[tor-dev] xp + T

Iain Learmonth irl at torproject.org
Tue Feb 26 11:27:20 UTC 2019


Hi,

On 26/02/2019 10:42, Georg Koppen wrote:
> I am not sure whether that's actually the intention of the original
> question. Assuming with "get Tor updates" it's actually meant to get
> *Tor Browser* updates (there is no tor update mechanism for Windows
> afaict) let me add the browser related bits here.
> 
> Mozilla stopped supporting Windows XP starting with Firefox 60 ESR,
> which is the browser version underlying Tor Browser 8.x. We decided that
> we will follow Mozilla here as maintaining an even larger fork
> supporting XP is risky both security- and resource-wise. Thus, even if
> tor would not have the respective policy for Windows XP, the browser
> would not run on that outdated and unmaintained Windows version.

I think this is perfectly reasonable given the size of the codebase.

In February 2017, Windows XP made up 8.4% of the Firefox userbase. After
this there are no metrics on how many Firefox users there are, or Vista
users, I guess because those OS are no longer supported. It's also not
clear where these users are located and what was preventing them from
upgrading.

https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/hardware

Tor Metrics does not have per-version data on Windows users, only
Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux.

I think that if there was a strong desire to have Windows XP/Vista
support for Tor Browser though, it would need to have that support
reintroduced in Firefox.

Thanks,
Iain.

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