(split off) Pale Moon and Windows XP (reprise)

[CrimsonAkiha]

They need to make it clear to their users that their browser is a separate fork (just as Pale Moon is with regard to Firefox; it would be similarly pointless to go to Mozilla for help with Pale Moon) and to not keep pestering us here. Unfortunately, for whatever earlier disagreements with Moonchild, they don't seem to be bothered.

Again, as far as I can tell, they are. Have you..have you read the thread? His personal website even has a giant banner with this at the top:

These projects have no affiliation with any upstream community code sources or organizations.

A web browser is a complex product and is often the most used piece of software, it requires an ongoing commitment to support if there's any intention of building a community. This isn't some random library on Github that you use at your own risk after all.

Yes, I know.

Why are they still dependent on MSFN forum threads instead of having their own clearly marked separate domain and forum like the one here?

Money, time and equipment, probably. Many of these people are struggling to make ends meet, and Pale Moon has the donations, time, expertise and resources to run a forum like this. I think I've seen Moonchild imply before that running and moderating this forum & other PM-related services is like a full-time job to him. MSFN is where Roytam's project started, it only makes sense that the community would center around there. I don't get why this is a problem.

[moonbat]

I don't get why this is a problem.

Maybe the banner you mentioned needs to also explicitly say 'do not go to Pale Moon's forum looking for support'. Without a separate website users will be confused on where to go. It could even be just a simple webpage with a link to the support thread/subforum on MSFN. The Basilisk browser website also uses a subforum here for support discussions although the browser itself originated with Moonchild before its current maintainer took over. AFAIK he's also running the site out of his own pocket.

[CrimsonAkiha]

Maybe the banner you mentioned needs to also explicitly say 'do not go to Pale Moon's forum looking for support'. Without a separate website users will be confused on where to go. It could even be just a simple webpage with a link to the support thread/subforum on MSFN.

Well, right after the sentence I quoted in the banner, it also says this:

Please direct all support or related questions to here. Comment forms are opened for support request.

And that's not even including what they've said on the forum itself.

But you're just going to keep raising the bar for what they should and shouldn't do until I'm wrong. I get the feeling what actually happened here is that you have been outraged and complaining about how these people "can't be bothered" to do X, Y and Z despite not even going out of your way to even check if they were or weren't doing those things for yourself. I shouldn't need to go keep pasting quotes here for you.

[Enobarbous]

I don't know what caused him to do this though.

Out of interest, I suppose This started as a “theoretical possibility” question on one of the forums. And then it grew...

[Moonchild]

All of this boils down to being serious about what they are doing or not.
I think they just don't want to treat this as anything but a hobby, but the users of it aren't told it's exactly that.

The issue is that the mere frequency of updates is seen as "doing a lot of work":

By the way, as for Roytam, he has been posting updates every week for about three years now, with a bunch of changes each time. This man has a gigantic capacity for work.

When I look at the MSFN thread, what I see is basically minor updates cherry picked, then a list of changes taken from Arctic Fox which in turn just seems to be slow-walking Mozilla's hg history and not doing anything new or interesting with those code changes. If I wanted to do the same, I could, and it'd be easy clout (but not actually helping people). It is grunt work that takes little effort, but will give the appearance of steady progress (exactly along the lines of Mozilla dev -- which means you may just as well make a rebuild of Firefox and not bother with forking anything). It's a 'solution" if you want to keep building Firefox for XP, I gguess, but they will inevitably also run into the brick wall of c++17, compiler incompatibilities, and it will get exponentially more difficult at that point. Until then? just ride the coattails.

Note that all of this is an opinion formed by looking at repos, MSFN posts, and the general lack of knowledge among roytam's users about where to go. I am aware I may be wrong because I spend most of my time doing other things than chasing forks' development status, but that's as far as I can tell the situation. Please don't take it as fact - do your own research, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

[CrimsonAkiha]

All of this boils down to being serious about what they are doing or not.
I think they just don't want to treat this as anything but a hobby, but the users of it aren't told it's exactly that.

I think the more "technically-minded" users on that forum are probably aware that it's more of an experiment/hack than a "professional" solution with long-term goals, that's for sure. It's just that most people don't really get the difference, because they're not really familiar with the idea of just taking some code and messing with it, and they often don't really have the agency to try that kind of thing themselves and so don't really know what it involves, making them see themselves as "customers" or "consumers" subject to another person's "intelligent design." It would be good if he explained his position better, but I guess I understand that it was already a difficult thing to explain to non-developers, let alone what I can only assume are some pretty significant language barriers over there.

