Chrome Will End XP Support in 2015; Firefox Has No Plans To Stop

Billly Gates writes "Microsoft is ending support for Windows XP in 2014. Fortunately for its users who want to keep browsing the web, Google is continuing to support Chrome until at least 2015. Firefox has no current plans to end support for XP. Hopefully this will delay the dreaded XPopacalypse — the idea that a major virus/worm/trojan will take down millions of systems that haven't been issued security patches. When these browsers finally do end XP support, does it mean webmasters will need to write seperate versions of CSS and JavaScript for older versions if the user base refuses to leave Windows XP (as happened with IE6)?" Update: 10/29 17:31 GMT by S : Changed headline and summary to reflect that Mozilla doesn't have plans to drop XP support any time soon.

Comments

From my cold dead hands...

[Kell Bengal]

They'll take my XP when they put me in the ground. Warning: this post may contain traces of levity.

Re:From my cold dead hands...

[brain159]

Will you drop some loot as well?

Re:From my cold dead hands...

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering he(?) is still running XP, I'd wager that loot will be cursed. It'll have some nasty effects, and you can't get rid of it.

Re:From my cold dead hands...

[alexgieg]

No loot, but he gives lots of XP.

Re:From my cold dead hands...

[ron_ivi]

If only it were open-sourced, then you (or your community) could pay third parties for support for as long as you wanted.

Re:From my cold dead hands...

[hairyfeet]

You are making a joke but I really don't see why so many would want to hang onto XP as frankly? Its a piece of shit, sorry but it is.

1.-When XP came out the average system had 256MB of RAM or less so XP will bitchslap the swap even when it has tons of memory to spare. 2.- Speaking of memory not only are you limited to 3.2Gb of memory but it doesn't even manage that well, requiring a reg hack to keep the system from taking 2GB for itself. 3.- Its support for newer tech like NCQ, SATA, 3G, etc is frankly bolted on and piss poor at best, 4.- Its got patches for its patches, making system instability and "Winrot" pretty much a given,hell I could go on all day.

Frankly anything from 2007 on up can run Windows 7 quite easily, I have put Win 7 Home on both a first gen C2D and a Pentium D, both with 1.5GB of RAM and they run just fine and anything older? Honestly you are just throwing money away as most of the older office machines and consumer boxes are Pentium 4 and the P4 is just insane when it comes to heat and power usage so hanging onto one is just nuts.

For those that have a system too old to take Win 7 I suggest you pick up an AMD Bobcat board, those can be found in the $80 price range and its dual cores and Radeon GPU will stomp the old P4s while sipping less than 20w under load,use a PCI-IDE adapter to keep your old HDD and DVD and there ya go,for just $100 counting a 4GB stick of RAM you have a new unit that can do 1080P while using less under load than a P4 by itself uses in idle. Tiger and Newegg has been selling Win 7 HP OEM for around $80 so for a final total of less than $200 shipped you can toss the power hog P4 AND XP AND have you a nice unit that will easily out perform the old junk you are replacing. BTW for those that want a cheap mediatank/HTPC I highly recommend the Bobcat, does 1080P over HDMI and supports hybrid crossfire so you can add a cheap discrete down the line and get more performance if/when you need it.

Re:From my cold dead hands...

[Anonymous Coward]

If only it were open-sourced, then you (or your community) could pay third parties for support for as long as you wanted.

If Windows XP users aren't opening their wallets to upgrade, they wouldn't open their wallets for extended support, either.

Re:From my cold dead hands...

[allamericancomp]

There are a lot of customers of mine that love windows XP and there blackberrys. THEY WILL NOT SWITCH. Got to use what you like good for you.

Re:From my cold dead hands...

[marphod]

I think you may be missing the point.

I don't want to buy a new OS. I don't want to give Microsoft money for a OS that I don't want to use and am locked into because one software package I use is Windows-only. I certainly don't want to be forced to get new hardware in order to pay money for something I don't want to use.

While my CPU and GPU aren't breaking any records (Intel Q9550, GeForce 9400GT) and I may have other minor issues[1], I'm also not feeling any need to upgrade. I don't do high end games, my primary OS is a Linux flavor, my compiler works fine for my development work, and except for when an application goes rogue and eats CPU or RAM, my 4 VMs run fine with 4G Ram. One of those VMs is Windows (XP 64bit), running on a license I happened to get with my hardware. I use the windows VM for 2 reasons -- one, for a decent OCR package[2], and two, one of the media servers I use is a Windows-only package[3].

If these ran well under WINE, I'd ditch windows in a heart beat

Would I like to be using Windows 7 rather than XP? Sure. If a license fell into my lap, I'd upgrade. However, I look at my windows partition in much the same way I look at dental work -- of course, I would rather getting Novocaine before dental surgery, it is a nicer option than not, but I'd rather not have to have dental work in the first place.

[1] - In particular, I'm rather annoyed that while my CPU supports it, the motherboard doesn't do VT-d,
[2] - I spent over 2 months trying to train Tesseract and Cuneiform to a workable state. I re-wrote significant parts of a UI front-end to make them play nice together and to select the best recognition from either engine. Best I could get was a recognition accuracy on my bank statements of 75% by _character_, much less word or line. And there still isn't an reasonable way to do document formatting replication in the recognized text.
[3] Yes, yes, I use closed-source software. I am a Bad Geek. Can we please move on?

Re:From my cold dead hands...

[SlippyToad]

I find the people going "XP or nothing" are usually not very savvy with the tech. They're just lazy and hyper-conservative, and fear change and what they don't understand.

Re:From my cold dead hands...

[unixisc]

I doubt that he was talking about people who run XP in VMs under Linux

Re:From my cold dead hands...

[KingMotley]

I don't think anyone cares about your running Windows XP in a VM, so long as you keep it off the net.

Re:From my cold dead hands...

[lgw]

It's one thing to fear change, it's another to see no reason to change when what you have works. If all you do it "non power user" stuff, which these days is almost all web browser (shopping, email, social sites, photo sharing), then XP is a great lightweight OS - takes very little disk, and is quite happy with 2GB memory.

If you're running a secure web browser, and that's all you need, then why change?

I only moved to Win7 because I like the UI better overall, and I could afford a high-end-at-the-time system to make it as fast as XP was - but that change started with the desire to build a new system for fun, not to change the OS.

Re:From my cold dead hands...

[unixisc]

Even on the net, it's not a problem. If it gets infected by a virus, just close that VM and start another.

Re:From my cold dead hands...

[hairyfeet]

Then switch to Linux full time and stop using an ancient OS? You can very easily have XP in a VM on your Linux box and that way you won't be an STD on the net? Folks can waste their mod points and mark me down ALL they want but as someone who has to clean up the messes facts are facts and the fact is XP is the most infected OS by a country mile because security frankly wasn't even a thought upon design. To this day XP runs like crap unless you run as admin and it takes a LOT of massaging to get it to run most applications in any other permissions level.

But if you REALLY hate MSFT soooo much do us all a BIG favor and just switch to Linux with a VM of your creaky old, broken down, soon to be the biggest security nightmare since the Melissa worm XP, okay? Like it or not when patches end every script kiddie on the planet is gonna hit that OS like a Bangkok Whore on coupon day because most of the patches for Vista/7 will affect XP as well so it'll be trivial to cook up bugs that won't be patched.

Your system is powerful enough to make running a VM trivial so there really is no excuse to run a 14 year old broken mess.Fuck go download a copy of Win 7 off of TPB, at least you won't be risking the whole net that way man.If you want a legal Tiger and Newegg has been selling Win 7 OEM for just $80, that is just $13 a year to have a patched OS. There really is no excuse dude, let go of the dinosaur.

Re: From my cold dead hands...

[KingMotley]

If you notice. Otherwise it just becomes one more in an army of zombie bots.

Re:From my cold dead hands...

[hobarrera]

Can't use just freeze an XP VM (eg: snapshot it) and use just that?
In case of a security issue, just rollback. You can keep on using XP, and don't really need a browser if all you do is use those two pieces of software.

Re:From my cold dead hands...

[bemymonkey]

Since you seem rather knowledgeable about OCR: Do you know of a way to completely re-render a PDF via OCR while preserving formatting? I've got a few PDFs that OCR just fine, but have horrible fonts/print for reading (i.e. extremely low res or low contrast).

Article says the opposite?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article says they have no plans to end support for XP, how in the world did the summary end up saying exactly the opposite?
Or is now even blatant lying ok as long as it might work as clickbait?

Re:Article says the opposite?

[KIFulgore]

I had to read it 3 times just to make sure I wasn't losing my mind...

Re:Article says the opposite?

[Anonymous Coward]

Timothy is on duty.

Re:Article says the opposite?

[Anonymous Coward]

It might not be intentional. If the criterion for publication is (EditorAmazement(SubmitterWriteup(news)) > threshold), then it tends to select in favor of writeups with errors that make the news amazing.

Re:Article says the opposite?

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

The article says they have no plans to end support for XP, how in the world did the summary end up saying exactly the opposite? Or is now even blatant lying ok as long as it might work as clickbait?

It happens all the time around here, unfortunately. Reading comprehension is rather poor for some of our article submitters.

Re:Article says the opposite?

[Anonymous Coward]

TIMMAY!

Re:Article says the opposite?

[dreamchaser]

Not to mention the editors don't do any editing.

Re:Article says the opposite?

[unixisc]

The Chrome article states that support will end in 2015 - a year after Microsoft ends its support. The FireFox article states that their support will continue (indefinitely).

More basic than the browsers - will the antivirus guys like Norton, Kaspersky, ESET, et al continue to support XP?

Re:Article says the opposite?

[Derek Pomery]

My initial guess was the article submitter was unclear on "continuing support indefinitely" but then I RTFA'd and I saw:
  "We have no plans to discontinue support for our XP users."

I mean. How much more clearer can you get? Yeesh.

Re:Article says the opposite?

[Dishevel]

I still have no idea what the editors here do.

Re:Article says the opposite?

[Anonymous Coward]

This post does have a trace element of the usual fear-mongering we expect from the nwo news channels, but here on slashdot? We will cut it usunder!

Re:Article says the opposite?

[Anonymous Coward]

Editors? /. Has editors?

Re:Article says the opposite?

[jbo5112]

Reading the official Google Enterprise blog post linked to in the article that slashdot linked to "we’re extending support for Chrome on Windows XP, and will continue to provide regular updates and security patches until at least April 2015."

The official announcement is a minimum date for support, not a date where they plan on killing updates. Google isn't stupid. They make most of their money off of searches, so keeping a healthy ecosystem of usable web pages for everybody is in their best interest. A better web experience->more time online->more searches & visits to ad partners->more ad revenue for Google. A better web experience for more people was their primary reason for pushing Chrome into the market to begin with. I'm sure they would like to stop supporting XP at some point (e.g. Win2k isn't supported), but not if that would alienate too many people from having an up to date browser.

