Many users have been wondering, for some time now, why Mozilla’s plans for Firefox support for Windows 7 and 8.1. Surely you will remember it, but at the beginning of this 2023 Microsoft considered the life cycle of both versions of its operating system to have ended, as we told you here about 7 and here about 8.1, two operating systems valued very differently by the common people. users, but despite the fact that they no longer have support, including security updates, they are still present in many systems that have not been able or wanted to make the leap to Windows 10 or Windows 11.
Hand in hand with the end of official support, we have been able to see how many companies joined the abandonment of these old versions of Windows. Google has done it with Chrome and also with Drive, Epic Games with Fortnite, Microsoft has also “taken” Edge and, although it has given some extra time, Steam has already begun to notify its users that they are not updating to a latest operating system, or they will lose access to their game library on January 1, 2024. That means, the library will still be there, of course, but they will need a newer version of Windows to access it and be able to install and play the titles of their collections.
Mozilla, however, has been considering paddling against the tide since late last year., extending Firefox’s support for “down” operating systems well beyond, in time, that its main competitors, that is, Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, were abandoning said ship. A movement that can attend to one or two reasons (and I am inclined to think that there is a bit of each in the final choice):
- Extend the life of computers that cannot be upgraded to Windows 10/11.
- Sticking with the users of those versions of Windows who have been Chrome or Edge users up to now, hoping that in the future, when they jump to a more current version of Windows, they will already have established their habit of using Firefox as their main web browser.
For whatever reason (or both), today we have finally known the future plans with respect to the operating systems of the past. According to an official support text, Mozilla’s support for Firefox on Windows 7/8.1 will be extended until September 2024date from which it will stop receiving security updates and, therefore, its use will become little or not recommended.
In this document we can read that the last regular version with support for Windows 7/8.1 will be Firefox 115 (the current version is 113.0.2), whose expected release date is July 4, 2023. After its arrival, these users will be automatically “moved” to the Firefox ESR channel (Extended Support Release), through which they will receive security updates published by Mozilla until September of next year. Of course, of course, the news that arrive with Firefox 116 and later will be lost, since the support will be exclusively for security updates, not those of functions.
