I know Vista and XP haven't been supported by Chrome since 2015, but what actually changed that broke compatibility? Could we easily just compile Chromium for Vista and XP?

The efforts so far have proven that it is not easy.
I'm not knowledgeable about chromium's code, so I cant exactly tell you everything, but there has been bits mentioned on their efforts in the linked thread, with a detailed write-up being the exact post linked.

Still need to test, but I might have found a Chromium 78 based browser that works on vista

1 hour ago, zhongtiao1 said:

Still need to test, but I might have found a Chromium 78 based browser that works on vista

Is it 360 Extreme Explorer version 12?

1 minute ago, win32 said:

Is it 360 Extreme Explorer version 12?

Yes, actually. It seems to work pretty well too.

On 5/2/2020 at 11:22 AM, zhongtiao1 said:

I know Vista and XP haven't been supported by Chrome since 2015, but what actually changed that broke compatibility? Could we easily just compile Chromium for Vista and XP?

So far...
**BBFrance has attempted to backport Chromium 74 at least five times and the thing failed to work.
**Obtaining the tools to even compile earlier versions of Chrome were very difficult. Though thanks to him, it's easier now.
**Backporting Chromium 76 to Windows XP has been very difficult due to many new things dependent on Windows 7 or later API.
**The Advanced Chromium Developer once released a Chromium 69 version for XP (link is dead), but had to remove hardware acceleration and web assembly. Apparently, a DirectX version included was too new for XP.
**DoaJC_Blogger is still working on fixing the biggest issue: removal of GDI write. Chromium now uses DirectWrite 1.1, which requires Windows 7 or later. Vista uses 1.0.

You can join his discord here. The main goal of porting Chromium to XP is so our data is not sent back to China. It would be somewhat annoying to have to dual-boot with Linux or Windows 7 or later, just to browse the web.

Edited May 12, 20206 yr by FantasyAcquiesce