If there are enough computer users willing to buy antivirus for XP, then a company will be willing to sell it to them. Personally, I find antivirus to be too big of an intrusive hassle to deal with, eats too many resources, and does nothing against my primary thread of "potentially unwanted programs." Using Chrome, it has warnings for sites with malware and even once told me when I downloaded a virus. That's plenty for me. On rare occasion, I would like to be able to scan suspicious files on demand, but it's not worth the hassle of maintaining AVG or Avast for a year or two per scan (especially if Chrome did the last one for me). With so much of my computing in the cloud, it's much easier to just plan to reinstall everything when there is a problem or even partially automate regular reinstalls.

Re:Article says the opposite?

[Anonymous Coward]

More basic than the browsers - will the antivirus guys like Norton, Kaspersky, ESET, et al continue to support XP?

Who are those guys? Oh... elephant repellant vendors. If your machine acts odd or a network admin tells you you're sending bad packets, you revert to the previous saved system state. It's been a few years since I've had to do that. Since I've stopped using IE, I haven't had to do it. The browser is pretty much the only attack surface on this machine.

I really don't see a need for AV. The dead cycles and glitches on my machine they cause... AV is a V!

Yeah, there's always that malware that might sit there stealthily then attack you at some fixed date... yeah, AV might protect you from that; but it might not. I'd rather just avoid punching the monkey than mess with AV. It works pretty well for me. Rolling back your system costs nothing. You should be doing backups anyway, so ransomware or other such nonsense can't cause you to lose more than a days work.

Re:Article says the opposite?

[stevez67]

And we're still getting more than we paid for.

Re:Article says the opposite?

[shutdown -p now]

More basic than the browsers - will the antivirus guys like Norton, Kaspersky, ESET, et al continue to support XP?

They'll pretty much have to, given that they've pretty much lost their market share to MSE on Win7, and Win8+ comes with built-in antivirus. XP users are the only remaining (relatively) lucrative market. When that dries up, they'll probably drop the ball altogether.

Re:Article says the opposite?

[unixisc]

Wonder why he didn't show up in this thread. Anyway, thankfully, the headline has been corrected

Re:Article says the opposite?

[jimicus]

With any luck, the companies providing line of business software will refuse to support their product on XP.

Re:Article says the opposite?

[cwsumner]

Um... there -are- no Editors on slashdot.

Someone could fork the project

[jfdavis668]

I know there are versions of Firefox for older systems maintained by other parties.

Re:Someone could fork the project

[Joce640k]

No need, the linked article says they're going to keep on supporting it.

(In a huge headline font...)

Linked article says exact opposite

[arobatino]

The linked article, posted 20 hours ago, actually says

Neowin asked Mozilla, the creator of Firefox, if it has any plans to end support for XP and Johnathan Nightingale, VP of Firefox at Mozilla stated, "We have no plans to discontinue support for our XP users."

and basically the same for Chrome.

Re:Linked article says exact opposite

[Anonymous Coward]

1. You're not supposed to read TFA, only TFS.

2. There is such a blatant contradiction between the two that it's actually funny.

3. But TFS has to be true... I just read it on Slashdot!

Re:Linked article says exact opposite

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, the confusion is rapidly happening fast!

Re:Linked article says exact opposite

[UnknowingFool]

Well when the summary compared IE6 CSS situation to Firefox and Chrome, that might have been the first clue about the quality. Webmasters don't have to write separate versions for IE6 because it's no longer supported. They have to write them because IE6 didn't support standards like CSS when it was still maintained by MS. Firefox and Chrome have supported those standards.

Re:Linked article says exact opposite

[Thanshin]

The funniest thing is that, because of the headline being in the address, you can put your mouse over
"Firefox plans to end support for XP"
and read
"mozilla-to-support-firefox-on-windows-xp-after-microsoft-ends-support-for-the-os".

We should have that feature on presidential speeches!

Re:Linked article says exact opposite

[interval1066]

I read the headline and came away with "Lou Reed Just Died". I'm gonna miss that guy.

Re:Linked article says exact opposite

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft would like us all to "Walk on the Windows 8 Side".

Re:Linked article says exact opposite

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the headline and came away with "Lou Reed Just Died". I'm gonna miss that guy.

During his life Lou Reed was a heavy drinking, drug abusing, creative rocker/artist. Died of liver complications at age 71, some 5 months after a liver transplant. He could've lived another 20 years if he'd lived a less 'I don't give a damn about my body' lifestyle, but then again we wouldn't have his music here to influence others. It was sad his last months were difficult, that's the price he paid for his decadent lifestyle. Too much walking on the wild side?

Re:Linked article says exact opposite

[Anonymous Coward]

He could've lived another 20 years if he'd lived a less 'I don't give a damn about my body' lifestyle, but then again we wouldn't have his music here to influence others.

Let's make Lou an honorary member of the 27 Club..

Re:Linked article says exact opposite

[arobatino]

Noticed the summary is now "Chrome Will End XP Support in 2015; Firefox Has No Plans To Stop". That's no longer the exact opposite of the truth, at least, but it's still false for Chrome. The Google article only says

we’re extending support for Chrome on Windows XP, and will continue to provide regular updates and security patches until at least April 2015.

That's it. In other words, like Mozilla, Google has no plans to end XP support, but unlike Mozilla, they are promising support for a specific time. The fact that they don't commit to more than a year's extra support doesn't prove they intend to stop after that - for example, they've only committed to keeping Google Voice free for a year at a time, and it's still free years later.

hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought i read not too long ago on /. that Chrome support would outlast Microsoft's support?

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought i read not too long ago on /. that Chrome support would outlast Microsoft's support?

Article: "Both Mozilla and Google said they WILL continue to support XP"
Slashdot: "OMFG NOBODY WIL SUPPRT XP NE MOAR"

Seriously timothy, Fuck you.

Hopefully

[Threni]

The lack of patches mean all these old boxes get taken out; there'll be no need to write web apps which run on them as they'll be too busy serving up DDOS/malware to people using slightly more recent versions of Windows!

Re:Hopefully

[crymeph0]

That's what I came to say. A massively vulnerable installed base of computers is a self-solving problem, once the computers get so slow and unusable that their owners just give up. Sure, some of them will pirate XP or miraculously recover their decade-old installation media to wipe their computer and start fresh, but once it gets to the point where you can't even put XP on the internet without it getting trashed within minutes, even those die-hard fans will be forced to see the writing on the wall.

Re:Hopefully

[johanw]

It will just result in better firewalls and antivirus for XP. Using it behind a NAT router helps too. And for installation media, I still have an iso image on USB stick in case windows 7 is too slow for the hardware.

An alternative would be running windows 2000. That is so old most exploits are died out in the wild.

Enough is Enough

[XPeter]

It's been over a decade, guys. I understand there are legacy software needs, but you've had ample time to find a replacement.

Re:Enough is Enough

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's been over a decade, guys.

Why would you need to replace THE ENTIRE OS after 5 or even 10 years?
It's a business plan, not a good tech stack.

Re:Enough is Enough

[realityimpaired]

It will adversely affect the virtual machine I use to watch Netflix. That's about it... I have a legal license for XP and run it in a VM. I no longer have a valid license for 7, and would not touch 8 with a 10-foot pole, even if you paid me to do it. But I still need something modern to support Windows XP, because that's how I access Netflix from my desktop PC.

Admittedly, with the number of devices I have with native Netflix clients (tablet, phone, smart TV, game consoles, etc.), that will become less of a problem, but I do still find time/reason to watch it on the desktop, and the Linux-native attempts do not work very well in my experience.

Re:Enough is Enough

[confused one]

They replaced the entire OS because the kernel stack was a tangled mess of spagetti that had numerous dependencies that made absolutely no sense. It was an unholy merger of Win9x and WinNT/2k with bells and wistles added throughout it's life (and three service packs).

Re:Enough is Enough

[Xest]

You're not replacing the entire OS any more than you do when you do a Linux kernel upgrade or an update to Mac OS X, you can still upgrade Windows, though most people prefer to take upgrade time (seeing as it only comes infrequently) as an opportunity to start afresh and clear out the plethora of applications they don't use any more and so forth.

If you mean "Why do I have to pay for a whole new OS?" then the answer is instead simply that Microsoft make things easy for people and you'd never get end users to put up with needing to pay for an upgrade to the kernel one week, the networking stack a few months later and so forth. End users would get sick of doing it in bits and pieces and paying each time.

If you're asking why does it cost anything to update at all, well, that's Microsoft's business model, a different discussion that's been well had over the years.

But both Linux and MacOS have changed at least as much since 2002 as Windows has, if not more. So it's silly to pretend there's something unusual about upgrading Windows after 11 years. Most people upgrade their OS in that timeframe whatever their preferred OS is. You wont find many people sat on MacOS from 2002 or Linux from the same era. Most will have upgraded substantially at some point.

Re:Enough is Enough

[Anonymous Coward]

XP has always had these application compatibility issues. That's why I'm sticking with Windows 98.

Re:Enough is Enough

[jones_supa]

It was an unholy merger of Win9x and WinNT/2k

Actually I would say that Windows 2000 (one of the best OS's MS has made) was the merger of consumer and business lines (Win98 and WinNT4). Windows XP was developed from the 2K base and made it more bloated, more unstable and more unsecure.

Re:Enough is Enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the major differences between 2k and XP:
UI theming support.
Added some "helpful" wizards.
Different default settings for several things.
Updated NDIS stack so windows could natively configure 802.11 WLAN adapters.

Re:Enough is Enough

[0123456]

It's been over a decade, guys.

Windows XP was still being sold on new PCs until two or three years ago, guy. Those PCs are still perfectly capable of doing most things that most of their users want to do. Why should they dump them just because Microsoft won't support its products?

Re:Enough is Enough

[cyber-vandal]

I haven't tried it but Android-X86 might be a viable replacement. I can't see whether Netflix works on it but given that there are some Atom based tablets about I would've thought Netflix would've ported it.

Re:Enough is Enough

[XPeter]

What software company is still actively supporting products from 2003?

Re:Enough is Enough

[TheRaven64]

It's disingenuous to count from the time XP first shipped. The important dates are when it stopped being shipped, and when an adequate replacement was available from the supplier. New machines were still being shipped with XP until very recently, especially in the low-end laptop market. If you count Vista as an adequate replacement, it shipped in January 2007. If you count Windows 7, which was the one that persuaded a lot of people to upgrade, then that's only 4 years old, which is still within a corporate upgrade cycle. The other two important dates are when the last major update was released (5 years ago) and when security releases stop (next year).

