Slashdot Mirror
Google Will Retire Chrome Support For XP, Vista, OS X 10.6-8 In April 2016 (blogspot.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Google has announced it is extending Chrome support for Windows XP until April 2016. The company will also end Chrome support for Windows Vista, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, OS X 10.7 Lion, and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion at the same time. This means Google will provide regular Chrome updates and security patches for users on these operating systems for five more months. After that, the browser will still work, but it will be stuck on the last version released in April.
Sounds good. Maybe Firefox will stop trying to clone it and make a decent browser again.
This will leave Windows Vista users without security fixes for Google Chrome, while security fixes for Internet Explorer 9 on Windows Vista continue until April 11, 2017, according to Microsoft's life cycle fact sheet.
Yes, I'm also miffed that they don't support Windows 95 and my Mac SE. Bastards.
Google's learning that supporting multiple OS versions costs money. I wonder what the Android team thinks.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Open source alternatives can be maintained as long as someone is interested in providing updates. It's far superior for updates to legacy software than the closed source alternatives. Open source browsers will continue to provide updates for these systems for the foreseeable future.
The real reason however is that certain bleeding edge HTML5 technology (webmidi, webgl2) doesn't have the necessary privilege separation on older operating systems, and the older operating systems will never have bugs fixed to resolve that.
I'm sure Chromium will keep working for a while. It's not necessary for Chromium/Node-Webkit (for all intents are the same thing) to be updated unless it's actually using the internet. Most software using Chromium as it's "cross platform" engine aren't actually using it for very much except the canvas/webgl/webaudio via Javascript. Everything else the "Browser" offers is practically useless. Unfortunately stock versions of Chromium and node-webkit package a lot of stuff that needs to be ejected if it's to be used by games:
1) Drop PDF, JPEG, GIF, WEBP, leaving only PNG.
2) Drop WebM/MP4 containers, and all video codecs except for hardware supported h.265/h.264 + AAC/FLAC. Allow playback of RGB/YUV444 h.265/h.264 "lossless" video so that there is no more of this "animation gradient banding" on video that should be highly compressible but isn't because the compression process can't figure out that a gradient can't lose half it's color data and still work.
3) Drop Extensions, Pepper, Flash and Java API's
4) Drop the development console.
Ideally developers would compile Chromium with what they need for their project and not rely on the 250MB insane "package" sizes that Chrome/Chromium/Node-webkit come with. Unfortunately this is often difficult. Sure 70MB doesn't look like much for the most stripped down runtime, but when your ANDROID app requires a 70MB runtime to run 300KB of code, there is something hugely fricken wrong.
I feel a great disturbance in the force as if millions of voices suddenly shrugged and switched to Mozilla.
Maybe in 2001
Why would people using Windows XP, an OS that was retired 18 months ago, care that their web browser won't be getting updates in 2016, 2 years post OS retirement?
If Windows XP being retired didn't get them to change, this won't either.
1) Drop PDF, JPEG, GIF, WEBP, leaving only PNG.
Which would bloat download sizes by a factor of ten compared to lossily compressed textures where appropriate. Or are you recommending that developers implement texture decompression through a polyfill in JavaScript?
Drop WebM/MP4 containers, and all video codecs except for hardware supported h.265/h.264 + AAC/FLAC.
Which would require each web developer to purchase a license from MPEG-LA in order to encode background music and cut scenes. Or are you recommending that developers implement royalty-free video codec decompression through a polyfill in JavaScript?
Drop the development console.
Then how would a programmer at a game studio go about debugging her work?
...firefox being resource hungry is why I switched to chrome.
Every now and then I fire up firefox and find it's still more resource hungry than chrome.
They're already on Vista. They're use to misery by now.
Misery was RTM. Mojave was Service Pack 1 and it fixed a lot of problems. Windows Vista is on Service Pack 2 now.
So you can simply switch to chromium now and not worry about it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If you want a chrome rendering engine for an android app, why not use WebView? It's included in Android so you don't need to distribute it.
I just run Classic Theme Restorer and use the built in Customize function to hide their wacky new features when then introduce them and force them onto the Navigation Bar.
