37 replies to this topic 1 votes

[+Mephistopheles]

End of Firefox Support for Windows 2000

For a number of years we've held off on updating our Windows toolchain to a newer version of Visual Studio, and in so doing preserved support for Windows 2000 and Windows XP RTM and SP1. Firefox developers and the 99.6% of our Windows users have paid a price for this support, though. Our developers have not been able to take advantage of new compiler features and have had to struggle to keep valuable optimizations from breaking -- including having had to back out and ultimately delay some important new features like SPDY. Our users have have suffered a slower Firefox than would be possible as both direct and indirect results of moving to a more modern compiler.

So this week, after a few months of discussion and evaluation of the latest Firefox user numbers and the pros and cons of moving our tools forward, I've called for Mozilla to begin the process for ending support on those older Windows version. Next Tuesday or Wednesday, after Firefox 12 moves to Aurora, the Mozilla Release Engineering team will begin upgrading our Windows build systems to Visual Studio 2010. With VS2010, we will no longer be able to build a Firefox that runs on Windows 2000, Windows XP RTM, and Windows Service Pack 1.

It's always a difficult decision to leave some users behind. The number of Firefox users on those OS versions -- less than one half of one percent of our Windows Firefox users, and the benefits to our development process and the hundreds of millions of Firefox users on XP SP2 and above, however, compel us to look forward rather than back.

If you are a Windows 2000 user, Firefox 12, released on June 5th, will be the final supported Firefox release. After that, your options are limited. Switching to Opera is probably the best path forward.

If you're a Windows XP user still on RTM or Service Pack 1, I strongly urge you to install the free Windows Service Pack updates.

And finally, for Enterprises adopting the ESR, these older Windows versions will be supported for the length of the first ESR of Firefox. That works out to an extra 6 months or so before these Windows versions become unsupported.

Source: Asa Dotzler's blog

[Ci7]

guess that would give them easier time with 64bit builds then?

[FrozenEclipse]

No one should be running any of those OS's anyway, they're all unsupported.

[Mike Frett]

FrozenEclipse, on 28 January 2012 - 09:13, said:

No one should be running any of those OS's anyway, they're all unsupported.

So what if it's unsupported. When your warrantee runs out on your car, do you stop using it because it's unsupported?. Tired of people feeding this crap to the users, if something is working just fine and you like it, then you should use it no matter what fear mongers say.

There are Hospitals that still use DOS. You know why? It's not because it's supported or unsupported; they use it because it's working just fine. No reason whatsoever to spend money on garbage you don't need just because Mr. Tech Know-it-all say's you do.

Doing what people tell you to do is just another form of slavery.

[Gerowen]

Mike Frett, on 28 January 2012 - 09:36, said:

So what if it's unsupported. When your warrantee runs out on your car, do you stop using it because it's unsupported?. Tired of people feeding this crap to the users, if something is working just fine and you like it, then you should use it no matter what fear mongers say.

There are Hospitals that still use DOS. You know why? It's not because it's supported or unsupported; they use it because it's working just fine. No reason whatsoever to spend money on garbage you don't need just because Mr. Tech Know-it-all say's you do.

Doing what people tell you to do is just another form of slavery.

+1

[+Mephistopheles]

Mike Frett, on 28 January 2012 - 09:36, said:

So what if it's unsupported. When your warrantee runs out on your car, do you stop using it because it's unsupported?. Tired of people feeding this crap to the users, if something is working just fine and you like it, then you should use it no matter what fear mongers say.

There are Hospitals that still use DOS. You know why? It's not because it's supported or unsupported; they use it because it's working just fine. No reason whatsoever to spend money on garbage you don't need just because Mr. Tech Know-it-all say's you do.

Doing what people tell you to do is just another form of slavery.

To use your hospital analogy: Connecting to the internet with an unsupported OS is akin to a surgeon operating without having washed his hands after defecating. Especially when you're using an old and fragile version of Windows like XP RTM or XP SP1.