That said, if you're planning on using an OS after it stops getting security patches, you'd better be sure that it's not connected to a network, which somewhat limits the utility of a web browser...

Re:Enough is Enough

[0123456]

What software company is still actively supporting products from 2003?

Which part of 'Windows XP was still being sold on new PCs until two or three years ago' is proving so hard to understand?

Re:Enough is Enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah Windows 98. Broken OS if ever I saw one. Win95 when you need modern shit. Else Win3.11.

Re:Enough is Enough

[0123456]

The great thing about the original Windows 95 is that it doesn't support USB, so you don't have to worry about people plugging infected USB sticks into your PC.

Re:Enough is Enough

[Anonymous Coward]

It was also able to run many of the games win2k would choke on without a seance and chicken bones involved.

I was sold when I called an old buddy. He was mr win98. He said he had switched to xp. 0 crashes in 3 months. I bought it that day.

Remember this was before people decided web sites could do infections drive by style. It was also a small window where people were not trying to randomly remote your box with random packets from the internet. That lasted about a year. Then you better have a firewall and keep up with the patches...

XP was pretty solid for its day. By 2004 we were supposed to have moved onto longhorn. That did not happen so SP2 did. Then it was another 4 years before we saw vista. Which was undoing many of the things XP had done to get the speed there. Vista was actually ok for the day too. HOWEVER, they shipped it with 3 techs that turned it into a morase of crap (their trojan scanner, awful search, and readyboost). Those 3 made vista unusable. Turn them off and you could use it passably if you had enough memory. I too this day fiddle those and people who still use vista say 'its like a new computer'. Win7 was just those 3 things fixed and a bunch other tweaks. Win8 is actually very good. Unfortunately it goodness is under the hood. They put that crazy GUI on there that people go 'how does this work?'.

Re:Enough is Enough

[Valdrax]

What software company is still actively supporting products from 2003?

Most of the ones I've worked for support 10+ years old versions with regular patches and updates. Our software wasn't marketed towards the consumer market, and all of these companies relied on support contracts for their revenue, but it's worth noting that the entire software industry isn't video games and internet apps.

Re:Enough is Enough

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, you are not counting industrial systems. That's the problem.

Re:Enough is Enough

[DrXym]

XP was a fairly minor iteration to W2K, polishing off the UI and other rough edges to make it more suitable for mass consumption.

Re:Enough is Enough

[XPeter]

Not two or three, more like four or five now. SP3 was released in 08, and once 7 released, manufacturers made the switch.

Re:Enough is Enough

[XPeter]

Microsoft gave the business community a decade, support and all. Bureaucracy and inefficiency shouldn't be Microsofts problem

Re:Enough is Enough

[shutdown -p now]

Because their machines will become a part of a botnet next time a remote code execution vulnerability in XP is found.

Re:Enough is Enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows XP was still being sold on new PCs until two or three years ago, guy. Those PCs are still perfectly capable of doing most things that most of their users want to do. Why should they dump them just because Microsoft won't support its products?

...And versions of Linux tend to be available for download long after RHEL et all drop support.

Fucking Open Sores assholes, giving people shit they won't even provide security patches for, amirite?

Re:Enough is Enough

[SeaFox]

What software company is still actively supporting products from 2003?

Which part of 'Windows XP was still being sold on new PCs until two or three years ago' is proving so hard to understand?

How it is Microsoft/third-party developer's responsibility to support outdated OSes just because the OEMs where being sticks in the mud about changing what they sold?

Re:Enough is Enough

[Cro Magnon]

How it is Microsoft/third-party developer's responsibility to support outdated OSes just because the OEMs where being sticks in the mud about changing what they sold?

Maybe because Microsoft took all those years to create an OS that anyone wanted to buy. Vista doesn't qualify.

Re:Enough is Enough

[mcgrew]

It's been over a decade, guys. I understand there are legacy software needs, but you've had ample time to find a replacement.

My 2002 automobile works just fine, and if a dangerous defect is found, the manufacturer will recall it. The computer I have XP on works fine, why should I have to replace my OS because Microsoft's code is full of bugs that they refuse to fix? The product is defective or it wouldn't need support. It is plain EVIL that MS won't support XP until the last computer running it lets out the magic smoke, and from what I've read a third of computers on the net are running XP.

There is simply no excuse for MS not supporting it, and no excuse for your excusing MS. Do you work for them, own a lot of stock, or are just not too smart? Stop excusing thieves!

Re:Enough is Enough

[mcgrew]

If you mean "Why do I have to pay for a whole new OS?" then the answer is instead simply that Microsoft make things easy for people and you'd never get end users to put up with needing to pay for an upgrade to the kernel one week, the networking stack a few months later and so forth.

I'm not looking for new functionality, I want them to fix their factory defects.

Re:Enough is Enough

[Xest]

Which are?

You seem to be making an awful lot of noise, but providing a complete lack of substance.

Re:Enough is Enough

[mcgrew]

Which are?

Bugs unfound by their pathetic QA. A vulnerable OS is a poorly written OS.

Re:Enough is Enough

[Xest]

Except that's not true anymore and is just a meme that should've been retired a good few years ago. Windows has decent QA now and isn't really any more vulnerable than MacOS or Linux.

Re:Enough is Enough

[mcgrew]

Windows has decent QA now and isn't really any more vulnerable than MacOS or Linux.

Microsoft has decent QA? Then why does Microsoft Admit Windows 8.1 Update May Bork Your Mouse? And look at the trouble this guy had after using it for 5 hours.

Decent QA, my ass.

Re:Enough is Enough

[Xest]

Find me a piece of software that's never had bugs.

Despite the size of the community, Linux releases have always had far more and far more problematic issues for example.

Re:Enough is Enough

[mcgrew]

Yes, Linux does have bugs and fixes them as soon as they're fixable. No waiting for Patch Tuesday, no reboots. But every OS is less buggy than Windows. I've seen bad distros, and desktops getting borked, but in Linux never anything like the litany of woes being reported about W8.1.

Microsoft can afford sloppy coding, since their OS is installed on almost every new computer and "nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft". Other OSes don't have that luxury, they HAVE to do it right.

Re:Enough is Enough

[Xest]

Lucky you then. Personally every time I've tried Linux I've had hardware outright not work, and not work for over a year - wireless connectivity, graphics cards, TV tuners. X just outright keeling over one day for apparently no reason forcing me to try and resolve the issues in the command line. That sort of thing.

It's not like any of my hardware was non-standard or uncommon either. Expensive Cisco and cheap Netgear wireless adapters alike had issues for example.

Granted I haven't tried it again for a good few years now but I always just went back to Windows for precisely the reason that stuff did just work there. No screwing about.

I like Linux as a server environment, but part the reason it's always failed to gain traction on the desktop is precisely because of shitty server support, lack of decent failsafe modes if something goes wrong (it took how many decades for X to get a safe mode?) and so forth.

Windows isn't just prominent because of it's monopoly, it's prominent because it works without any hassle.

I don't disagree that 8.1 is a shitty release but that's cherry picking. Take Windows 7 for example - fast, stable, secure, familiar, usable, great backwards compatibility. It's hard to argue that there was much wrong with it.

Re:Enough is Enough

[mcgrew]

Granted I haven't tried it again for a good few years now

Ah, there it is there. I'd had those issues (maybe not as bad as yours) a long time ago; a USB sound blaster I'd bought because I lost the Windows driver (dual boot PC) wouldn't work in Linux, some extra buttons on a Logitech wireless mouse and keyboard didn't work, etc. Choice of distro may have something to do with it, too. SVGA from the computer to the TV didn't work with Suse but worked fine with Mandrake.

I still have that keyboard and mouse, all the extra knobs and buttons now work. It's greatly improved, haven't had problems like that in years.

I bought a bluetooth dongle to move pictures from my phone to my computers and didn't think it would work on the Linux (kubuntu) box, since there were install programs for Windows and Mac but not Linux. So I installed the drivers on the Win7 notebook, rebooted (of course, it's Windows), went through its setup program, rebooted again, and had to hunt for the program to actually use bluetooth. It worked fine after all that.

I wanted to see what Linux would do if I plugged the bluetooth dongle in, and was amazed when a new icon appeared on the task bar. Clicking it brought up a screen to pair with a bluetooth device. One click on the computer and on the phone and I was moving pictures.

So which OS "just works"?

it's always failed to gain traction on the desktop is precisely because of shitty server support

I take it you mean connecting one to a network, I'm not sure I understand you. I've never had any problem connecting my Linux computers, Samba just works and is usually installed as a default. If you mean for it to be a file server I still don't get it.

lack of decent failsafe modes if something goes wrong

What? Windows is the one without failsafes. I've lost lots of data to Windows malfunctions, none to Linux. I had a dual boot box a few years ago and was cursing XP up and down because it kept crashing, but it wasn't completely Microsoft's fault, as one evening after I'd given up getting Windows work I was in Linux, Linux froze for a second, then the PC stopped. The power supply was flaky and trying to fail and causing Windows to crash repeatedly while Mandrake kept chugging along. I put the drive in another computer and Linux booted up just fine, except I couldn't access the windows files as I usually could, and when I tried to boot Windows I couldn't even get into safe mode, the entire file system was trashed. It was a good thing I had the data backed up.

As to Windows 7, the only thing that's kept linux off of this notebook is laziness. Yes, it works, but I have the hassle of Patch Tuesday while the Linux tower just pops up a thing saying updates are available and I click "install" and it's done, no reboots, no fuss. I hate shutting this computer off, don't mind shutting Linux off at all. None of the "waiting to close program" and losing data if you force it or time if you click cancel, it just shuts down. When I turn it back on it enters the password for me (this is optional on install), goes to the desktop and opens everything like it was before you shut it down. On the notebook I have to enter a password then remember what I was working on and find where I was. What takes ten clicks on the notebook takes three on the tower.

I would disagree about fast. I had another notebook that was dual-boot, and the Linux side ran rings around it.

Yes, it's stable from what I've seen (and this computer is starting to get a bit elderly) but I'm not knowledgeable enough to comment on security (I know enough to have a thin grasp on how immensely ignorant I am) but disagree on useability. Take that dual-boot notebook. It took me a month or longer to find out where you shut off the annoying "tap to click" thing. It wasn't under control panel in the "mouse" selection although you could swap buttons there, but in an icon that was inside a hidden icon, and was 20 clicks down. I installed kubuntu on it and it took less than five minutes t

Re:Enough is Enough

[Xest]

"I take it you mean connecting one to a network, I'm not sure I understand you."

That's because I'm a retard. By shitty server support, I meant shitty driver support, though it may have been an Android auto-correct fail and not my fault I guess.