Maybe thats less than ideal but the browser seems to behave OK, and I get all of my nice Adblocking/privacy add-ons without using a browser coded by a literal advertising company.
Try Pale Moon.
https://www.palemoon.org/
and pirates, and people with good reasons to still be using it (I have multiple XP VMs for various things, I even have legal images and it works perfectly well for what I need thanks).
I bet XP still has an enormous user base.
Since XP was the last win32 based OS - Vista and successors being win64 based - that's a good reason for Google to drop 32-bit Chrome and do only 64-bit Chrome. Also gets around the WoW64 security bugs. I just uninstalled 32-bit Chrome and installed 64-bit Chrome instead.
What is a light weight HTMl5 compliant browser? That runs well on low end systems?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
no you can't just upgrade from 10.7 it requires a 64bit driver for the graphics that my macbook doesn't have. other than that its a tidy little dual core working fine for many years.
So mostly yes but for the sake of a driver no.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Tried that along with Waterfox. The browser is fundamentally broken.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Considering that it works perfectly fine for many others (myself included, as I'm using Pale Moon to type this), I'd say that's a bit of a stretch.
Firefox has some serious issues, but hyperbole helps no one.
I don't see how that makes download size irrelevant. It still affects performance even if running locally.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
Midori (http://midori-browser.org/) is pretty good for a fairly thin wrapper around WebKit. It's lacking a bunch of features, of course, but it has a tiny install and RAM footprint relative to mainstream browsers.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
For a "fundamentally broken" browser, it's very good at rendering web pages, has nicely configurable settings, is quite stable, and very fast. Do you have an actual objection to any aspect of it, or are you just talking out your ass? You don't even present a subjective, much less objective, fault in the browser. I could mention a few, but eh, none count as anything like "fundamentally broken".
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
10.5.8 is the last version that will run on millions of PPC systems. They were mostly high end and fast systems when they were new and are still very functional. Many of those systems were handed over to other family members after upgrades and they are still out there working. Even the lifesaver machines from 1999 will run os x 10.5.8 and they are quite responsive enough to be useful when using Safari. They tend to get a bit bogged down with Chrome 21 or Firefox 16 but they still work. There are millions of old macs still out there that aren't ever going to get upgraded.
Redownloading a packaged Chrome app still costs money, especially now that more ISPs are going pay-per-bit.
It's not a clone and what is so shitty about Firefox?
Don't hate me but, I kind of liked Vista. I also liked ME. :/ I had a box that was designed for ME and ran ME nicely - it was pretty damned stable. Hell, it ran an OpenNap server hub (don't ask) and regularly had a few months of uptime - or more. So long as the hardware was quality, it was alright. Vista? Yeah, it was pretty crappy at first but SP1 rolled down the pipes and it was great.
This is coming from a guy who uses Linux. Hell, I exclusively use Linux now, on my computers. (I've got a Windows phone being shipped to me from back home. I do own an iPod somewhere and I have VM images for a bunch of OSes.) Oh, I might still technically own a MBP but I'm thinking my daughter absconded with it when she last visited. I'm pretty sure I got a kiss on the cheek and a, "Thanks Daddy!" I can't swear to it. It seems likely, history and all that.
Incidentally, the ME box was my first run in with AMD. I'd simply never tried them before. It was also a "cheap" computer from a company that I'd never used before. It was Acer with an AMD K6-II 350 MHz that I OCed to run at just below 500 MHz. It was awesome, thanks.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
You should move to a modern country and get a decent ISP! ;)
There is not a different download or code base for Vista vs Windows 7, so I am not sure I understand what Google means by this announcement. The odds that the chrome.exe will magically stop working on Windows Vista before the end of 2016 seems unlikely to me.
I'm running 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) (posting from it, in fact), so this decision affects me.
I realize software companies have to pull the plug sometime, but this decision is a hassle for me. Already Apple has stopped updating Safari. I moved to Firefox which was so buggy and crash-prone I got frustrated. Moved to Chrome, which has worked well. This puts me one step closer to no browser.