[FrozenEclipse]

Mike Frett, on 28 January 2012 - 09:36, said:

So what if it's unsupported. When your warrantee runs out on your car, do you stop using it because it's unsupported?. Tired of people feeding this crap to the users, if something is working just fine and you like it, then you should use it no matter what fear mongers say.

There are Hospitals that still use DOS. You know why? It's not because it's supported or unsupported; they use it because it's working just fine. No reason whatsoever to spend money on garbage you don't need just because Mr. Tech Know-it-all say's you do.

Doing what people tell you to do is just another form of slavery.

lolwut, biggest misinterpretation of a post ever. Slavery? Really? Get over yourself. What are you, a Windows 95 user still?

Running unsupported operating systems means you're setting yourself up for problems. Windows 2000, as great as it was, hasn't gotten security updates in nearly 2 years now. Given it's an NT-based OS, virtually all Windows malware of today would run on it. Same goes for any version of Windows in that branch prior to XP SP2. Save a few hundred bucks so the rest of the world doesn't have to worry about yet another zombie computer being used for spamming and whatever else.

[+Rudy]

Oh Windows 2000....I loved it, it was such a breath of fresh air coming from Win98

[Dot Matrix]

About damn time Mozilla. About damn time.

[Medfordite]

Rudy, on 29 January 2012 - 05:24, said:

Oh Windows 2000....I loved it, it was such a breath of fresh air coming from Win98

After locating all the proper drivers first.

I have worked at places which just simply panic when new OS's come out and stick with what works for them. Where I work now, they use primarily Win 7 for their OS, with a few XP machines only because of specific software which isn't vendor supported for Win 7. Try as they might, they can't use other software because often times it is specially written for them, or at least specifically used by a division for certain purposes. Even on some machines which I have noticed too, they use terminal sessions for certain things.

I honestly, can't say whether turning off support for Win2K is a bad thing or not since I don't run it, but all the same - let's face it...just like the Commodore/Apple II/Atari 800/XL/XE/IBM XT etc...systems and software- eventually, it does get phased out and companies move on.

[+Rudy]

Medfordite, on 29 January 2012 - 06:05, said:

After locating all the proper drivers first.

Oh you just reminded me why I hate Creative! I had a Live! card from them and it took FOREVER to release stable drivers for Win2k (the sound drivers would BSOD the system :facepalm:

[Dot Matrix]

Mike Frett, on 28 January 2012 - 09:36, said:

So what if it's unsupported. When your warrantee runs out on your car, do you stop using it because it's unsupported?. Tired of people feeding this crap to the users, if something is working just fine and you like it, then you should use it no matter what fear mongers say.

So wrong on so many levels.

[Nashy]

Any problem you had in Win2K was nothing compared to running Windows ME.

[FrozenEclipse]

Medfordite, on 29 January 2012 - 06:05, said:

After locating all the proper drivers first.

I have worked at places which just simply panic when new OS's come out and stick with what works for them. Where I work now, they use primarily Win 7 for their OS, with a few XP machines only because of specific software which isn't vendor supported for Win 7. Try as they might, they can't use other software because often times it is specially written for them, or at least specifically used by a division for certain purposes. Even on some machines which I have noticed too, they use terminal sessions for certain things.

I honestly, can't say whether turning off support for Win2K is a bad thing or not since I don't run it, but all the same - let's face it...just like the Commodore/Apple II/Atari 800/XL/XE/IBM XT etc...systems and software- eventually, it does get phased out and companies move on.

It is, because there's no reason for Mozilla to keep support going for a version of Windows that Microsoft itself no longer supports.

[+Mephistopheles]

Rudy, on 29 January 2012 - 06:15, said:

Oh you just reminded me why I hate Creative! I had a Live! card from them and it took FOREVER to release stable drivers for Win2k (the sound drivers would BSOD the system :facepalm:

Ah yeah, Creative products. I had to install a beta BIOS on my ASUS A7V133 to install Windows 2000, otherwise it would hang during the hardware detection phase of the Windows 2000 setup. Those were fun times...