A large part of Linux's problems historically have been because a lot of hardware doesn't get first party driver support and relies on volunteers whom do what they can to get basic support it but don't necessarily have the hardware in question available to test it - that's always historically been the problem with Linux desktop issues and is certainly why I had so many non-working Wifi issues and so forth because drivers were implemented based on what little documentation was available and not tested with the actual hardware.

I know this isn't the fault of the FOSS community and is entirely the fault of companies, but either way it's also an unfortunate fact as to why Windows has historically worked better on the desktop for many people.

"but I'm not knowledgeable enough to comment on security (I know enough to have a thin grasp on how immensely ignorant I am)"

Years ago, and I mean years ago, I spent those years doing things I shouldn't to Windows, finding exploits and so forth and it's absolutely true that Windows was riddle with holes and Linux was a much harder play - things like DLL injection to hook into applications with higher privileges and a desktop presence allowing privilege escalation and so forth I discovered on my own. Nowadays it's almost the case that the reverse is true, circa 2000 Microsoft really began to realise it had to take security seriously given the bad reputation it had for it and it did actually work, since that point they've come in leaps and bounds and although their software isn't perfect (no software is) it's still pretty solid in terms of security - some of the things they've implemented in terms of security they did so way ahead of anyone else such as ASLR in the browser and so forth.

So in this respect I have a lot of sympathy for Microsoft, especially as someone with a history of breaking Windows and I do genuinely think that comments about them not being secure nowadays is indeed a little unfair because for each security vulnerability they do have they also have products that have security techniques that are mere theory in every other software community including FOSS.

I'm actually trying Windows 8, well, 8.1 now and even that isn't as bad as many have made out though this is in part because I use shortcut keys. I find it boots and runs way faster than even Windows 7 did. There's no doubt the new start menu is shit, but because of my shortcut key/pinned taskbar icon and desktop icon usage I thankfully pretty much never see it.

There's no doubt Microsoft deserve a lot of flack for this new start menu, there's no doubt they deserve a lot of flack for doing stupid things like removing features such as VPN auto-redial with the built in VPN client amongst other things. I also want to try and find time to play with Linux again but I don't have the time to play that I used to.

So my point is really this, yes Microsoft has it's faults, but even it's worst products (Windows 8) have advantages to some people (I've fortunately not had any driver issues at all). On a technical level Microsoft has put in a tremendous effort to improve things, and although that's not always shown through I think there are old arguments against Windows that aren't fair anymore - as I say, stability and security being the obvious ones.

I'm just of the opinion that credit where credit is due, a lot of people here hate Microsoft for it's history and I try to be a bit more balanced and pragmatic than that. This means I also slate Microsoft where it deserves to be slated - Windows Phone and it's patent trolling against Google are unacceptable, Visual Studio has deteriorated in recent releases, and the Windows 8 UI changes and feature removals were plain stupid. But then counter to that is the fact I've still not fou

Re:Enough is Enough

[mcgrew]

The driver issues are way fewer than they used to be, I haven't seen any in a long time.

If you're developing Windows apps, of course you're going to need Windows.

Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

XP shoulda been EOL years ago yet people still are facing same challenges as they did when upgrading to XP.. When will people learn

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

They have learned. They know how much it will cost them to leave XP. The only think they ignore is wether it is a good idea to switch to linux.

If they kept supporting it, I'd still use it.

[Strawser]

I only use Windows for dual booting when I need Windows for some reason, which is rare, but XP was a solid and decent version of the Windows family. I'd have kept it if it weren't being sunsetted. I now have Windows 8 on my other partition. I hate the interface, passionately, but luckily I don't have to use it often. I felt like I had to move to 8 just to have software support.

Sad to see it go. It was the first decent OS Microsoft made.

Firefox is continuing support

[Sockatume]

From the fine article:

Neowin asked Mozilla, the creator of Firefox, if it has any plans to end support for XP and Johnathan Nightingale, VP of Firefox at Mozilla stated, "We have no plans to discontinue support for our XP users."

Re:Firefox is continuing support

[Anonymous Coward]

Which in PR speak could mean explaining to XP users how to upgrade to a different OS that supports newer Firefox versions.

But I agree that's not what is meant here. How did this article get past the Firehose (or whatever it is people with accounts have access to)?

Chrome would support XP till 2015

[Anonymous Coward]

2015 is soon? It is more than a year away.

64 bit Firefox

[jfdavis668]

Does this mean that Firefox will finally go 64 bit?

Re:64 bit Firefox

[julesh]

No. Firefox is 32-bit because it has to support NPAPI plugins, which are mostly (if not all) 32-bit DLLs, and Windows can't load a 32-bit DLL into a 64-bit process.

Re:64 bit Firefox

[TheRaven64]

On other platforms, this is solved by nspluginwrapper, which runs the plugin as a separate process and just sends events and screen contents between them. Given that most web browsers now do something similar for security and stability (so a plugin can't crash the browser and a security problem in the plugin is isolated), it's not likely to be a significant issue.

Re:64 bit Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that the reason? Thanks; I'd been wondering about that.

Re:64 bit Firefox

[Derek Pomery]

What the other person said about plugins, but if you want a 64 bit windows Firefox, Mozilla has builds going back to 2010 or so.
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/

Re:64 bit Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

On Linux I use a 64-bit version of Flash with my 64-bit Firefox, I don't think nspluginwrapper has been needed for a few years now.

Re:64 bit Firefox

[julesh]

On other platforms, this is solved by nspluginwrapper, which runs the plugin as a separate process and just sends events and screen contents between them. Given that most web browsers now do something similar for security and stability (so a plugin can't crash the browser and a security problem in the plugin is isolated), it's not likely to be a significant issue.

Unfortunately, Windows' security model is somewhat different to X's, and under Windows you can't just have two processes rendering into the same window without them being written quite carefully to cooperate with each other. Chrome is able to do this, but AIUI the method they use to make it work is (1) so complicated nobody else has even tried to make it work and (2) relies on a hack that fails if they try to have one of the processes as 64-bit and the other as 32-bit. AFAIK, Chrome is the only browser that runs NPAPI in a separate process under Windows.

All right

[trifish]

Only an idiot would run a browser on an OS with unpatched vulnerabilities. Windows XP will not get any security issues fixed after April 2014. If you ignore those simple facts, you deserve becoming a part of a botnet, sending your passwords and credit card numbers to the botmaster.

Re:All right

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you get beyond the home user realm you'll start to understand the complexities of sunsetting something with the history that XP has associated with it. I supported an OS/2 Warp system until 2006-2007. I supported several MS-DOS systems during Y2K, but mind you MS-DOS was still technically supported by MS at the time. These things happen and it's not always as easy as saying "just install teh Linux!!!!1111!!!!"

Re:All right

[Anonymous Coward]

Then install Windows 7 and run XP Mode for stuff that absolutely must run in XP.

Wow. Hard.

Re:All right

[interval1066]

Well... Linux works for me, I run 7 in a vm for those rare times I need it, but as a posix/Foss developer Linux is indispensable. It may not work for you, perhaps, but it is a viable alternative, a better one in my opinion, d00D.

Re:All right

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. XP Mode is different from XP.. Wow.. breakage.. Wow.. unemployed much?

Re:All right

[Merk42]

It may be more complex, but IT departments have had ample time to figure out said complexities. April 2014 has been known about for YEARS.

Re:All right

[Anonymous Coward]

Do I want to support 50k people that can barely find their way around winxp on pick your favorite easy to use linux distro and then migrate 70% of my commercial solutions to a new solution since they will not be supported and retrain 50k people. I can't move to win 8 because not all the commercial solutions I have are supported on it yet so I am in the same boat as linux {although it would be more like 30% of the commercial solutions would need migrated} so we move to win 7 and upgrade any solutions not already compatible but at least the same brand with little to no training involved.

The part that sucks the most is that after we are done with the migration and settled into to win 7 the win 8 support will most likely be ready and we will need to migrate again when win 7 end of lifes.

Re:All right

[Patman64]

Windows XP will not get any security issues fixed after April 2014 from Microsoft.

FTFW. WinXP may not be open source but if you think the people who use it are going to give up on it you can think again.

Re:All right

[interval1066]

Do I want to support 50k people that can barely find their way around winxp...

Let them keep using xp. Doesn't stop you from doing what YOU want, after your "people" are taken care of. Give the people what they want, if they want to keep using crap, that's up to them. I never advocate upsetting the status quo, unless I can benefit some how. In this particular case, I, and You, would gain no discernable benefit. Are we agreed?

Re:All right

[SlippyToad]

IT departments usually can only ask for money. If the business isn't concerned about april 2014, we can't make them get excited.

Re:All right

[shutdown -p now]

XP Mode is literally XP running in a VM. Unless your software depends on some custom hardware that cannot be virtualized or otherwise accessed by the VM (non-USB etc), it'll work exactly the same.

Re:All right

[Anonymous Coward]

Only an idiot will assume that his current, quite fresh OS -- which will be continuously patched until the moment of its retiring, just like it predecessors -- will have less "security issues".

I could even argue that a product that has been around for a while will have more of its "security issues" closed than a newer one being around much shorter.

Re:All right

[xorsyst]

How? If you're using IE and it isn't getting patches, fair enough. But if you're using a modern, patched, browser, then how does the OS security actually matter anyway?

Re:All right

[toddestan]

And as such, XP Mode will also stop getting updates after April 2014. So your virtual XP can get pwn3d just the same as if it was on a physical box.

Re:All right

[shutdown -p now]

Yes, of course. The point of XP Mode was to provide for a gradual migration path to Win7 (that's why it's not even available in Win8 anymore). If someone kept sitting on XP for all this time without any attempts to migrate, they have only themselves to blame.

MS should make Windows 9 look exactly like XP

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Like. XP. With classic window option and all. Just change the stuff under the hood. Instant top seller. Instead they're trying to sell me a cellphone for my desktop. Bloody idiots.

Re:MS should make Windows 9 look exactly like XP

[just_a_monkey]

> Exactly. Like. XP.

Shut up and take my money!

Re:MS should make Windows 9 look exactly like XP

[Anonymous Coward]

But but but... Why buying this "new" Windows which looks exactly like my current one?

Re:MS should make Windows 9 look exactly like XP

[unixisc]

Windows 7 is just fine. They are too stupid, or else, they'd have made Windows 8 look exactly like Windows 7, and made a different OS, different name (say Metro) for both the Phone & Tablet platforms. In fact, they could have made that an ARM only, or ARM & MIPS only OS, since those would be the primary CPUs used.

Re:MS should make Windows 9 look exactly like XP

[IwantToKeepAnon]

Exactly. Like. XP. With classic window option and all. Just change the stuff under the hood. Instant top seller. Instead they're trying to sell me a cellphone for my desktop. Bloody idiots.

