ARMOUR Posted December 24, 2016 Share Posted December 24, 2016 Mozilla announced on December 23, 2016 that it will support the Windows operating systems XP and Vista at least until September 2017. The organization announced back in September 2016 that it plans to make Firefox 52 the latest major version of the browser that supports Windows XP and Windows Vista. Firefox 52 will be released on March 7, 2017 according to the browser's release schedule. Mozilla plans to move all XP and Vista users of the web browser to the Firefox Extended Release Channel (ESR) in March. The move ensures continued support for the operating systems at least until September 2017 according to Mozilla. The organization will reassess the number of XP and Vista users in mid-2017 and use it to decide on a final end of release date for Firefox on those two operating systems. According to the Firefox Hardware Report, Windows XP accounts for 10.36% and Windows Vista for 2.56% of all systems reporting metrics back to Mozilla. That's still almost 13% of the browser's user base in total. While Mozilla continued to support Firefox for XP and Vista, Google did drop support already in its Chrome web browser in mid-2016. Of all major browser makers, only Opera and Mozilla are still supporting XP and Vista. Microsoft did end support for the then-and-still popular operating system Windows XP back in April 2014, and will drop support for Windows Vista in April 2017. The decision to end support for XP and Vista leaves users on these operating systems in a predicament. The operating system itself is no longer support -- or won't be come April 2017 -- and now the browser will also stop receiving security updates eventually. Users may stick with an unsupported version of Firefox, e.g. the last Firefox 52 ESR release that supports XP or Vista. Other options are to use virtualization to run other browsers, or to switch to another operating system entirely. There is always Linux, and it is free to install and use. Source: Ghacks.net Blog.mozilla.org Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banned Posted December 24, 2016 Share Posted December 24, 2016 Anyone who officially supports XP this far past Microsoft's cutoff date deserves praise in my book (although Microsoft does still patch XP behind the scenes). Well done Mozilla. If you do decide to end support next year, I'll forgive you. It won't stop me from continuing to use XP however. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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