at least run 2000, I do so, but sometimes I just don't have the spare parts sitting around waiting for them.

Not everyone has a couple grand they are able to flop down at the drop of a hat in order to get the latest and greatest, some people have very tight budgets.

While it is true many of these people don't expect the biggest and best of the software world to run on their machines, it's not that they don't want them to.

These people are out there, and will stay out there for a long time. The Internet will always have traces of these legacy systems as long as it exists in it's current form, is it not better to at least try to give them something reasonably up-to-date in order to protect ourselves from their inevitable infections?

That is why OpenSSH runs on so many systems, it was meant to remove a insecurity via telnet and rlogin from the Internet, for everyone's benifit.

Re:shrug

[ArmyOfFun]

I should post anonymously to avoid horrible embarrassment. My home computer was bought in '99, (550 mhz), and while intended for useful work, it was also an awesome gaming rig at the time, it came preloaded with Win98 SE. While still my main machine, it's only regularly used for web browsing now. XP would slow the thing down, and I have no desire to purchase/pirate 2k. The only stability problems I've had were due to a stick of memory going bad (so it has even less RAM than when I bought it in '99). That said, I don't care about this announcement. I understand my setup is outdated, and I don't expect any software to support it. I have no desire to upgrade my machine, or rather, any desire to upgrade is outweighed by the cost of a new machine. I have only two reasons I would need a bleeding edge computer. The first is to play PC games, but I've moved to consoles for my gaming needs simply because it's cheaper (I can't justify $200 every 1-2 year just to play new games). The other is do work on my home machine but I'm not interested in doing any work during my off hours (the main app I need to run often slows my 1ghz work machine to a crawl). For web browsing/paying bills, my setup is more than adequate.