You seem to be under the impression that a version of Windows contains anything but changes to the chrome and trim. If you take Windows 9 and make it look exactly like XP then you'd have, well, XP.

Thank God for AOL...

[BUL2294]

It will keep my computer from 2002 on the Inter-webs via dial-up...

Re:Thank God for AOL...

[BUL2294]

Slashdot needs to add a trigger that deletes any post from "Anonymous Coward" with a negative rating. Without fail, they are either "me too!" posts, uninformed, or are absolutely puerile attempts at witty retorts.

Microsoft is missing an opportunity here.

[Anonymous Coward]

So lots of people are willing to continue using XP. Why doesn't Microsoft simply support them? XP is plenty good enough for most people, so Microsoft could easily provide ongoing support for a small yearly fee. Multiply a "small yearly fee" by a "boatload of users" and you're talking real money. Especially when you consider that a lot of businesses are going to be very happy to stay with XP if they can: Their costs for retraining and replacing systems will be reduced and that's an opportunity for Microsoft to get in there and claw back some of those savings for "support" charges.

Re:Microsoft is missing an opportunity here.

[Custard Horse]

Have you ever visited the planet earth?

Re:Microsoft is missing an opportunity here.

[Tridus]

Microsoft's own tools don't even work on XP anymore. It's a highly obsolete codebase for them.

If people want to keep using it, then can take those machines off the net and use them until they die without problem. But at some point Microsoft wants to devote its time to building better stuff, not infinitely supporting the old stuff because corporate IT still thinks that their IE6 only web app is good enough.

Re:Microsoft is missing an opportunity here.

[Anonymous Coward]

But those IE6-only web apps are largely Microsoft's fault.
They should accept responsibility for them.

Re:Microsoft is missing an opportunity here.

[interval1066]

Not a viable business strategy for Microsoft.

And where does it say this?

[R.Mo_Robert]

The first link says that Mozilla plans to continue supporting Firefox on XP; it gives no end date, so they presumably mean indefinitely (though practically probably not much longer than a few years--for example, they supported Windows 2000 until Firefox 12 in April 2012, a bit over 2 years after its EOL; on the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if they went a bit longer with XP given its larger user base). The second link says Google plans to continue Chrome support on XP into at least 2015. Neither one of these links talks about Firefox or Chrome ending support for Windows XP. In fact, both mention the exact opposite, at least for the foreseeable future, so I'm really wondering where the author of this summary got this information.

Re:And where does it say this?

[intermodal]

Unlike Microsoft, there's no incentive for these projects to drop XP until the number of users gets too low to justify continued development. I'm phasing it out of the office before the EOL, but that doesn't mean home users will. Microsoft wants users to buy newer versions of their products.

Free software projects supporting XP or not supporting XP is a matter of providing your users with what they will actually use. As long as enough XP users are using Firefox, Mozilla has no reason to drop it. Microsoft's decisions are basically irrelevant to that decision except in their effect on OS market share.

Re:And where does it say this?

[penix1]

This summary aside, there is at least one valid reason a project should drop support after EOL. Namely reputation. When a flaw in the OS gets exploited via the browser, people tend to blame the instrument that first started the failure. It happens all the time today even on patched systems. The browser will catch the blame for the failure in the OS since it is where the trouble started.

Hell, we've all seen it with granny getting infected because the pre-installed version of Norton's timed out and hasn't seen an update in years. Does Symantic get blamed for the failure? Does granny blame herself for not purchasing the updates? No. To granny it is the computer that is bad.

Re:And where does it say this?

[intermodal]

That position has its merit, but the comparison isn't quite apples and oranges. An ancient version of Norton isn't really equivalent to Firefox having new updates available. Especially if whatever grandkid installed Firefox enabled the auto-update. The continued updates are going to be more secure than the older version granny would be stuck with, even if the underlying OS or the virus scanner are still insecure and old.

User Experience

[prefec2]

User experience will degrade for XP in normal desktop environments. In other use cases nothing will change much, as these systems do not use browsers. They control some weird machinery and the day the hardware fails, they have to be replaced. As long as the new hardware is able to run the old setup, these system will remain in that state. At the very day, the user/company is unable to acquire a replacement unit able to run the old stuff, they either migrate to a new OS or they collapse trying. As a company you should get rid of un-maintained software stacks. As a desktop user, you will migrate when it hurts more to stay with XP then migrating to something else.

IE6 Support

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this also mean webmasters will need to write seperate versions of CSS and javascript for older versions of Chrome and Firefox like they did with IE 6 if the user base refuses to leave Windows XP?

Are you being paid to do so?
Can you afford to not be paid if you decide not to support it because you believe supporting it would be bad for ?

To be honest...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I'm in really bad shape finacially. I pay money to my ex-wife as part of our divorce settlement, amongst other bills.

I just have no choice to use an old XP laptop because I can't afford a new one.

captcha: trapped

Re:To be honest...

[couchslug]

Puppy Linux is one excellent option for older hardware and is wonderfully easy to configure. Even if you want to retain XP for some things, Puppy runs nicely off live USB keys (and you want one of those if you ever have to rescue your lappy).

I use it to setup basic PCs for friends. No malware, good performance, easy for them to use with no Linux expertise.

Re:To be honest...

[jones_supa]

You could put Xubuntu on that machine or, get a slightly newer refurbished laptop for $150 and put Windows 7 on it (use MSDN image and Daz's Windows Loader).

Re:To be honest...

[Anonymous Coward]

TIP: launch saveAC.com and accept PayPal donations

Mandatory recommendation to switch to Arch Linux.

[Bogis]

Snarky reference to "Winblows", and link to text-only browser.

End of Life for XP in General

[ironicsky]

As of April 8th, 2014, Microsoft is ending all support for their 12 year old operating system. We can't continue to support legacy systems because people refuse to upgrade. There has been THREE full OS versions that have come out since XP. There are people still using Windows 98 and Windows ME, doesn't mean we still provide support for them.

Re:End of Life for XP in General

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, three full OS versions: Vista sucked a lot, Seven sucked a little less, Eight breaks the suck-meter. When they're supposed to pay extra for something that sucks, people don't easily part with their money.

Re:End of Life for XP in General

[sfm]

> There has been THREE full OS versions that have come out since XP

Don't you mean 2.5 ? Remember, Vista was on that list.

Re:End of Life for XP in General

[denis-The-menace]

LOL: "Eight breaks the suck-meter."

Once the XP-lovers get burnt by a XP-only exploit and it becomes big news, they will switch.
But something tells me that MS will not be happy with their choice.

IMHO: Metro exists to give MS' marketing dept the ability to says that MS has the same look and feel regardless of the device.
If MS made cars and trucks, both would have air breaks, a rolling back door (like you see on rigs) and attachments for child seats.

Re:End of Life for XP in General

[Anonymous Coward]

Seven does not suck, in fact it's marginally(not a lot, but somewhat) better than XP, provided you run it on a powerful enough machine.

Re:End of Life for XP in General

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista (NT 6.0), Windows 7 (NT 6.1), Windows 8 (NT 6.2), and Windows 8.1 (NT 6.3)

THERE. ARE. FOUR. VERSIONS. (Cool trick: Slur your speech like Picard did, and it sounds like "virgins".)

Then again, the GP did say "full" versions, which means that there's actually only one version in the last 12 years (NT 5.x -> NT 6.x).

Re:End of Life for XP in General

[Anonymous Coward]

There has been THREE full OS versions that have come out since XP.

Yeah, and they all sucked dead bunnies through an old garden hose.

Okay, be fair, Win 7 isn't all that bad. Too bad it doesn't run on a lot of still perfectly good hardware that XP does. (Yeah, memory is cheap ... that doesn't help if the mobo doesn't have enough or the right kind of slots to support more than 2GB of RAM.)

Re:End of Life for XP in General

[gravis777]

More like 3.5. Remember - Windows 8.1 was recently released.

Seriously, what if I came up and said "Dos works just fine for me, and I refuse to upgrade, therefore everyone must make products for DOS so that I can continue to use it"

It's a stupid argument - if software doesn't support your operating system, than apparently your operating system is NOT working for you.

What if someone was running a version 1.0 of Linux? It works. Wait, it doesn't support USB or UDF or 64 bit hardware and so forth and so on? No, I don't want to recompile my kernel - you should just support what I am using.

Look, if people don't want to upgrade, that is their perogative (sp?), but they shouldn't be thick-headed enough to expect that they will still be supported and protected.

Re:End of Life for XP in General

[Anonymous Coward]

>There has been THREE full OS versions that have come out since XP.
Which are all worse. I for one will not downgrade, I'll stay with XP until Linux becomes mature enough. (Or hypothetically, until Microsoft releases something decent again.) If lack of security updates becomes an issue, I'll just run it in a VM in a bare-bones Linux distro.
Remember people, you don't actually have to upgrade just because Microsoft says so. And if enough of you stick with it through the ‘winter’ software vendors cannot afford to drop support.

Re:End of Life for XP in General

[mea_culpa]

Yeah, three full OS versions:

Not quite. There has been one full version and three point releases.

XP = 5.1

Vista = 6.0

Win 7 = 6.1

Win 8 = 6.2

Win 8.1 = 6.3

The n.0 versions of windows have traditionally been less than stellar compared to their .1 counterpart. This is the first time we are dealing with a .2 and .3 release and I agree that there seems to be an abundance of suck on these releases.

Re:End of Life for XP in General

[Anonymous Coward]

If millions upon millions of people say DOS works fine for them, then no, it's not a stupid argument.

Re:End of Life for XP in General

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, what if I came up and said "Dos works just fine for me, and I refuse to upgrade, therefore everyone must make products for DOS so that I can continue to use it"

You are wrong. In this situation it is like "DOS works just find for me, and they would produce products that I need on DOS for some time so I can continue using it longer". I don't know what is wrong with that? In case the user just is happy with DOS and DOS works for her without an issue? And what about those people who cannot afford to upgrade and current system just works for them?

It's a stupid argument - if software doesn't support your operating system, than apparently your operating system is NOT working for you.

"working" and "usable" are totally different. Even if your operating system is working great, it is not usable unless softwares you require are supported on the operating system.

What if someone was running a version 1.0 of Linux? It works. Wait, it doesn't support USB or UDF or 64 bit hardware and so forth and so on? No, I don't want to recompile my kernel - you should just support what I am using.

If someone is running Linux kernel 1.0 on her machine, there must be some reason and because it just works for her. And she might not try to hook up USB devices or something. If she has 64 bit hardware, she would load appropriate softwares. The comparison is not appropriate.

People are not saying Google/Mozilla have to support their OS. Those companies are providing people with products. You are sort of off-topic.