It's a 'solution" if you want to keep building Firefox for XP, I gguess, but they will inevitably also run into the brick wall of c++17, compiler incompatibilities, and it will get exponentially more difficult at that point. Until then? just ride the coattails.

Note that all of this is an opinion formed by looking at repos, MSFN posts, and the general lack of knowledge among roytam's users about where to go.

This is definitely true. I think a big problem with Roytam's fork is that there isn't a lot of technical knowledge and resources behind it, and they don't seem to be really interested in doing more major changes like experimenting with different compilers to produce binaries for XP that support newer C++ features, even though they totally could (I've seen other people try this on their own and it works quite well). It really does feel like a big set of hacks, but I guess in that way it's kind of impressive that it even works so well at all haha

Edit: I also think part of the problem is precisely that he needs to distinguish himself from Pale Moon as much as possible to avoid risking trademark issues or users doing things like asking for help on this forum, and even if he goes out of his way to do that it's often not enough for many people on this forum to recognize it, as this thread has clearly demonstrated. I figure not everyone using his browser has the time or knowledge to really cope with the whole "Actually, it's just a set of patches to Pale Moon, but also, it's totally Not Pale Moon in terms of support and branding and [etc] because the code is different enough to cause unique problems, so pretty please don't bother them" issue. However, he does seem to begin the list of all of his cherry-picked upstream changes with "Official UXP changes picked since my last build:" in each changelog, so maybe he really has done all he can to explain the situation, it's just that a lot of people still don't really get it.

[andyprough]

This also seems to be misinformation as well. As far as I can see, Roytam's browser has feature parity with, and closely tracks upstream commits of, the very latest UXP. ... Again, I could be wrong, but I don't think I'm so wrong as to justify you automatically referring to Roytam as if he were just a stupid kid. That seems a bit arrogant to me.

Well it is still a fork of Pale Moon 27. What are the reasons why Pale Moon 33.3.1 itself cannot be made to build on Windows XP? I'm assuming roytam did reach the limits of what could be done when he forked PM27, or he would have continued. The term "Misinformation" gets thrown around like playing Frisbee with manhole covers - not sure it applies in this case, but feel free to show me where I was wrong.

As far as calling roytam a "kid" - that was your term, not mine. I don't think roytam would be a kid since the project was started quite a few years ago. I think roytam is someone who has reached certain technical limits. We've seen this many times with many projects - Waterfox classic, Seamonkey, the old Opera come to mind. At some point you reach a limit as to what can reasonably be done in a certain direction, and either have to change direction like Seamonkey, or give up altogether like the old Opera.

Other than your choice of phrasing those couple of items, I generally agree with the points you have raised in your further posts here, I'm not in general disagreement with you.

One reason for the ire toward roytam's users coming to this forum is that they often start a support thread and don't mention that they are using something other than Pale Moon for the first 10-15 posts. Some people here actually spend a significant amount of time researching and answering support questions, so it's not a small thing, and is very strongly warned against.

[CrimsonAkiha]

Well it is still a fork of Pale Moon 27. What are the reasons why Pale Moon 33.3.1 itself cannot be made to build on Windows XP?

No, I don't think so. He is maintaining a fork of Pale Moon 27 separately, for other reasons, as is indicated on the website. As I already said before, his fork of UXP, modern UXP, seems like it is still tracking the latest UXP's commits. And it is working on Windows XP. You may think the term "misinformation" is overused, however I believe that was a correct application of it in this case. From Wikipedia:

Misinformation is incorrect or misleading information. Misinformation can exist without specific malicious intent; disinformation is distinct in that it is deliberately deceptive and propagated. Misinformation can include inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, or false information as well as selective or half-truths.

You did not share that information with malicious intent (or at least, I am assuming you shared it in good faith), but you were misleading people with information that was inaccurate and incomplete.

As far as calling roytam a "kid" - that was your term, not mine. I don't think roytam would be a kid since the project was started quite a few years ago.

