End of Firefox Support for Windows 2000

By +Frank B.
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Grand Master

+Frank B. Subscriber²

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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

Veteran

Mike Frett

Posted
Posted

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.

  • The Laughing Man, Gerowen and Tech Star
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Grand Master

Gerowen

Posted
Posted

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

Grand Master

+Frank B. Subscriber²

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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.

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Grand Master

NEVER85

Posted
Posted

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.

Grand Master

PNWDweller

Posted
Posted

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.

Grand Master

Dot Matrix

Posted
Posted

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.

Grand Master

NEVER85

Posted
Posted

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.

Grand Master

+Frank B. Subscriber²

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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...

Grand Master

thealexweb

Posted
Posted

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

I'm one of the few people that loved Me, I used it for four years, longer than I have any other Windows OS, I never saw most of he horrors that people grumbled about.

Grand Master

dnast

Posted
Posted

As much as I loved Windows 2000 way back when, I'm glad Mozilla is finally moving on. The OS is 12 years old, now. There's no reason to hold the rest of us back.

And I'd like to forget about WinME. It was rare for me to go a full 24 hours without a BSOD, freezing, or needing to reboot for some other reason. I envied those that didn't have any issues with it.

  • 2 weeks later...
Experienced

erpster3

Posted
Posted

I'm one of the few people that loved Me, I used it for four years, longer than I have any other Windows OS, I never saw most of he horrors that people grumbled about.

same here, I liked WinME when it came pre-installed on an old HP Pavilion desktop computer after I installed the proper hotfixes and updates on it; otherwise WinME w/out several of the essential patches installed make it look mediocre. Windows ME was really designed for the home user / consumer user, not for business / corporate people.

As much as I loved Windows 2000 way back when, I'm glad Mozilla is finally moving on. The OS is 12 years old, now. There's no reason to hold the rest of us back.

And I'd like to forget about WinME. It was rare for me to go a full 24 hours without a BSOD, freezing, or needing to reboot for some other reason. I envied those that didn't have any issues with it.

yup, I had a feeling the day would eventually come when Mozilla will end Win2000 support for its Firefox web browser. they had to let go of support for old OSes at some point.

Grand Master

remixedcat

Posted
Posted

what's stupid and fail and all kinda facepalm is my school (at the time) bought new dells with xp on them and wiped it and put windows 2000 on them!

then they wanted new copies of xp put back on those same machines later!

Grand Master

cork1958

Posted
Posted

I'm one of the few people that loved Me, I used it for four years, longer than I have any other Windows OS, I never saw most of he horrors that people grumbled about.

Are we still living in the past or what with that Netscape avatar?

Nice combinatin of a couple of the worst inventions ever. That being Windows Me and Netscape!! Both were crash masters from hell!!

Unfortunately,

Firefox has already waited to long to do this and has lost a lot of users, darn it! ;)

Grand Master

The_Decryptor Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted
...

Unfortunately,

Firefox has already waited to long to do this and has lost a lot of users, darn it! ;)

So there were people out there that didn't use Firefox because it supported Windows 2000?

Mozilla switched from Visual C 2008 to Visual C 2010, as a result they now build against the 2010 C Runtime Library vs. the 2008 C Runtime Library. The only thing stopping the 2010 version from running on 2K (and early XP systems) is the lack of a couple of security APIs (literally 2, EncodePointer and DecodePointer). It's not like Firefox will become sentient and start doing the laundry by using the 2010 library, it's being read into too much.

  • Sub_Zero_Alchemist and remixedcat
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Grand Master

Nashy

Posted
Posted

I'm one of the few people that loved Me, I used it for four years, longer than I have any other Windows OS, I never saw most of he horrors that people grumbled about.

You must be the calmest person on the planet. I commend you for your achievement. Does MS know about how long you ran it? It has to be a record worthy of medals and money.

You're very lucky, I don't know how you didn't have issues. It really was the worst, garbage OS I have ever, ever had the displeasure of installing. Running Vista with non-compatible drivers would give a better experience.

Experienced

DJGM

Posted
Posted

Are we still living in the past or what with that Netscape avatar?

Nice combinatin of a couple of the worst inventions ever. That being Windows Me and Netscape!!

Don't forget, if it weren't for Netscape, there'd be no Firefox, and of course, no SeaMonkey either.

I'm one of the few people that loved Me, I used it for four years, longer than I have any

other Windows OS, I never saw most of he horrors that people grumbled about.

While Windows ME was perhaps the buggiest and most unstable version of Windows ever made, it is true there were

a minority of Windows ME users that hadencountered little or no problems with it whatsover. It seems you were one

of the lucky minority. My experience with it: First few months were OK, after that BSODs were a daily occurance!

Windows 2000 was a godsend, like a breath of frsh air on my PC of the time.

Meanwhile, I have to agree with comments that running an obsolete OS that's no longer supported is a bad idea,

especially online ... It's like skinny dipping in the Florida Everglades, or standing in the middle of a rugby pitch

during a match. It's like urinating on an electrical fence, or going to Iran wearing a Salman Rushdie t-shirt.

Absolutely not recommended eitherway!

Grand Master

thealexweb

Posted
Posted

Are we still living in the past or what with that Netscape avatar?

Nice combinatin of a couple of the worst inventions ever. That being Windows Me and Netscape!! Both were crash masters from hell!!

Unfortunately,

Firefox has already waited to long to do this and has lost a lot of users, darn it! ;)

I don't use Firefox anymore so I'm not sure why I still have my avatar as it is xD I'll get round to changing it at some point :p

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