Firefox End of Support for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 on September 2024

[Brink]

Firefox version 115 will be the last supported Firefox version for users of Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. If you are using these versions of Windows you will be moved to the Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) channel by an application update. Mozilla will provide security updates for these users until September 2024. No security updates will be provided after that date.

Why has Firefox ended support for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 users?

Microsoft ended official support for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 in January of 2023. Unsupported operating systems receive no security updates and have known exploits. With no official support from Microsoft, maintaining Firefox for obsolete operating systems becomes costly for Mozilla and dangerous for users.

Will switching to a different browser keep me protected?

No. Most browsers, including Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, have already ended support for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1.

Can I still browse safely with Firefox Windows 7, 8 and 8.1?

Mozilla is providing critical security updates through the Firefox ESR channel up until the end of ESR version 115, September 2024. After this, no security updates are provided and you are strongly encouraged to move to a supported version of Microsoft Windows.

How can I get the newest features of Firefox?

If you want to keep your Firefox up to date, with all the latest features and updates, you need to upgrade your operating system to Windows 10 or higher. In some cases, Microsoft may require newer hardware in order to support the newer operating system. After upgrading, users can easily reinstall Firefox and keep all of their settings.

Source: Firefox users on Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 moving to Extended Support Release | Firefox Help

 

[file3456]

*In a Morpheus voice* What if I told you there are other browsers that still do... That fly's in the face of this statement from Mozilla:

Microsoft ended official support for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 in January of 2023. Unsupported operating systems receive no security updates and have known exploits. With no official support from Microsoft, maintaining Firefox for obsolete operating systems becomes costly for Mozilla and dangerous for users.

And this utter crap:

Will switching to a different browser keep me protected?

No. Most browsers, including Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, have already ended support for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1.

 

[Unknown scout91]

i wonder what next software will decide to unsupport windows 7 and windows 8.1
i honestly can't handle all of these news but i guess there is nothing i can do about it
afterall who am i to stop these multi-millionare company's plans to unsupport my favorite windows
all i can i say is these news we are getting every month is devasting for all us windows 7 and windows 8.1 users

 

[Aardvarkly]

Quite frankly I don't give a damn who or what decides to "unsupport" W7. I will not be bullied into selling my soul to Microsoft's latest malware.

 

[file3456]

If you're not much of a gamer[SUB]1[/SUB] then go Zorin Linux. Only problem there is some banks don't like Linux because they think it's a "hacker OS" or some stupid crap. Nothing could be farther from the truth and a useragent and other fingerprints can be forged. So out right blocking the Linux OS is massively stupid and pretty much sucks the you know what of Microsoft to keep people on their BS OS.

You could run a virtual machine in Linux though and run Winblows 10 or 11, etc. Use that ONLY for banking and nothing else. At least in that particular virtual OS.

That's all I can offer unless you're will to use Tiny10 which I am, but it needs an LTSC license key... Tiny10 strips all the utter crap out of it and so far so good on my end. It's available at archive.org...


Zorin OS - Make your computer better.

[SUB]1[/SUB]Sometimes trying to get games to work right in Linux can be a PITA...

 

[LevelBest]

I don't get this; I downloaded the ESR a few months back yet a week ago I got a red notification in the browser that says "unable to update - system incompatible" yet it says it will continue to update until September 2024, another year away.

 

[Night Hawk]

Quite frankly I don't give a damn who or what decides to "unsupport" W7. I will not be bullied into selling my soul to Microsoft's latest malware.

I wouldn't exactly label the latest version as malware having taken a serious look at Triple Booting it along with both W7 Ultimate x64 and the 64bit edition of W10 Pro to run W11 Pro along side the present dual boot! I have been able to install and run several rather old even going back to 9X PC Game Titles on the new Windows which will be the XP? for the new line of 64bit Only OS!

As for FireFox Nightly a more pronounced version of a favored web browser from the Open Source Community when sat up next to some other titles like Waterfox, Cyberfox, Seamonkey with a name that fits that bill! :sarc: FF's Nightly Sadly but expectedly will be dropping the versions older then 10 and 11 as you wouldn't to see Edge on the 9X family if not on XP or Vista? But even on 7 here I was elated at seeing Edge take on IE9?! It was definitely the time for that old Legacy browser to move along.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't get this; I downloaded the ESR a few months back yet a week ago I got a red notification in the browser that says "unable to update - system incompatible" yet it says it will continue to update until September 2024, another year away.

