Microsoft has in fact discontinued support for Windows XP, meaning that it no longer receives security updates. Some organizations that require Windows XP to run legacy software pay Microsoft for extended support, but these businesses are slowly moving to newer operating systems because that was never intended to be a long-term solution.

The average consumer does not get updates on Windows XP, so Windows XP is an insecure operating system. Mozilla supported Windows XP as long as possible, but sooner or later there comes a time where it has to be unsupported. Most software companies have done the same.

hi, the decision by mozilla to drop support for windows xp & vista in september 2018 is a final one - at this point in time firefox is the only major browser still supporting these outdated operating systems anyway. please look into updating your OS as soon as possible...

Firefox has ended support for Windows XP and Vista

edit: this was also announced way in advance: https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2017/10/04/firefox-support-for-windows-xp-and-vista/

Can you name names of computer professionals recommending Windows XP today?

The registry key hack to fool the Windows updater into finding updates for Windows XP POSReady systems does NOT give you a complete set of updates and Microsoft says those updates may not be fully compatible with desktop XP. That was reported five four years ago and I'm not aware that the situation has improved: Hacked Windows XP still updates, still a bad idea | ZDNet.

Chromium, Chrome, and Opera dropped support of the EOL WinXP and Vista back in April 2016.

By the time 52.9.x ESR is EOL on Sept 5 it will have been almost 2 1/2 years longer.

Mozilla has been generous in still supporting Windows XP and Vista for as long as they have already.

Originally the legacy 52.8.x ESR was going to be the last however the current ESR is based on 60.0 and not 59.0 so it was delayed for one more update in overlap. So there will be a 52.9.0 ESR release on June 26 (along with 61.0 and 61.0 ESR).

One of the many complications in supporting WinXP.

from the tracking Bug#1130266 for Reading is comment #16

Jim Mathies [:jimm] on Sept 29, 2016 Supporting XP is actually become quite a problem for our releng teams in that data center testing hardware doesn't support XP anymore. So for example we currently use AWS for most of our testing, but have XP tests running on old hardware we have to maintain ourselves in a data center. It's issues like this that push us to move XP out to an extended support release where we can decommission most of our automated testing associated with it.

note: Please read https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html before considering commenting in any of the related Bug reports like the above as "Why?" and such comments will be spam and likely hidden.

Thanks for the replies but to address this matter we don't need to know what anybody else is doing regarding support or otherwise of Windows XP. We don't need to know Microsoft's spin. Nor do we need to know about what advice Mozilla might have given previously on this issue.

On behalf of all remaining XP users and organizations needing to maintain PCs with it, I note there is a clear and present need for Firefox to continue to support Windows XP until mid 2019.

If this is not being planned there needs to be a review of current actions to achieve this objective.

I thus ask the Management of Mozilla to review the previous decision and extend support again - even further - into 2019.

Developmental testing may be extra work but I am sure the resources of Mozilla can rise to this relatively minor challenge.

I note in May 2018 Mac OS is reported to be on 9% of computers, Windows XP is 5% and Linux is 2%. I presume Firefox still supports Linux, so with one-twentieth of the worlds PCs still running Windows XP this needs continued support too.

Regards

Hugh Burns

hi hugh, there is no way around looking into migrating away from this sun-set operating system as soon as possible.

SETSHB said

I note in May 2018 Mac OS is reported to be on 9% of computers, Windows XP is 5% and Linux is 2%. I presume Firefox still supports Linux, so with one-twentieth of the worlds PCs still running Windows XP this needs continued support too.

The difference with supporting Linux is that Linux distributions are still maintained by their developer. Windows XP is in a completely different boat.

At the end of the day, there's no point in debating the topic because the decision has already been set in stone. Mozilla has always discontinued support for operating systems that are outdated and they will continue to do so. It was the same with Windows 98 and it will be the same with Windows 7 in a few years. It's common practice in the technology industry.

The fact that Mozilla is keeping support for Windows XP as long as they are shows that they do want to help users still running Windows XP. However, Windows XP is a dead operating system and it's not safe to continue running it, especially in a business setting.

SETSHB said

On behalf of all remaining XP users and organizations needing to maintain PCs with it, I note there is a clear and present need for Firefox to continue to support Windows XP until mid 2019. I thus ask the Management of Mozilla to review the previous decision and extend support again - even further - into 2019.

Firefox 53.0 and later including the 60.0 Release and 60.0 ESR does not run on WinXP/Vista so that is not a option.

Firefox 52.0 ESR useragents including 52.8.1esr shows as if you have the Firefox 52.0 Release. Some websites already says Firefox 52.0 is outdated and more will as time goes on.

Also any cipher changes made as time goes on in more current Releases will likely not be supported or updated in the old Firefox 52.0. I say this because some websites like Paypal and eBay will be looking for fairly current versions of Firefox at end of month.

The only thing Mozilla could do perhaps is try and backport security and stability fixes to the old 52 ESR so maybe there could be a few more major updates but that would increase in work load and resources and QA testing that could have been used for the work and development on the 60.0 ESR, Release, Beta/Developers Edition, and Nightly channels.

