Firefox continues with Win 7 & 8 until Q3 2024

[AGTDenton]

Some good news for anyone rocking an older system/OS, you can continue to browse safely on Windows 7 & 8 with Firefox until at least Q3 2024.

A few weeks ago there was speculation they would discontinue support later this year, but now it's been confirmed that Mozilla will keep Firefox in support that little bit longer.

With Chromium browsers (Edge & Chrome) having pulled support last year this will be welcome news for anyone not ready or willing or able to upgrade.


https://www.neowin.net/news/firefox-...ar-of-support/

[Jonj1611]

I have been using Chrome for a while now. Thinking of going back to Firefox. Not really related to what you said, just thinking/typing out loud

[AGTDenton]

Firefox is still my favourite and main browser, however, with all the additional forks these days there's quite a healthy amount of choice on both Chromium & Mozilla.

Other browsers to consider would be Brave, Ghostery Dawn, Waterfox & Pale Moon.
If you're into your social media & news then Opera is fully loaded! I mainly installed that for the free VPN. Otherwise it serves no day to day purpose and I disabled all the other features with it.

[videobruce]

It will be a very long time before I give up on W7. FF v91 with it's FULL MENU BAR is fine with me!

W10 is beyond terrible, their most BLOATED O/S system out there. I can't even imaging what W11 is like other than it's much worse. Neither do anything more than what W7 Pro does, I could care less about all the 'post teenager' "apps" for their toy phones and the like along with all the other crap.

[Saracen999]

While certainly agreeing with videobruce in principle, in practice a couple of things have forced me into Win 10, not least of which is drivers for some new hardware, and the removal of support for Win 7.

However .... there's heavy irony in the fact that the reason I also still have some Win 7 systems is, yup, also support for hardware, albeit rather old stuff, and even an item or two of software. I'm kinda caught in a trap - I'm not about the replace that old hardware, some of which was quite expensive, in large part because now that I'm retired, while I certainly have a use for the hardware because I aleady have it since my business days, I don't have the justification for buying modern equivalents (if they exist) post-retirement.

So yeah, W10 is bloated so though I finally had to give in and spend the time/effort in debloating, and hunting down effective tools to assist in that, while keeping those older unsupported system air-gapped from t'internet.

I suspect that in a similar way I'll eventually be forced into using W11, but I won't willingly adopt it, and won't be adopting it at all, any time soon.

Sidenote - looking at pricing for a Dell laptop earlier today, I noticed that the default is that it is supplied with W11 (supposedly 'free', yeah, right!) but W10 is a selectable option .... at an £89 surcharge over W11. Both 'Pro' versions.

[Millennium]

Windows 10 and 11 are effectively very similar, Saracen, actually. I'm sure you 'could' make them similar. The control panel layout looks very different, and you should use some start menu replacement software (5$ ish), but other than that Win11 is quite effective and actually shows progress. It's the same Win7 OEM key essentially, as you're retired I assume you're keeping your hardware intact. However, you know us, always upgrading.
I'm writing this now from workstation 2 on 4G which is running Win10 because it 'only' has 16GB. Win11 is a bit more 32GB. You may think the only updates were DirectX12 ones, and you may be right, but it's actually ok. Maybe give it a try in a VM (again?)

[Saracen999]

I agree, I *could* wrangle it into what I want. Issue 1, I want my menu bar along the top. Yes, I know there ae several utilities that will let me do that, but I'm enjoying a good whinge and don't see why I should have to buy utitiies to unbreak something MS didn't have to break in the first place.

More significant is that I don't want an MS account, and MS are doing everything they can to force users into having one. And yes, I know there are ways round it (for now) but it seems to be a game of leapfrog with MS trying to plug the holes.

But fundamentally, I've grown to REALLY dislike MS. Not as much as I detest and despise Google, but MS are getting there. I certainly don't, and won't, use any of the producs or services that require an MS account, be it their "drive" (or whatever they're calling it this week), or Outlook, or MS Mail, and I switched to Libre years ago specifically to get away from MS Office, and i'm still more than happy with Libre. I also have zero desire to be 2signed in2 all the time. It's a data grab and it abnnoys me, as it does with Google.

There's nothing I've seen yet in W11 that I actually need, or even much want it for, and Win10 does everything I need. In fact, I'm even on Win10 only under protest, and with gritted teeth. I'd rather be on W7.

I've given in on a lot of positions in recent times because it was pragmatic, if undesirable, to do so. Win7 to Win10 is one, buying a bit more than a basic level smart phone is another (needed for my DJI drone, etc). I bought a Steamdeck after swearing up one side and down the other that I'd never touch Steam (and if I'd realised the Asus Ally was that close to launch, I'd have have waited). i even bought an iPad Pro.

So out of spite if nothing else, i'm staying with Win10 as long as I possibly can. If I'm lucky, I'll drop dead before I have to give in and switch to W11.

[AGTDenton]

I agree, I *could* wrangle it into what I want. Issue 1, I want my menu bar along the top. Yes, I know there ae several utilities that will let me do that, but I'm enjoying a good whinge and don't see why I should have to buy utitiies to unbreak something MS didn't have to break in the first place.