The warning message is automated there. For the Nightly version just downloaded lately I also received a notification of the demise of support to be seen in 2024 as well for this newer version of the browser which just came out in the last few years! It won't be receiving any regular updates for 7, 8. and 8.1 being dropped from active support as well as these versions of Windows to lose all support from Microsoft with 7 already having been dropped in favor of support being redirected to 10 and 11. You will still be able to run the browser until the present build you have on now simply will no longer work since there won't be any newer version offered.

 

[lukewt1017]

What's nice is that websites like YouTube still function fine on Firefox 60, released May 9, 2018, which was 5 years ago. That means that the last Extended Security Update version of Firefox will still be fine for another few years!

 

[file3456]

Well, I'm sure some snot nose Google employee just read your post and will have that fixed in a jiffy (an actual unit of time I might add).

To play devil's advocate, sooner or latter things need to be updated. I mean, take the example of how you can't game or hardly even use the Internet with Windows 98se today. We all know that if it weren't for that fact Windows 10 and 11 weren't such a massive pile of goat crap we'd have no trouble at all migrating to the so-called "latest and greatest." But it's not "greatest". It's (the OS) is a piece of crap on so many levels it's not even funny. It's sad. They (Microsoft) turned their OS into one giant App-like environment really meant more for a tablet and pretty much blow torched the PC user/PC enthusiast.

It comes down to this: learn how to REALLY nerd out 10 and 11 by stripping it all the hell down. It sucks one has to do that, but it can be done and I'm sure there are lots of website tutorials and YouTube videos explaining how to do just that. Or just go with Zorin OS or some other Distro. Linux is pretty decent for those that just surf the Internet and print things. And you can game with it too, but in my opinion I feel Windows is better suited for that . If someone wanted to game in Linux they're stuck with AMD because AMD actually open sources their drivers unlike BS ("AI") Nvidia.

In a nutshell, Microsoft is just gonna corporate. And that's pretty much why the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation was created. Sans some help here and there for the downtrodden to mask the real intent. And ol' slick billy got divorced due to his love affair with an island... Isn't there a mugshot of Bill floating around the Internets? Yeah...

 

[SAVVYSCLUTTER]

You could run a virtual machine in Linux though and run Winblows 10 or 11, etc. Use that ONLY for banking and nothing else.

Just change your user agent.

 

[win7guy284]

Just change your user agent.

This (spoofing the OS reported by the browser) is something i've been looking into for privacy reasons, along with using VxKex in conjunction with DXVK to get "non-supported" games to run on W7. You can look the latter method up on google, lots of people managing to get the newest games running on Windows 7 sans any issues. I've also seen Threadripper/Ryzen 9 builds running W7 without issues recently (for those saying W7 has issues with newer AMD CPU's, which is demonstrably false in the great majority of cases).

Ultimately, anything made by M$ after W7 is a downgrade imo. Non-freedom-loving devs may chose to artifically restrict their programs from being run or updated on Windows 7 (*ahem* i'm looking at you, Librewolf), i will boycott them and switch to other ones instead. Thorium is a good example, its dev openly supports Windows 7. Same for Waterfox, Mypal and so on. Windows 7 will keep being viable as a daily driver for a very long time, especially as VxKex/the Extended Kernel project matures further and more people realize how screwed-up M$ has become with its anti-privacy stance since W7's release.

 

[file3456]

Just change your user agent.

I already spoof my UA in Pale Moon (my main driver). This issue (thread) is not mine, it's everyone else's.

When I personally go to my bank I use Firefox. Reason for that is that most websites that are coded with Google webcomponets and other fantastic Google shit (they don't have to) I have to use Fartfox or Ungoogled Chromium (Chrome without Google crap). It's actually better that way to use more than one browser anyway to minimize your leaked data collection...

BTW- I've been spoofing my UA in the browser since circa 2007 in Firefox which at the time was a FANTASTIC browser. Today it's gone full on stupid... along with the CEO... Just look at that b888ch...

 

[lukewt1017]

Well, I'm sure some snot nose Google employee just read your post and will have that fixed in a jiffy (an actual unit of time I might add).

