End of XP support in Pale Moon
Posted: 2014-08-13, 17:58
As an advance announcement for the near future, Pale Moon will no longer be built for Windows XP from version 25 onwards.
Since Windows XP has reached its End of Life last April, and development of the browser has to move forward, XP support will be dropped in the next major version update. Although Windows XP is still used on many systems, continuing to cater to it means back-end development has to be held back in some respects, and preventing people on current operating systems from getting the full benefit of the available build options.
I will likely retain XP support in the Pale Moon for Atom version (making it an actual separate branch of Pale Moon) since older netbooks (which this build is mostly aimed at) are often stuck on Windows XP as an operating system due to unavailability of updated drivers. Support for (and development on) this branch will be limited as it is a special-case build.
I know some people will be saddened by this or be forced to either use a less-optimized version of Pale Moon (in the Atom build) or switch browsers altogether. It has, however, never been Pale Moon's goal to support either archaic hardware or obsolete Operating Systems (including those not properly updated to the latest service pack). Windows XP has become obsolete with its extended support cycle ended.
I've also notified people ahead of time this was going to happen; when the actual support would be dropped was just not specifically decided until now.
Since Windows XP has reached its End of Life last April, and development of the browser has to move forward, XP support will be dropped in the next major version update. Although Windows XP is still used on many systems, continuing to cater to it means back-end development has to be held back in some respects, and preventing people on current operating systems from getting the full benefit of the available build options.
I will likely retain XP support in the Pale Moon for Atom version (making it an actual separate branch of Pale Moon) since older netbooks (which this build is mostly aimed at) are often stuck on Windows XP as an operating system due to unavailability of updated drivers. Support for (and development on) this branch will be limited as it is a special-case build.
I know some people will be saddened by this or be forced to either use a less-optimized version of Pale Moon (in the Atom build) or switch browsers altogether. It has, however, never been Pale Moon's goal to support either archaic hardware or obsolete Operating Systems (including those not properly updated to the latest service pack). Windows XP has become obsolete with its extended support cycle ended.
I've also notified people ahead of time this was going to happen; when the actual support would be dropped was just not specifically decided until now.