They're mostly battling with Task Bar placement. After each release something gets broken because Microsoft alter or remove something.

Start 11 have yet to figure out a way to have the taskbar on the sides efficiently, to the point the beta option is now removed, and if you want Autohide at the top thats now a problem in 22H2.
Explorer Patcher changes the Start menu back to Windows 10 and reskins it, to my knowledge is utilising left over code & files that you can also achieve manually, but this could be removed without warning by Microsoft at any time.

So I would actually recommend avoiding 11 if this is a showstopper, because while it might work now with 3rd party tools, it very well might not in 22H3.

[Millennium]

As I've just installed a Win8 VM on PC2, I'll boot it now and install Firefox. Thanks for this information...

[fact is though it's currently running 12 threads and that isn't a patched 6 so it will still not be secure enough for me but at least Firefox is open source ish and trying. I say ish, cause they make some money from Firefox, of course for this level of development they should!]

[Saracen999]

...

So I would actually recommend avoiding 11 if this is a showstopper, because while it might work now with 3rd party tools, it very well might not in 22H3.

It is a showstopper .... but kinda isn't.

I have no doubt I could get used to it at the bottom. Even in the middle, at the bottom. Hell, I just bought an iPad pro and .... yeah, exactly.

But Ive been using Windows since it was in short trousers. I mean, using it quite a bit dating back to the mid '80s, or earlier. I'm used to it being at the top, it feels right it being at the top, I like it at the top, want it at the top, and am somewhat irrationally digging my heels in.

A somewhat more balanced explanation is, as far as I'm concerned, the OS is merely a tool enabling me to get what I want to do, done, with the minimum of hassle. Years ago, I'd embrace change and even made a good chunk of my living from writing about changes, especially in printers, scanners and cameras, but also in a vast and eclectic array of other hardware, and software too. I just enjoyed the pace of everything changing.

But now, computers are, in all forms, little more than a tool, a means to an end. The "end" varies. It might be an audio or video project. I'm still hovering on the edge of a 3D printer. It might be gaming, or it might be setting up my NAS and Plex/Emby (both are currently running) to get my music and DVD collection digitised. It might just be playing with something new because, hell, I want to (3D printng being a good example)

What I DON'T want is to waste my now limited time having to get used to stuff I'm used to (for about 40 damn years) being at the top, moving to the bottom, probably on the whim of some managers and/or designers deciding it, and that probably weren't even born when I started using Windows with my menu in drop-down mode, not pop-up mode.

MS have left that ultimate choice to us, the user, all that time. Okay, they defaulted to the bottom years ago. Fine. First thing I do on a new install was move it to the top.

Now, I've been doing it for so long it's embedded in muscle memory. I don't see why, absent a really good reason (and I mean a reason that's good for me, not for MS) to change.

Then I look at Win 11 and Win 10 and ask, what does 11 have that 10 doesn't, and that I care about? Answer? I have yet to find anything.

Sure, there's probably stuff 'under the hood' that's improved. Do I care? Nope, not unless it would improve my daily usage in a noticeable way. Is 11 probably a 'better' OS than 10? Probably. In a way I care about, though .... nope.

Is 11 the way of the future? Yup. Until W12. Does 10 have a limited shelf life? Yes. but so do I.

I've gone on about it a bit (ahem ... ) over the years, that I am NOT a fan of a lot MS has done in the last few years, and I'm not. One upshot of that is, despite being an MS Office user since the days of switching from DOS Wordstar (and Wordperfect), I went to the trouble of migrating to Llbre. I don't work in teams or collaborate with anyone any more. I'm not stuck with a file format dictated by a magazine editor, either. So Libre does everything I want or need, and I like it. Would that suit everybody, espcially those still in their working life? Probably not, but it suits me.

I also won't, on principle, use MS "services" be it cloud storage, email, Outlook, Onenote, whatever. I want nothing to do with any of that, and hence neither need nor want an MS account.

So the whole menu at top versus bottom thing is really a kind-of metaphor, summarising that I see either W10 or W11 as merely a means to an end, that being running software I DO use that requires Windows (and no, I don't want to mess about with Linux and VMs on my laptop), to run.

Given that nothing new in W11 really floats my boat or screams "need this" to me, the inconvenience and disjointedness over a bottom menu in W11 doesn't provide any reason to put up with it, or to retrain expectations and muscle memory, over the easy route of sticking with menu at top.

No, it's not a life or death issue. If sufficiently good reason to switch came up (and it might in years to come) and I have to put up wth the menu at bottom to get it, well, so be it.

But given I don't perceive any benefit to me, at least for now, from Win11, why not just go with the familiar, the comfortable, the path of least resistance, and stick to menu at top. MS, for their part, can stick the menu-at-bottom wherever seems appropriate. I have a suggestion or two for them, but forum rules suggest I'd better not post them.

I bet, if you read this far AGT, you're regretting the "showstopper" bit by now, eh?

But it's the most honest explanation I can come up with.

TL / DR - Showstopper? Not really. But .... I like it at the top and don't see a good reason to cave in to MS' whim to tell me I can't have it at the top.

Not that they'll care, or even notice, but it's my version of a digitus impudicus to MS. And why not?