To play devil's advocate, sooner or latter things need to be updated. I mean, take the example of how you can't game or hardly even use the Internet with Windows 98se today. We all know that if it weren't for that fact Windows 10 and 11 weren't such a massive pile of goat crap we'd have no trouble at all migrating to the so-called "latest and greatest." But it's not "greatest". It's (the OS) is a piece of crap on so many levels it's not even funny. It's sad. They (Microsoft) turned their OS into one giant App-like environment really meant more for a tablet and pretty much blow torched the PC user/PC enthusiast.

It comes down to this: learn how to REALLY nerd out 10 and 11 by stripping it all the hell down. It sucks one has to do that, but it can be done and I'm sure there are lots of website tutorials and YouTube videos explaining how to do just that. Or just go with Zorin OS or some other Distro. Linux is pretty decent for those that just surf the Internet and print things. And you can game with it too, but in my opinion I feel Windows is better suited for that . If someone wanted to game in Linux they're stuck with AMD because AMD actually open sources their drivers unlike BS ("AI") Nvidia.

In a nutshell, Microsoft is just gonna corporate. And that's pretty much why the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation was created. Sans some help here and there for the downtrodden to mask the real intent. And ol' slick billy got divorced due to his love affair with an island... Isn't there a mugshot of Bill floating around the Internets? Yeah...

Everything you said... is sadly true. However, we have things like MyPal, a browser that is made SPECIFICALLY for legacy Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 systems. Windows XP support will have been gone for 10 years next April. Heck, they did it to "Get that old PC back to life!". And the small community of people (us) that are not upgrading to the recent bloatware and spyware Microsoft made that they like to call "Windows 10/11 (and somewhat 8 in this context)" are waiting for this moment for an old OS to have that. MyPal might even work with compatibility mode on Windows Vista and 7, so we won't even have to wait! It's just the fact that companies like Microsoft that used to be so well viewed for their great and unique design of their software, but they switch to the ugly, flat design of modern software and logos without thinking anything about it. I hope a group of people force big tech companies to move back to the great skeuomorphic design.

 

[file3456]

Didn't really read threw this so I'm going to address a few things here.

This (spoofing the OS reported by the browser) is something i've been looking into for privacy reasons...

Spoofing the UA is not going to give you much of anything in terms of privacy. It works for certain things like in Thunderbird if you know the Pref and don't load HTML content of third-party images in e-mails like I do. But all in all in terms of using UA spoofing in a browser it's not going to afford you much privacy simply due to the fact that there are many different types of fingerprints that a browser has and that a website can see. And due to that, if you do spoof the UA a banking website or whatever may detect that something's amiss and have you solve a captcha or down right deny access. Most of this privacy invading code is rendered via JavaScript and pulled from the browser. So if you know how to poison canvas data, turn off WebGL and WebRTC and then completely turn off JS, then you will have a more privacy based browser, though with less user functionality. But then again, simply doing that makes you stick out since not very many people do this. So the goal now becomes having to blend in. That's why you want to use more than one version of portable Firefox and the installed version of UnGoogled Chromium without any extensions if at all possible. So you'd use one version of portable Firefox for banking, another for certain other sites and another for maybe forums like this one, etc.

Non-freedom-loving devs may chose to artifically restrict their programs from being run or updated on Windows 7 (*ahem* i'm looking at you, Librewolf)

I'm sure this is because Librewolf is based on Firefox and Firefox now only supports Windows 10 and above. You would probably need to develop a new web browser engine. That's why such projects do exists called Pale Moon et al. I use Pale Moon myself. It's niche however and not for everyone.

- - - Updated - - -

Everything you said... is sadly true. However, we have things like MyPal, a browser that is made SPECIFICALLY for legacy Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 systems. Windows XP support will have been gone for 10 years next April. Heck, they did it to "Get that old PC back to life!". And the small community of people (us) that are not upgrading to the recent bloatware and spyware Microsoft made that they like to call "Windows 10/11 (and somewhat 8 in this context)" are waiting for this moment for an old OS to have that. MyPal might even work with compatibility mode on Windows Vista and 7, so we won't even have to wait! It's just the fact that companies like Microsoft that used to be so well viewed for their great and unique design of their software, but they switch to the ugly, flat design of modern software and logos without thinking anything about it. I hope a group of people force big tech companies to move back to the great skeuomorphic design.

Good term. Skeuomorph - Wikipedia