Re:End of Life for XP in General

[Waccoon]

We can't continue to support legacy systems because people refuse to upgrade.

I wouldn't refuse to upgrade if they didn't massively redesign the UI on a regular basis for no good reason. I have Win7 on my laptop and WinXP on my workstation, because even after more than a year of using Win7 regularly, I still think XP works better, so I use it for my "real" work and the laptop for everyday stuff.

People have no trouble buying OSX updates, because even though the graphics change regularly, the functionality doesn't change much. Of course, it does help that OSX updates are cheaper.

Before Linux is Recommended

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a Windows XP fanatic.

But before someone recommends that everyone go out and pick any old Linux distribution. People please qualify the recommendation.

If you have a machine that was powerful five years ago, sure use a new heavy distribution (Heavy = KDE, Unity, GNOME, Cinnamon). If you bought a cheap machine 3-5 years ago or an older machine. Recommend a lower impact distribution (Light = LXDE, XFDE, Mate, otherwise)

Linux isn't a solution for everyone, and some point we should recommend the machine just get backed up and recycled

Re:Before Linux is Recommended

[couchslug]

Puppy Linux is excellent on older hardware and fast on more recent boxes.

The motivation is to support Windows Server 2003

[BUL2294]

The reason Firefox and Chrome will continue to support XP is because they want to support Windows Server 2003, which has an End-of-Life of 14-Jul-2015. Since Win2003 (and XP Pro x64) use the NT 5.2 kernel and they don't want to lose that marketshare, by default supporting it on the NT 5.1 kernel (e.g. XP 32-bit) would be a trivial affair. That's why they chose "at least 2015"...

F$CK UNITY! err, wait, what?!...

[Thud457]

As soon as Micr$oft comes up with a better version, we'll start using it.

Lousy goddamned Fisher-Price tabletized piece of crap. This is a real big-boy computer I use to get real work done on, not some damn device for consuming BookFace and MeToobe videos. Plus there's no signed W7 driver for the lab control interface card. Mabel II would be very unhappy if that stopped working.

Re:F$CK UNITY! err, wait, what?!...

[couchslug]

"This is a real big-boy computer I use to get real work done on,"

I hear ya, but it shouldn't need a web browser. I support XP boxes for my buds machine shop. He doesn't need to buy a newer CAM program ($$) and what he has barfs on Windows 7. We don't connect those machines to the internet. If I need to I can boot Puppy Linux off USB, do whatever, then reboot into XP.

Ubuntu isn't a replacement for XP as its a RAM hog by comparison. I quit distro-churning long ago and use CentOS because it just works.

XP machines will be around for decades, but they can live in isolation.

I don't know if W7 Ultimate XP mode will work with your lab control card but it might be worth a look for giggles.

Re:F$CK UNITY! err, wait, what?!...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear ya, but it shouldn't need a web browser.

Wait, what? I use XP on my work machine because Vista, 7, and 8 all suck dick.

Re:F$CK UNITY! err, wait, what?!...

[gravis777]

if you are using those machines in a lab enviornment, they should not be connected to the internet anyways.

Re:F$CK UNITY! err, wait, what?!...

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Ugh. Can you not just call Microsoft, Facebook, and Youtube by their names? Isn't the cleverly parodying brand names in order to make a clever and substantial point against them gimmick wearing a little thin now?

Or are you just another Slashbot drone, who just wants Linsux to be used everywhere, who would love to see Blandroid dominant, and every GPU produced by NShittier? :-)

No

[Quick Reply]

Web Developers have learnt from the past, there will never be a supported code that will be dependant on a specific version again.

Cross-compatibility and Browser Independence is a main focus that hasn't been in the past. Most websites are not locked into a particular browser, so there are more options if things go pear-shaped in a particular browser. If for example Firefox drops XP support and there is a bug with the old version, the customer can change to Chrome until another solution is put in place.

IE6 was the exception, because it was too difficult in many codebases to update it for compatibility beyond IE6 in the short term, for time(=money) reasons. As soon as the codebases were updated (or the solution replaced) to work beyond IE6, IE6 was kicked right out the door. IE6 didn't stay king because so many people loved that browser so much that they didn't want to change, it was because they HAD to keep using it for some reason. It is not uncommon for companies still relying on IE6 to have Firefox installed for general web browsing and IE6 only for the specific app they need. You can bet your ass they have retirement plans on how to eventually get off IE6 (& now also XP) altogether.

Unsupported code (eg: unmaintained websites) that won't work with new versions - Yes that is inevitable.

Supported code - No.
If it is a supported codebase - The web developer's solution would be to update it to work with the new version, not make it work with the old. If that means that it will break compatibility with the old version, then so be it, it is industry practice not to support unsupported software.

It's worth pointing out that Mozilla & Google are not supporting XP - They are supporting their browsers. If there is a problem in XP, they are not going to help you with it.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

there will never be a supported code that will be dependant on a specific version again.

Someone please mod the parent funny.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

IE6 was the exception, because it was too difficult in many codebases to update it for compatibility beyond IE6 in the short term

NO. IE6 was different because __it was/is a supported product__ the fact that it was the base browser in xppro is why it was so entrenched into enterprises requiring all those fucked-up web design hacks. when xp goes, so goes its support, AND internet explorer 6's (finally).. yes, ie6 is still a microsoft supported product (!!!), same as xp.

third parties started dropping ie6 support on web pages, and in some cases, with a software's installed microsoft browser requirement... WHILE IT IS STILL SUPPORTED by its developer... when xp goes, people will start dropping xp support AFTER MICROSOFT DID.

there will be a few holdouts among the profit-minded companies, wrt xp support.. but that will mostly fade away around the end fo 2014, and even most, if not all, commercial antivirus companies will dump xp as they did 98/me when they were dropped by microsoft despite their still being used.

XP opacalypse?

[Anonymous Coward]

What does any of this have to do with Kai Opaca's lips?

Here's how this happened

[slashmydots]

For those of you wondering how this happened, I told my bosses about it about 2 years ago. I made a schedule of replacing 2.5 computers every 100 days and that would bring us right up there. Every single time it came up, they delayed it. We actually added about 4 more XP workstations so the number of replaced PCs went negative. Now we need to replace about 24 in the next 6 months and we don't have the money for that so we're screwed. I plan on finding a different job prior to April 8th.

Re:Here's how this happened

[0123456]

Your bosses probably figured out that, when there are tens or hundreds of millions of XP machines in businesses around the world exposed to newly found security holes, the bad press will force Microsoft to keep supporting them or offer cheap upgrades to Windows 7.

Re:Here's how this happened

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

Just upgrade to Linux Mint or some other Linux distribution. It should world on old hardware.

Re:Here's how this happened

[Anonymous Coward]

And you bozos really believe this, that's what keeps me coming back.

Re:Here's how this happened

[FlyHelicopters]

Or perhaps it will force the bosses to pull out their wallets and upgrade all those machines quickly to Windows 7. Frankly, an office with 24 machines shouldn't take all that long to upgrade and test, it is the thousand machine installs that are so hard to do quickly, but 24 isn't that hard.

Re:Here's how this happened

[slashmydots]

You're the type of unrealistic idiot that's ruining Linux. Our CRM doesn't run on it. Office 2003 doesn't run on it. Outlook especially doesn't run on it. There are no security controls like group policy. Nobody knows how to use it. Not all our hardware would have drivers. Our blueprint plotters doesn't work with it. Updates to the OS could break anything. AutoCAD doesn't run on it. Remote meeting software doesn't run on it. Should I go on?

Still using Windows 2000

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still using Win2k and am not having any problems. I don't have any plans to upgrade to XP, so I guess I don't have to worry.

Abandon Ship

[Anonymous Coward]

"Does this also mean webmasters will need to write seperate versions of CSS and javascript for older versions of Chrome and Firefox like they did with IE 6 if the user base refuses to leave Windows XP?"

Not going to happen, for me at least. This sort of behavior really is ridiculous. It's like wanting me to put a new $1000 stereo into your 1987 corolla. It doesn't fit, and your car is shit. Don't ask for an upgrade until YOU upgrade.

You'll probably hate Classic Shell less

[tepples]

I now have Windows 8 on my other partition. I hate the interface, passionately

You'll probably hate Classic Shell less. It adds a proper Start Menu to Windows 8, which you can configure to look like Windows 9x, Windows XP, or Windows 7.

Re:You'll probably hate Classic Shell less

[Strawser]

Thank you. I know there are 3rd party tweeks, but I hadn't gotten around to figuring out which, if any, are worth while. I'll take a look at that next time I have to boot Windows.

Re:You'll probably hate Classic Shell less

[Anonymous Coward]

Classic shell has worked for me for months now. Just found this article on tips to help decrapify bloatware on Win 8/8.1 . http://www.howtogeek.com/174587/refreshing-your-pc-wont-help-why-bloatware-is-still-a-problem-on-windows-8/

Re:You'll probably hate Classic Shell less

[Anonymous Coward]

You could try not being a faggot and just use it. The Start Screen is the only serious difference and it's actually better than the old Start Menu once you understand how to use it.

Re:You'll probably hate Classic Shell less

[Anonymous Coward]

You could try not being a faggot and just use it.

When you no longer use phrases like this, perhaps then you will be a man. Perhaps.

Re:You'll probably hate Classic Shell less

[Anonymous Coward]

Just set up your Windows 8 start screen with everything you like and unpin all the apps you don't use.

It's better to learn the new interface than it is to pretend that Windows 8 looks like Windows 7.

Besides, once you get your stuff pinned, the start screen is mostly just a full-screen version of the start menu anyway.

It's really not that big of a deal.

Re:You'll probably hate Classic Shell less

[Strawser]

When Windows 95 first came out, I replaced "shell=explorer" with "shell=progman" in system.ini so I didn't need to get used to the new interface at the same time I was getting used to all the other changes. In this case, though, I really hate it. Badly.

I'll probably have to learn to live with it at some point, though.

Re:You'll probably hate Classic Shell less

[Waccoon]

I really wish these tools didn't focus so much on the Start menu. I never use it.

I'm more interested in the taskbar and the old Explorer. Adding new panels to the taskbar, bringing back QuickLaunch with the small icons and support for multiple launch instances, getting rid of the stupid pinning paradigm, letting me have my damn window menus back, etc.

Misleading title!

[Anonymous Coward]

Misleading title!

Re:The motivation is to support Windows Server 200

[NJRoadfan]

Just goes to show that the Win32 API is stable compared to say, MacOS X. Even though Mozilla dropped support for 10.4 and 10.5 PowerPC, the TenFourFox project keeps up with Mozilla's changes. Whats missing from Win32 in XP/2K3 that would force Mozilla to drop support in the future? OS X had big changes to font handling in 10.5 and higher, plus that big architecture change.

