Firefox XP support will shift to ESR 52, drop in mainline past 51

[cc333]

54 minutes ago, dencorso said:

You forget Mozilla is the heir to Netscape, and Netscape has already proven they knew how to utterly sink a winner product... I guess they've kept alive both the knowledge and the urge to do it.

You mean, they've kept alive the knowledge and urge to sink winner products?

c

[dencorso]

Absolutely. MS, OTOH, is just begining to learn how to do it propperly... but it seems they're fast learners, AFAICS.

[glnz]

Gents - on my XP machine (kept updated with the POS hack thanks to dencorso and friends), will the transition to ESR happen automatically, or will I have to do something?

Also, I don't know what ESR means (Extra Special Rubberband?), but the important question is:  will it continue to get security updates from Mozilla?

Thanks.

PS Ever since FF dropped "Ask Me Every Time" for cookies, I don't like them so much anymore.  Like how I feel about Delta Airlines.  But I love NoScript, BetterPrivacy and Disconnect, so I'm still there.

Edited October 25, 2016 by glnz

[dencorso]

4 hours ago, glnz said:

... on my XP machine, will the transition to ESR happen automatically, or will I have to do something?

Also, I don't know what ESR means (Extra Special Rubberband?), but the important question is:  will it continue to get security updates from Mozilla?

Probably not... I guess you'll have to download the installer and install over your (then) current FF once.
Thenceforward, all subsequent updates will happen as usual.
Extended Support Release.  Yes, for some time. See this: FF ESR FAQ.

...And try to hang loose for a change, will you?

[glnz]

I'll try!  I promise!

[Guest]

https://chuttenblog.wordpress.com/2016/10/28/firefox-windows-xp-exit-plan/

[FranceBB]

2 hours ago, Sampei.Nihira said:

https://chuttenblog.wordpress.com/2016/10/28/firefox-windows-xp-exit-plan/

In other words: if they'll see enough people using Firefox on XP, then maybe they'll continue issuing security updates after April 2018; am I right?

[dencorso]

Sure. OTOH, you might have guessed that much by yourself, without having to refer to any blog nor to FF's official site for it, right?

[Guest]

6 hours ago, FranceBB said:

In other words: if they'll see enough people using Firefox on XP, then maybe they'll continue issuing security updates after April 2018; am I right?

Probable........

[dencorso]

What do I know? I know that:

• POSReady 2009  Extended Support will end on April 9, 2019.
• Firefox ESR 52 is should for release in April 2017 and ought to be supported until May 2018.
• Firefox ESR 52 will be the last version to offer NPAPI (and JRE) support, so Firefox 53 may even work on XP, but is not for me, AFAIK.

Moreover, Firefox is open source, so someone probably will keep releasing unofficial security updates of Firefox ESR 52 at least until April 2019, just the same as there were unofficial updates of Pale Moon up to the Windows Server 2003 EoS, not to mention some non-SSE2 releases, too.
And, even if not, I'll postpone worrying to when the problem presents itself.

[ppgrainbow]

Regardless of how old the bug is, it got flagged as RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1315083.

This is one of the reasons that I'm gonna have to abandon Windows Vista soon as it is going to reach end-of-life in April of next year.

[NoelC]

FYI, Windows Vista right now (literally since about June of this year) for most folks can't complete a Windows Update operation.  It just goes into a hard loop on one core.

Win 7 has also been reported to have reached this condition, and I've even seen Win 8 reports of it as well.

I once would have advised getting a newer version less than 10...  I've settled on Win 8.1 myself, since it's supposed to be supported for some years to come, and it's moldable into a decent desktop setup, but nowadays the task of installing a Win 7 or 8.1 system then getting *just* the right updates has gotten more complicated than just running Windows Update and taking those you need while hiding those you don't want.

-Noel

[Stefan43]

The fix for Windows Update on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 can be found on this page: http://wu.krelay.de/en/

It worked for me on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 x64 (My daily OS). But for Windows Vista, nothing seems to fix it...

Also, many software is ending support for Vista and XP at the same time, Google did it with Chrome and Mozilla with Firefox. I believe the reason of Mozilla ending Firefox XP and Vista support is because they want to use the Chrome (Not supported on XP and Vista) sandbox feature in Firefox.

Edited November 27, 2016 by Stefan43

[Mcinwwl]

On 16.10.2016 at 4:01 AM, JodyT said:

I'm not saying don't use XP.  But saying it's the most secure OS out there, or wanting to use "XP Forever" is a stretch.  Saying that since no security apocalypse has maligned XP over the last two years, that means that security concerns are FUD, I can't agree with that.  We have nuclear power plants in Pickering, Ontario and I do believe they pose a certain level of danger.  Is that any less true because there hasn't been an explosion yet?

Sorry for necroqouting, but...

Well, nuclear plants aren't operated by people with no education and technical skills. And aren't under constant attack from people willing to exploit this lack of knowledge. Just by looking at how many people are attacked by malware, f.e. loosing their stuff by ransomware, and following your comparision, we might say PC are nuclear plants that explode every day in thousands, and thus we might get some statistics out of that.

XP is being run simultaneously with never systems, and all of them are attacked, so we might compare. XP is out of date for 2,5 year and so far it's not rumoured to be much more attacked than other versions.

I'd love to see some some statistics showing comparing malware attacks grouped by systems, whether non-POSready XPs perform any worse than newer ones. This would show how much all the security improvements did to the users of Vista and Higher. For me it seems like patched systems aren't better enough to make obsolete XP worth making better target.

[Jody Thornton]

1 hour ago, Mcinwwl said:

Well, nuclear plants aren't operated by people with no education and technical skills. ...

Well except this one