To quote my original message, I said that you were referring to him, or treating him, as if he were "just a stupid kid." I was commenting on your attitude, not your words, as it felt like you were generally portraying him as clueless, incompetent, and beneath you, despite how you also clearly weren't sure what he was actually doing. For example, one of your message said this:

Oh that's it, roytam can't figure out how to move off from his fork of Pale Moon 27

Even though it seems like he has "figured out" how to do that. The rest of your messages in this thread have also been generally extremely condescending (for example, regarding yourself as "doing the responsible thing," and referring to posts by him as "his nonsense," acting like all of these people are grandmas with "infested" computers and can't be trusted, etc), and I think that was uncalled for. Somebody earlier in this thread was complaining about the animosity Pale Moon's community has towards people who do interesting things with the code, and this is an example of it. My problem was that you were talking confidently and derisively about a subject you do not fully know about. I get why, but it wasn't really helping anybody. I hope we can agree on that.

One reason for the ire toward roytam's users coming to this forum is that they often start a support thread and don't mention that they are using something other than Pale Moon for the first 10-15 posts. Some people here actually spend a significant amount of time researching and answering support questions, so it's not a small thing, and is very strongly warned against.

I agree that this is a problem, but I don't think this is the fault of any one individual. I have demonstrated already that they've gone out of their way to prevent this from happening, but I think the sad reality is that Roytam's browser just isn't that different from regular Pale Moon under the hood, and that's going to confuse people no matter what he says. It's not a world of difference like there is between Pale Moon and Firefox, for example. I reckon Librewolf users probably complain to the Firefox developers when something goes wrong a lot, too: to the brain, it just registers as "funny-looking Firefox," because on some level it kind of is. The only solution is to prevent further fragmentation if at all possible.

[andyprough]

No, I don't think so. He is maintaining a fork of Pale Moon 27 separately, for other reasons, as is indicated on the website. As I already said before, his fork of UXP, modern UXP, seems like it is still tracking the latest UXP's commits.

I'm looking through these repos and release notes and seeing references to pulling in all changes from Arctic Fox, and Arctic Fox itself claims to be partially a fork of Pale Moon 27.9 (and other things). There's no browser that I see that's pulling in everything from Pale Moon 33 as you seem to be trying to imply. Clearly Arctic Fox is pulling in some things from Pale Moon's latest work (along with things from other projects), and then some of that is supposedly working its way into New Moon 27. And there's reference to a New Moon 28, but I haven't looked to see what's in that. Are you saying New Moon 28 is a direct fork of Pale Moon 33? I'm not sure where all these ideas are coming from, they don't seem to refer to any actual releases.

as if he were "just a stupid kid

Your words based on your own thoughts and injected ideas, I'll step aside and allow you to continue arguing with yourself on this point if you like.

[CrimsonAkiha]

I'm looking through these repos and release notes and seeing references to pulling in all changes from Arctic Fox, and Arctic Fox itself claims to be partially a fork of Pale Moon 27.9 (and other things).

Okay...I don't know if you're just doing this intentionally now, but I'll try one more time and we'll see, I guess.

This is the repository for his fork of UXP, the Unified XUL Platform, which powers Pale Moon: https://github.com/roytam1/UXP
If you click "Commits," you will notice that these are all commits pulled in from the master branch here: https://repo.palemoon.org/MoonchildProductions/UXP
Which is the original UXP, i.e., the one the browser you're running now is using. And then, on Roytam's fork, if you switch to the "custom" branch, you'll see the patches he made to UXP to make it keep working on Windows XP. Hopefully this will help!

Conversely, this is his other repository, which is a fork of Pale Moon 27, and pulls in patches from Arctic Fox: https://github.com/roytam1/palemoon27
I am aware Arctic Fox is very different from modern Pale Moon, and is in fact based on Pale Moon 27. I have used it before, don't worry. I promise I'm not stupid!

Are you saying New Moon 28 is a direct fork of Pale Moon 33?

Yes, that is a more-or-less correct interpretation. New Moon 28+ is built on the linked fork of UXP, because in new versions of Pale Moon, the browser interface and rendering engine are separate repositories. I admit the version number is confusing, but it is entirely superficial. It is changed by editing a text file at "palemoon/config/version.txt" in the source tree.

I have been trying to make this as clear as possible, but it seems I am not doing a very good job. If you need any further pointers, let me know.

as if he were "just a stupid kid

Your words based on your own thoughts and injected ideas, I'll step aside and allow you to continue arguing with yourself on this point if you like.

Er, okay, nevermind then. Kind of a weird response to attempted good faith criticism of your representation of other people, but I guess it is the nature of the Internet. Maybe you'll come back and be ready to face the part of the text with the actual quotes in it when you've cooled off a bit, but then again, somebody else in this thread has already tried before me, so...eh.

[Basilisk-Dev]

How are people still asking for this? Windows XP was introduced in 2001... 23 years ago.