Electrolysis for 32-bit Windows Vista and 7

[tepples]

There are still plenty of 32-bit machines running Windows Vista and netbooks running Windows 7 Starter, so probably not. A 32-bit app on a 64-bit operating system is perfectly fine unless a single process needs more than 2 GB, which isn't quite the case for web applications. Firefox will more likely follow Chrome in splitting the user's browser session into multiple 32-bit processes.

Re:The motivation is to support Windows Server 200

[jbolden]

Of course it is stable compared to Apple. Apple's attitude is that all apps should patch annually to keep up with OS changes. That have no intention nor desire for stability, they like rapid progress and encourage this attitude in their developer base and user community. Apple brags about how quickly they retire old versions of their operating systems to investors.

The more things change...

[Cid Highwind]

Funny, when XP launched the Slashdot consensus was that it was 'goddamned Fischer-Price crap' for consumers who didn't care about the lack of signed drivers for (your favorite obscure ISA card here), and real big boy computers ran Linux, UNIX, or Win2k if you really needed Microsoft software.

Re:The more things change...

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot consensus

You might think such a thing exists, but you are mistaken.

Re:The more things change...

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, it was 'goddamned Fischer-Price crap', that's why i always changed it to look like the older windows, just like i did with windows 7. Now it has that clean look, which suites me.

Re:The more things change...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah seriously...has everyone around here forgotten about the "Playskool OS" rants back when Windows XP came out?

Re:The more things change...

[johanw]

Well, you can switch to classic theme. Fortunately even windows 7 can do that. Now with tileOS 8, that's a different matter. :-(

Re:The more things change...

[toddestan]

I've always found it amusing myself that you can still make Windows 7 (and Vista) look like Windows 2000, but that horrid default XP theme was not carried forward.

XPopacalypse written by

[Pope]

Paul Thurrot. OK, guess I'll ignore that drivel.

Re:XPopacalypse written by

[jittles]

Paul Thurrot. OK, guess I'll ignore that drivel.

Not only that, but I think MIcrosoft would go back and patch a huge issue in XP if it was causing bad press. If there is an XPopacalypse then they would have to be crazy not to address it.

Re:XPopacalypse written by

[FlyHelicopters]

Why? They ended Win95 and Win98 support when they said they would and didn't touch them since. They have supported WinXP for 12 years, what is with this idea that somehow they'll just support it forever? MS has made such a point of April 2014, if they break it, they'll end up supporting it for 20 years, for free. They'd be fools to do that.

WINE for Windows?

[DdJ]

How hard would it be to create a runtime environment for XP similar to WINE on Linux and MacOS that provides missing APIs and such so that things written to require newer versions of Windows could continue running on it?

Related point: is enough known about the OS that third parties could realistically provide their own security updates to it?

Re:WINE for Windows?

[Ash-Fox]

About as hard as writing WINE.

What about Opera?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because, Opera will surely do.
It is only a few years since it dropped the support for Windows 98. Seriously, it kept supporting it for freakingly long, I think to the end of version 11.

It's not a compliment though, only shows they have or had seriously outdated code base. Dropping much of functionality in the recent versions is a give away sign of it too.

Re:What about Opera?

[RebelWebmaster]

Given that Opera is switching to Blink, I would assume that their support will end when Chrome's does.

does this mean

[rossdee]

does this mean will not have to worry about upgrading to a new version of Firefox every other fortnight and having it break all the add-ons
sounds good to me
btw I just upgraded to FF 25 on my Win7 box and had to fiddle with Foxtab a lot to get it going again
there was no mention during the upgrade process that Foxtab was incompatible

Re:does this mean

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not too bad. Thunderbird (email application from Mozilla) recently auto-updated the Lightening plug-in (official calendar plug-in) and completely broke everyone's calendar. The fix is manually downgrading the plug-in or upgrading the application (which meant manually messing around with library dependencies in LMDE). I've stopped trusting updates from Mozilla and turned off all of their auto-updates. Hackers might want to use my computer to attack other companies, but they leave my workflow alone and otherwise don't cause me any problems (at least until my identity is stolen...)

The Article

[JTD121]

Was published early August, so there may have been some changes and press releases and announcements since then, no? I would imagine AV companies will support whoever pays, especially the annual plans.

The End of Firefox and Chrome in Corporate

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell you that our IT department will drop Firefox and Chrome like a hot potato when that happens. It took almost a decade to convince them to write cross-platform code for intranet sites, but with 100,000+ workstations they are not in any hurry to upgrade XP machines. They are taking the upgrade by attrition approach. If Chrome and Firefox stop being supported on XP, Chrome and Firefox will be removed from the corporate PC fleet.

Re:The End of Firefox and Chrome in Corporate

[Anonymous Coward]

^^Anonymous retard failed to read any of the copious comments above pointing out that the summary is wrong and both Firefox and Chrome will continue to support XP long after MS EOLs it.

Re:The End of Firefox and Chrome in Corporate

[Ash-Fox]

What company is this? I would like to know so I don't do business with them.

WinXP in a VM for VPN clients

[mathew42]

I've found WinXP running in a VM the sanest way to connect to the VPNs of various clients that I work with. Many VPN clients attempt to take over the entire network stack and direct all your traffic through their VPN which creates havoc with accessing company servers.

With WinXP I can clone a VM for different clients. I tried this with Windows7 and ran into activiation nightmares. Possibly not strictly legal, but I refuse to fork out cash just because different VPN clients won't play nicely with each other on the same instance.

Pretty sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lack of Performance is a metric for suck, and in that regard Vista+ ARE sucky compared to XP.

I only use windows to game and for the rare 'Windows Only' app/DRM requirement (Notably various mandatory college web applications, and Netflix and similiar DRM'd media apps.) In regards to that windows is a necessity, and if XP works, why break what you've got for something new?

Additionally 16-20 fucking gigs for an OS with no more available features than XP? No thank you.

Those reasons by themselves are enough for me not to switch to Vista+ over XP. And given that even my full linux installs only take up 4-8 gigs with a whole pile of programs installed, I think the standard modern Windows install is a bigger security hazard than pretty much anything else on the planet. But maybe that's just me.

people still use Windows XP?

[Anonymous Coward]

not trying to be rude, but hurry up and upgrade to Windows 8!! geez and don't give me the argument about running old versions of programs. who runs old, buggy software that hasn't been upgraded since 2005? Windows XP is a 32 bit operating system that can run 32 bit programs. so 32 bit programs designed for Windows XP can run on Windows 8 64 bit. i just bought a computer that runs windows 8 for only $500. what a deal. cheaper than upgrading my friend's Windows XP computer. Ge had a Pentium 4 CPU, hard drive, mother board, case with 300 watt power supply (really?), DVD drive USB hub, NVIDIA geforce 210 video card (not a gaming card mind you)

Re:people still use Windows XP?

[0123456]

Troll rating: 1/10.

Try to be less obvious in future.

We Love XP

[AndyCanfield]

Most manufacturers would give their eye teeth to have a product that their customers love as much as our users love Wincows XP. It does everything that our people need done, it is stable and secure and simple and they know it well. As tech support I know it well, too; on XP I don't have to search for "Where did Microsoft put the device drivers THIS TIME!"

But the problem that Microsoft faces is that they hire programmers, and programmers are change agents. If the program really does the job well, nobody will ever buy a new version. So they have to artificially destroy Windows XP in order to sell newer versions. Trojans, viruses, malware are all allies of Microsoft.

Sort of like getting a new wife every eight years, whether you want one or not.

Re:We Love XP

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying your wife is stable and secure and simple?

Re:We Love XP

[gravis777]

Most manufacturers would give their eye teeth to have a product that their customers love as much as our users love Wincows XP. It does everything that our people need done, it is stable and secure and simple and they know it well

Something like.... Windows 7?

Re:We Love XP

[FlyHelicopters]

If you paid for WinXP on an annual subscription basis, then MS would probably be happy to support it forever. The problem is that they have long booked the sales and now you want MS to support it forever for free. Explain how that makes any sense.

Re:We Love XP

[Waccoon]

So they have to artificially destroy Windows XP in order to sell newer versions.

Sounds like the Detroit auto model to me... which is proven not to work.

Maybe they could have just make sure that Win8 didn't suck?

What is wrong with Timothy?

[DaTrueDave]

Why are his summaries so despised for being inaccurate?

Re:What is wrong with Timothy?

[wonkey_monkey]

You've got all the right words, but not necessarily in the right order.

His summaries are so despised. Why? For being inaccurate.

Re:What is wrong with Timothy?

[Provocateur]

Underneath that skin is a hyper alloy combat chassis: fully armored, very tough.

And finds editing quite a chore.

The XPocalypse

[fast turtle]

is when MS turns off the Activiation servers for XP and all of those computers go silent except for a BSOD that demands money to Upgrade to Windows ?#.

So? Give me a free replacement OS

[gelfling]

Just give me a free Chrome OS to put on my Asus eee PC as a replacement.

Re:So? Give me a free replacement OS

[uncle slacky]

Here you go: http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/

"your browser is not supported" is so common

[swschrad]

that frankly, who gives a rip. we are still stuck on XP at work until somebody finally gets off their wallet and completes the Win7 upgrade project.

I finally did it at home, picked up a bargain laptop for the hamshack. 73 critical upgrades for Win8 later, all I have to do is fight the "Modern" interface. it's good exercise sliding to the bottom left all the time.

the eMac is another issue, but that's my editing machine...

Re:"your browser is not supported" is so common

[ebh]

Ham shack? 73? And you don't see the cosmic significance?

Uses for XP

[Anonymous Coward]

- If you have to web-dev for feds and IE5 or IE6 are involved (sigh)

- If 14 years ago you received an effectively unlimited personal use volume license after doing someone important a favor.

To be candid -- I still use XP in vmware/virtualbox for a lot of things...

1) If I think I get a virus or suspect attachment... I clone a VM, take a snapshot, execute the "virus", pause and dump the disk on the still running machine... then do a recursive diff on mounted images. Yay weird hobbies to learn.

2) Old windows games without rebooting... (There's only one game I will reboot for at all these days)

3) Watching netflix (thank you crap silverlight DRM...)

Please don't take away my ability to play duke3d or watch netflix.... None of this trivial virtualization is possible as best I can tell with win7 (fuck win8) -- and even if it was, I'm in no mood to buy 10 licenses just to virtualize. Come to think of it, not only am I not in the mood for it... I'm not willing to burn the cash. It's also a ridiculous pain in the ass with modern windows platforms -- every time I clone a VM and get a new MAC/drive it wants to bitch about non genuine windows. Upgrade your virtualization software... time to re-authenticate. Grow your VM disk...time to authenticate. Move the VM Image to another computer running a slightly different version via OVF... time to authenticate.

