Change in system requirements

[Moonchild]

With the next development release (33.3.0) we will be changing Pale Moon's system requirements.

Starting that version, all 64-bit release versions will require at least the AVX instruction set in the CPU. This instruction set has been common in processors for about 10 years.
This follows up on our announcements earlier this year where the exact time this change would be made was not yet set.

In tandem with this change, the expected Linux build environments will also need to be changed to start using gcc v11 or later for official builds, as we will be setting x86_64 v2 + avx as our expected target architecture which cannot be properly done on earlier versions of gcc.

Windows 32-bit builds will not be changing their requirements, and continue to use a minimum of SSE2.

If you are not sure whether your CPU supports AVX and would like to know, you can go to Help -> Troubleshooting information in the most recent Pale Moon version where it will be listed under "CPU Capabilities"; it will list SSE2, AVX and AVX2 support as-appropriate. Note that AVX2, even if detected, will not be required for Pale Moon. Only AVX.

To make updating as smooth as possible, more recent versions of Pale Moon have started detecting and indicating to our update server if AVX is supported by the system the browser is running on, but if you have not updated your browser recently (you should!) you will be first updated to an intermediate (so-called "watershed") version that supports this detection and passing on the cpu flag, so that you aren't inadvertently given an update that would not run on your processor.

Community builds for specific operating systems that normally run on very old hardware, that aren't expected to support AVX, may continue to target SSE2 and above.