Besides it is not like the WinXP users with the ancient hardware do not have any other OS options as there are still some light 32-bit Linux distros that still supports the old 32-bit CPU's.

I have read this post and the one posted at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1223323. I have been using Firefox for more than 10 years. I see the major points from James (the moderator) are that the old hardware is difficult to maintain in a data center, and Firefox would like to devote the precious time to newer versions. For the former problem, I don't know whether it would be helpful if someone (say me) lets Firefox to use my xp for testing purposes. For the latter and other questions, I hope contributors at Firefox can consider the work on this ESR version is to help those users who need help. This is more a moral problem than a pure technical issue.

I assume that rich people have already moved to newer window platforms. Those 5% people who are still using xp likely want to save money. From history, when Microsoft made profits from Windows 95, 98, etc., some people felt that a free OS and GNU general public licenses (and free software) should be provided to the society, and thus Linux and open sources including Firefox had appeared. Now, when Microsoft sells one window version after another, and stops the security updates of older versions to force people to buy newer window versions, should Firefox go along with this?

This is why I hope Firefox can see this as a question on the moral side rather than a technical issue. We hope bugs in Firefox will be fixed, but I understand that Firefox is a free software so we use the software at our own risk. I assume that most xp users perhaps do not know how to install and use Linux. Otherwise most xp users would have converted to Linux users already.

I understand that Firefox is a volunteer based "project", so perhaps it is not exciting for computer scientists to work on this old ESR version. But as Huge had mentioned above, I hope that Firefox can devote some minimal efforts and continue to update this ESR version --- at least the security updates. As James had mentioned, perhaps Firefox can backport security and stability from newer versions to this ESR version. I am not a computer scientist, but I am curious why, if we only want security updates in the ESR version, would that be time consuming for xp which is no longer updated? Is it because someone is finding new security holes in xp? If no new features are added to the ESR version, shouldn't less and less security holes would be discovered?

Gradually when third parties require to use newer Firefox versions to access web, that is when the current xp users will have to move to different OS. But in the mean time, if Firefox can at least patch security holes in the ESR version, that will be a responsible action.

Thank you for the time from Firefox contributors.

You are lucky that there is a special ESR release channel that is based on a Firefox version that supports Windows XP. The ESR channel only receives security updates and is meant for organizations that do not want to test whether a new release still works in their setup and it isn't created just to support XP and Vista for a longer time. The next ESR version is Firefox 60 and is thus already available for testing. There is usually a two version overlap before the previous ESR version (52) no longer will be updated, so with the next Firefox release update the ESR channel will switch from 52 ESR to 60 ESR.

See:

• https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/

The decision to drop support for XP has been made, technology doesn't stand still, and ancient operating systems that are not secure themselves and shouldn't be on the internet anyway eventually will not be supported.

Please either update to Windows 7 or higher, buy a new computer, or install linux

Quoting from Microsoft's document on embedded systems

"All of these XP - based embedded versions no longer receive mainstream support. However, they continue to receive extended support. Extended support means that they will continue to get security patches provided to them."

If you are running embedded systems then your support doesn't come from the mainstream anyway - it can't because most machines are locked down. It is extended support provided through the organization that is configuring and maintaining the boxes. It seems somewhat callous to suggest organizations should be replace systems before the published end of life date "because they shouldn't be on the internet anyway."

My I respectfully suggest it makes more sense to sync your end of support dates to the end of support dates of the operating systems you are supporting.

My I also respectfully suggest that the decision to "buy a new computer" or update to a newer version of the operating system sometimes is not so simple: custom applications, specialized hardware, and system interfaces that wont run on newer operating systems being just some of the potential considerations.

Hi dougxp, this is a support forum. Firefox is operating as intended, and no decisions about future releases will be changed here.

If you don't want to lose the use of your XP computer because you need it for specialized applications, that's fine, just try not to use XP on the web.

ESR short for Extended Support Release was intended for Enterprise users in mind and not for regular users. The 52.0 ESR was not made for to support WinXP and Vista in mind but for Enterprise users.

It was a bonus that 52 ESR was a option for WinXP and Vista users to still have a browser option for a while longer and will be almost 2 1/2 years past when Chrome, Chromium, Opera dropped XP/Vista back in April 2016 and 4 1/2 years since Microsoft made it EOL in support for regular users.

If the Firefox ESR concept did not exist then Mozilla would have perhaps dropped WinXP/Vista as of Firefox 53.0 Released on April 19, 2017.

dougxp said

My I respectfully suggest it makes more sense to sync your end of support dates to the end of support dates of the operating systems you are supporting. My I also respectfully suggest that the decision to "buy a new computer" or update to a newer version of the operating system sometimes is not so simple: custom applications, specialized hardware, and system interfaces that wont run on newer operating systems being just some of the potential considerations.

Well Microsoft is ending extended support for Windows 7 as of January 14, 2020 so should Mozilla just stop supporting Windows 7 then with Firefox by that logic?

As said the WinXP systems should really not be used online and go right ahead using it offline for stuff not supported by Win 7 or later or on Linux.

I'm locking this thread. The decision is made, XP is no longer supported by Mozilla or Microsoft, if you have special software that needs XP use it in a computer not connected to the internet, and use a modern OS to browse the web.