Look, I'm willing to only /run/ a licensed version on one host at a time. But piss off with authentication servers, network connectivity, authentication, and anything else. If I boot windows in a VM, it's for one purpose only -- to read some fucked up office file somebody sent. Anything else just gets in the way.

Yes -- I have two or three instances of XP running at once on my desktop at any given moment. It's just easier that way.

Viruses? What virus...images revert to clean on shutdown and get marked writeable to apply updates... that's it.

I'd rather run linux than this crap -- but netflix is taking precedence. Don't even think about suggesting building IE and silverlight -- it's easier and faster to spin up and even provision an entire damned VM than it is to deal with that depencency hell, especially after software updates.

Need flag for articles.

[AndreasB]

What the new and improved slashdot really needs is a "flag as inappropriate" (i would also settle for bullsh*t) button for articles...

Too bad the summary cleverly delivers misleading information about the clearly communicated future of chrome for XP - i would very much love for google to sue dice into oblivion because of the headline alone...

At least you see what the editors are doing around here, covering their asses when it comes to the big $ while kicking the OSS projects into the nuts all while spreading FUD for the usual joe coming here for serious "tech-info".

XP can die when I have no spare parts.

[Anonymous Coward]

XP can die when I have no spare parts that need it.

Chrome and Firefox DO NOT INSTALL onto Windows XP with less than SP2 already. So If you have to rescue/salvage a system and have to use pre SP2 discs to do so, you can't even download firefox to download the service pack, ... it's already damn near impossible to download the Service packs using IE6, because Microsoft's site insists on upgrading you before you can use the site, which you ALSO CAN'T DO.

I mean I think XP has to go, and that's ok, but please quit breaking s*** that you don't have to. There is absolutely NO REASON to make sure Chrome and Firefox do not install onto Windows XP. This is bulls*** imposed by the installer, not the program.

The same problem came up while I was using said system to recover data (you can't install 5.25" drives on any system later than a pentium 3, and the latest OS a P3 will use is XP) and found that not only can I not find drivers that work for any of the parts (lucky the ethernet controller drivers come with XP) I was out of luck trying to install any drivers anyway because hardware vendors insist on using ******* .NET frameworks that don't come with XP.

So what do I need XP for?
1) Pulling data from floppy discs, zip drives and some CD-ROM's that won't read on DVD/Blueray drives
2) My USB netcam has no drivers for Vista/7, My video capture card doesn't, hell, this is a consistant pattern
3) Win 7 supports the firewire port on my previous motherboard, new motherboard doesn't have it, so what do I do? I use the XP licence on the old hardware

I have half a dozen XP/Vista licences kicking around from dead/retired hardware. There's no damn way I'm installing 7 or 8 on these clunkers.

Oh, bravo Timothy

[wonkey_monkey]

The headline:

Firefox ... Will Soon EOL On XP

From the article

Johnathan Nightingale, VP of Firefox at Mozilla stated, "We have no plans to discontinue support for our XP users."

You're a freakin' genius, y'idiot.

patches aren't everything

[epyT-R]

Everyone talks like the patch treadmill is absolutely necessary. It's not. The only reason this treadmill is marched by IT depts is to protect their jobs from the logical fallacies of management. The proof is the false assumption that the system's secure once the latest patches are installed, coupled with the rash of new patches the following week. Windows is fundamentally insecure. Hell, just about every OS is insecure if setup incorrectly no matter how many vendor patches are applied. If you're going to use an OS in a networked environment, just accept that, and when planned for accordingly, it's not the biggest issue in the world. Everyone posting here should know how to mitigate risks like this by now, patches or no patches.

Re:patches aren't everything

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for the voice of reason amongst so many chicken littles' (who also apparently did not read the article). I use XP for web browsing in an extremely isolated, locked down, snapshot'd vbox VM. About the only safe way to cruise the web. PS: When ms makes a more usable os than xp, I might upgrade.

Not Acceptable

[drwho]

Since when does an OSS community abandon an entire segment of the population just because Microsoft makes a commercial decision? I hope there's a fork and some group continues to support XP.

EULA built in Kill Switch

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh don't worry about it.

Microsoft will release a final Patch update that kills the last of XP off like a shot through the C:\Windows directory.

The EULA says you rent it, not own it.. so they will be found wihtin their rights to knife it.

The beauty of open source

[tonysg]

The beauty of open source is that the code is there for anyone to work with it if needed. Mozilla and Google will keep supporting Win XP users for now, but if they ever stop supporting the OS someone can fork them (specially Firefox) and keep the browser working. We know MS will not open source Win XP anytime soon, but if they did someone could take the OS and write patches for it. I have Windows XP in a dual boot with Linux on my laptop, because there are certain programs which I don't particularly use, but my wife does. I don't even have the original CD anymore to some of them, and maybe the company went under years ago. I virtualized the XP once and it worked. Then I isolated it from the internet just in case. I can do that again, because I know how to do it, but most people have no idea how to do something like that. They don't have money to buy a new computer and their systems are filled with photos, and files they want to keep. Is up to us to help them save those files. If you now someone like that tell them how to save those files somewhere else, and maybe introduce them to Linux so they can keep their computers without buying new ones. Its good for the mental well being of people and good for the environment.

B'bye Firefox

[hyades1]

Either Firefox forks, or I'll quit using it. I have no plans to change from XP. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me subsequent versions of Windows have made it more and more difficult to work "under the hood", and spend more and more time trying to turn every scrap of information they can gather over to Microsoft.

Re:B'bye Firefox

[johnsie]

You're planning to use an operating system with no security patches? Good luck with that.

What does the NSA want?

[Anonymous Coward]

The question is: what does the NSA want you to do? Do they want you to stay on XP where they have reliable old unpatched vulnerabilities to exploit, or do they want you to upgrade to Windows 7/8 where they have state of the art intrusion built-in?

Choices, choices ...

I have a few older machines...

[nhat11]

so no need to upgrade. All my new machines have Vista or higher though.

good...

[globaljustin]

hats off to firefox then...

b/c this, in TFA summary, was a really stupid question:

Does this also mean webmasters will need to write seperate versions of CSS and javascript for older versions of Chrome and Firefox like they did with IE 6 if the user base refuses to leave Windows XP?"

I LOL'ed

i'm making an 'ecommerce' site *right now* and putting custom system shortcuts & stuff all over it...using CSS3 alot to make quasi-animated features but still be lean

there's absolutely no way in hell I would do something like this...w/ my CSS3 'magic' i'd have to fucking run javascript (which my goal is not to need for presentation stuff) on all my main visual 'content' to make it all render properly

this crap is *exactly* why i hate M$ to begin with!

see, I actually have fond memories of Windows XP...it was the least bullshit of M$'s stuff & i could actually get work done on it w/ some tweaking

there will always be a place in my heart for a super-lean, fast, simple, non-Mac OS...

so again...thnx firefox!

Mozilla, Google working hard for microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you Mozilla, Google, for working hard for microsoft so that they can suck even more money from people.

Update: 10/29 17:31 GMT by S :

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of changing the headline to have negative connotation, how about changing it to be positive? For instance, Firefox will stand behind XP, aka the most usable OS micro$haft has been able to create to date.

>>>Update: 10/29 17:31 GMT by S : Changed headline and summary to reflect that Mozilla doesn't have plans to drop XP support any time soon.

Next version of webgl requires dx11 on windows

[greggman]

Both Chrome and Firefox use DirectX on windows to support various features like access to direct2d and hardware video decoding. So they both end up emulating OpenGL for WebGL by using ANGLE so they can have access to both an OpenGL API and those other things at the same time. It also doesn't help that the state of OpenGL drivers on window is pretty poor for most user. Sure gamers have high end gpus and up to date drivers but most users don't.

Well, in order to for angle to emulate OpenGL ES 3.0 it requires DirectX 11 (or maybe only 10). Regardless that means for all practical purposes XP won't be supported.

Linux Clone Opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

What we need here is a linux clone of XP that works just like it in as many ways as possible (maybe based on Linux Mint?) with a start button and everything... I think I remember hearing about an effort like this several years ago. It should have Open (or Libre) Office preinstalled, with .doc and .xps set to default. A set of icons as similar to the original as possible. The killer feature would be an install script that automagically moves all non-XP files into an NTFS partition and mounts it as a volume named C:\>

For better or for worse, that could make 2014 the year of linux on the desktop.

But every MS distro after XP sucketh

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows XP was Microsoft's operating system high water mark (just as Ubuntu 10.04 was Ubuntu's).

Windows Vista was terrible.

Windows 7 was slightly less terrible, but still buggy as heck and choosing bizarre configuration options that are hard to impossible to edit out. (Ribbons, anyone? Ugh. Hover cover? Ugh).

And Windows 8 is of course worst of them all.

With Ubuntu dithering with rolling its own everything (e.g. Waylnd etc) and the flawed "desktop as a tablet" philosophy, Microsoft actually has a chance here to keep market share, were they to come out with a good OS comparable on the front-end to XP. But Microsoft is dithering, too. Only Google (and to a lesser extent, Apple) seem to be progressing.

If Microsoft would replace XP with something better for once instead of with something worse, people would flock to it in droves.

No need for special CSS

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no need for web masters to use special CSS &tc to support XP users, their base is just too small and there are plenty of alternatives available

Full screen is entirely the problem

[tepples]

Anonymous Coward wrote:

the start screen is mostly just a full-screen version of the start menu anyway.

Full screen is entirely the problem. It's like going through a doorway to the kitchen: the complete change in scenery makes it harder to remember what you went in there for.

XP Support

[brunnegd]

Thank you, Firefox. I am amazed that MS touts improved XP as a reason to move away from XP. Does anyone use IE? I would move from XP to Win7, if MS would pay the costs of converting my machine. Time, support help, potential program upgrade costs, etc. My hardware is sufficient, but I would need to essentially delete the operating system and all of my programs and settings, then rebuild the machine. Not cost effective.

New Instance in Windows 7 and 8

[tepples]

Pinned applications in Windows 7 and 8 support multiple launch instances. Right click the icon and choose the program's name, which is just above "Unpin". Besides, Classic Shell does include a few enhancements to File Explorer.

LOL

[Safety Cap]

THEY WILL NOT SWITCH. Got to use what you like good for you.

Folks who live on the festering edge of technology will forever be in reactive mode.

They most likely live there because they don't know any better and have become "accustomed" to wearing their hair shirt.

There are a lot of customers of mine that love windows XP and there [sic] blackberrys.

Sure, and when Blackberry goes belly-up, they can suffer through a protracted outage while they scramble for a replacement. Nothing says success like a decision made in fear in panic. Or, they could start their planning and migration now and move as soon as they're ready.