My gripe is that my hardware is working perfectly well. I have no REAL reason to buy a new computer except for the fact that software companies force me to. This machine (a Mac mini) is working absolutely perfectly.
I face the same issue with Itunes, which I can't update because the new version requires a version of OSX I'm not running. Furthermore, not only has the latest version of OSX gotten pretty 'meh' reviews, it's pretty clear installing it on older hardware takes a working machine and turns it into a deadweight - the latest OSX works terribly on a Mac Mini purchased in 2010. (The charts show it is possible, but the user reviews all say "this was a mistake").
Not sure what I'll do with this machine - make it into a media box or something, or flash it and install FreeBSD or something. But I'm annoyed - this hardware works just fine; I have no reason to go out and splash down another thousand bucks just because software companies decide to give up on it.
Finally, connect the dots, people: each year software companies give up on old hardware a bit faster. In another decade they won't bother supporting anything other than machines sold that year, and we'll have moved computing hardware into something disposable, which is ecologically ridiculous. Already they've got you throwing out your old iphone every two years so you can have the latest and greatest - imagine how rich you'd make the magnates if you threw out your desktop every two years, too.
This sucks.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
*sighs* I wrote this rely, just for you. Yes, yes it is from within Lynx. Do you know how much of a pain it is to use Lynx on the net? I mean, sure, it's okay if you're just consuming stuff on really basic sites but, beyond that, it's really not a very good browser. Even commenting as an AC isn't all that easy. I like the idea but it's really not worth the effort.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
You should move to a modern country
Emigrating from the United States "to a modern country" costs more time and money than a lot of people have. I've read that it often includes a master's degree and classes to reach the level of proficiency in the national language that "a modern country" tends to require before it becomes willing to grant a work visa to an immigrant.
I don't pirate movies.
Covering up alleged copyright infringement is by far not the only example of a reason why one would desire privacy. For one thing, the law has become so complex that people commit far more crimes than they're aware of. (See Three Felonies a Day by Harvey A. Silverglate, ISBN 1594035229.) And if you handle confidential information in the ordinary course of work, such as trade-secret computer program source code or patients' health information, would you be comfortable with live-streaming every keypress you make to Microsoft and its "marketing partners"?
I don't have metered internet access
Good for you. It might not be so good for others reading this, who might have to not only buy a copy of Windows 10 to replace a copy of Windows Vista but also find a new job in a place offering unmetered Internet access and relocate their families to such "an area with 3 high speed Internet choices, including two fiber to the home options."
Then you moved the goal posts.
I apologize for not having addressed all conceivable ramifications of telemetry in Windows 10 in a single post. If I later thought of additional questions to ask, should I have instead asked them as an additional reply to #50913183 rather than as a reply to #50913599?
And if you handle confidential information in the ordinary course of work, such as trade-secret computer program source code or patients' health information, would you be comfortable with live-streaming every keypress you make to Microsoft and its "marketing partners"?
But since I don't do any of that, I don't care, and 99% of the people don't have to.
I disagree with your claim that only 1 percent of Windows users use Windows for anything subject to a confidentiality agreement.
Do you have any numbers for how much data Windows 10 uses, compared to Windows 7?
No. I can offer a qualitative guess once it is clarified whether the 3 GB per machine automatic download of the Windows 10 upgrade installer is charged against the Windows 7 total or against the Windows 10 total.
I would support a ruling that high speed Internet of at least 25 megabit be a "right"
Until such a ruling comes to be, we have to work around what is, not what ought to be.
No. I can offer a qualitative guess once it is clarified whether the 3 GB per machine automatic download of the Windows 10 upgrade installer is charged against the Windows 7 total or against the Windows 10 total.
If you're on a metered connection, then you should have it set to being on a metered connection...
And that download is charged to Windows 7, not 10, IMHO... since it doesn't download on 10...
Opera.
If you're on a metered connection, then you should have it set to being on a metered connection...
I'm curious as to what Windows 10 will do if all connections available to a given PC are marked as metered. Will it fall behind on security updates?