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Firefox to Drop Pre-Windows 2000 Support

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the they-dropped-mac-os-9-long-ago dept.

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.'"

20 of 491 comments (clear)

  1. Why not? by milamber3 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Why not? by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?

      --
      liqbase :: faster than paper
    2. Re:Why not? by Short+Circuit · · Score: 5, Informative

      Pre-W2K systems are still in wide use in the home. I know this because my Computer Club regularly services them at PC Clinic. Dropping support for pre-W2K systems puts Firefox in a bad position for these systems. We may have to look at Opera instead.

      --
      tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
    3. Re:Why not? by truthsearch · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ... 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).

      --
      Developers: We can use your help.
    4. Re:Why not? by Richard+Steiner · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
      The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
    5. Re:Why not? by SiChemist · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      God is imaginary
    6. Re:Why not? by zimus · · Score: 5, Funny
      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.

      Actually, up until now the most secure thing for win98 users has been to leave the computer turned off, and unplugged from the wall.

      --
      Is your terror cell living in terror? Is your safe-house not so safe? If so, read the New York Times, the jihad journal.
    7. Re:Why not? by masklinn · · Score: 4, Informative

      W98 support will be dropped for Firefox 3.0 because it's using Cairo (which does not build on W98

      Firefox 3.0 is at least a year in the future, mid-2007 that is. If you haven't switched from W98 nearly 10 years after it's been released, you're asking for trouble no matter what.

      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?

      W98 is a piece of crap security wise.

      --
      "The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
    8. Re:Why not? by misleb · · Score: 5, Insightful

      '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

      --
      "THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
    9. Re:Why not? by misleb · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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

      --
      "THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
    10. Re:Why not? by Tackhead · · Score: 4, Interesting
      > 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.

      "It's too old", by the way, doesn't mean "Nobody bothers to find infection vectors for it", it means "they were never implemented."

      Other than the TCP/NetBIOS stuff (that never, to the best of my knowledge, had a remote exploit that let anyone take control of the box), a box running 98SE runs no services. No uPNP exploit. No DCOM/RPC. No Messenger. No nothing. For all intents and purposes, it's already firewalled when you plug it into the wall.

      Warning: Rant coming on.

      I'd go so far to say that 98SE out of the box, plus Mozilla, is more secure than XP ever was. After a user actually runs the malware, it's a draw. 9x has no security model, and the XP box wins in theory: an OS that supports privileged/nonprivileged users is at least capable of defending against user stupidity. But in practice, the 2K/XP malware uses privilege escalation bugs to turn XP's security model something effectively identical to 9x's: "None at all."

      9x is also IMHO more recoverable than XP; replacing a borked .DLL for an updated (or downgraded, because some idiot installer overwrote it) .DLL is easy when you've got a "talk-to-the-bare-metal" DOS prompt and there's no OS in the way telling you you can't overwrite the file. DRM? What DRM? You can't do DRM when you've got no security model. 9x doesn't phone home. 9x doesn't care - doesn't know - if you make a drive image (ah, a DOS prompt again!) of your boot partition, burn it onto a CD, and file it away until the user hoses something badly enough that it can't be recovered.

      Sure, the OS was a fancy DOS shell that sucked balls compared to any real OS if you were trying to develop software on it, but it made a damn good single-user home/gaming platform. If it weren't for the 137GB drive (not partition, drive) size limit and the 512MB RAM size limit, I'd run it today as my gaming rig.

      OK. Rant over.

      I suspect that the real reason the Mozilla team is dropping support for 9x is because the OS sucks balls, and the ball-sucking makes it not fun to develop software on it. It's got nothing to do with security. Because the OS that runs no services, doesn't get 0wn3d.

    11. Re:Why not? by Chris_Jefferson · · Score: 5, Informative

      Don't rush.

      The support is being dropped from Firefox 3. Firefox 2, out later this year, will have windows 98 support. Firefox 3, which probably won't be out for another 18 months after that, will be the one without windows 9x support. By that point I would expect to still see some, but even less, windows 9x boxes.

      --
      Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
    12. Re:Why not? by kentyman · · Score: 5, Funny
      I don't think there will ever be a large number of machines running an extremely obsolete version of a free operating system.
      What about Debian Stable? :)
      --
      You know where you are? You're in the $PATH, baby. You're gonna get executed!
    13. Re:Why not? by just_forget_it · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I am currently at work using Windows 98. From my perspective, using Windows 98 is getting more and more awful. Especially since I have to coordinate with Engineers using AutoCAD 2007 on Windows XP machines, making it work with my Acad 2002 win98 machine.

      Arguing against stopping support for windows 98 makes about as much sense as being against companies stopping support for DOS or CP/M. Windows 98 is in the same boat, eventually the only users will be people running highly specialized custom niche software that CANT run on any other OS.

  2. shrug by aleksiel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    i'd be hard pressed to find someone who runs anything pre-win2000 as their main/only computer and also has technical sense enough to want to use firefox.

    1. Re:shrug by ArmyOfFun · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  3. One way to go... by truthsearch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Developers: We can use your help.
  4. Sorry, wrong. by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 4, Informative

    9x/ME/NT support is dropped. Check the Bugzilla bug linked to in the article, it states it right in the title.

  5. Re:Then the 98 people will all move to Linux! by christopherfinke · · Score: 4, Funny
    I guess it's a little mean to the 98 people
    I'm not sure if this means "people who use Windows 98" or "the 98 people who uses Windows 98," but I think I'm going to go with the latter.
  6. Re:Pre-2K ? by Spad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Windows Millenium can barely be considered as an Operating System.