Are we to support Linux distributions from 23 years ago too? Or MacOS X 10.1?

1978 is 23 years before 2001. Would developers in 2001 have been expected to support the Apple II or the Commodore PET, both of which would have been current in 1978?

[Moonchild]

How are people still asking for this? Windows XP was introduced in 2001... 23 years ago.

And discontinued 2014, 10 years ago (with sales up to.. what maybe 2 years before that? so.. last normal purchase of XP ~12 years ago or so). PCs can last for a decade if well-built, and people just do not want to move to a new OS on their aging hardware. The world has to bend to their unchanging workflow. It's a special form of entitlement, I guess.

[athenian200]

How are people still asking for this? Windows XP was introduced in 2001... 23 years ago.

Are we to support Linux distributions from 23 years ago too? Or MacOS X 10.1?

Honestly, I've spent a long time thinking about this myself, and I blame this absurd situation of people expecting Windows XP support on the following factors. First, there are some more general ones that have nothing to do with UXP or Pale Moon itself and apply to the computing landscape in general.

1. Windows Vista was a market failure, giving Windows XP an unnaturally long life. Service Pack 3 was not originally planned, and it extended support of normal Windows XP all the way out to 2014.

2. On top of this, an edition of the same codebase got security updates up until 2019, and people basically did a registry hack to get those updates.

3. The 2010s represents one of the worst decades in history for forward movement of computing power in a long time, so people were able to hold onto their old Windows XP machines longer.

4. Many people in Eastern Europe apparently believe that every edition of Windows past XP contains telemetry that cannot be blocked, and refuse to either use anything newer or switch to Linux.

Then, we get to factors more specific to our project.

5. Mozilla supported Firefox on XP until 2018, meaning that unfortunately XP support was baked into ESR 52. Additionally, SeaMonkey kept XP support even longer to 2019, for as long as they were on the ESR 52 codebase.

6. This established a precedent in people's minds that every branch of ESR 52 or earlier should support XP until moving on to a newer base, meaning Pale Moon is compared unfavorably to more legacy-oriented branches of ESR 52 that were simply spinning things out as long as possible and had no eye to future development or long-term continuation of the codebase.

So essentially, it was a perfect storm of Microsoft botching Vista, slow movement of computing power in the 2010s, Eastern European fears of every Windows version post-XP, and Mozilla and SeaMonkey especially establishing a precedent that anything based on ESR 52 can and should support XP long after EOL. At least, that is my analysis of the situation.

Even if I disagree with these people and think they fail to understand how our goals differ from that of, say, SeaMonkey, I can understand why they want to hold us to that standard. Mozilla set the bar high for anyone forking ESR 52, in fact sometimes I half-suspect Windows XP support being included in ESR 52 was a "poison pill" for potential forkers like us who wanted to move that version of the codebase forward... they wanted it to be tied in with legacy technologies that are not attractive to support, in the hopes that those tempted to support any of them would feel the pressure to support all of them, making them reconsider and move to a newer base if at all possible.

In the case of SeaMonkey and Waterfox, it seems to have worked in forcing them onto a newer base. We resisted both moving to a new base and the pressure to support XP, but that means we get attacks from both sides, those who think it's too old a codebase, and those who want us to support every single legacy technology that ESR 52 was capable of dealing with. I feel that we moved forwards the best we could with the options available, but we were in for a difficult path no matter what.

[Moonchild]

If people still think we're somehow a rebuild of Firefox 52, then that just makes me very sad.
Just look at all the feature work we put in as a team effort.
Don't take my word for it. e.g. go load up https://compat-table.github.io/compat-table/es2016plus/ in Firefox 52, then load it up in Pale Moon, and compare javascript support. I'd suggest something similar for our DOM/CSS support but I don't know of an easy comparison test for that online. Check the difference in SSL support too. I could go on.

[frostknight]

If people still think we're somehow a rebuild of Firefox 52, then that just makes me very sad.
Just look at all the feature work we put in as a team effort.
Don't take my word for it. e.g. go load up https://compat-table.github.io/compat-table/es2016plus/ in Firefox 52, then load it up in Pale Moon, and compare javascript support. I'd suggest something similar for our DOM/CSS support but I don't know of an easy comparison test for that online. Check the difference in SSL support too. I could go on.

Its not impossible, but yeah, I imagine it is a lot of work. Then again, what purpose does supporting 32 bit serve?

XP and newer is what I thought 32 bit was for.

But feel free to correct me. As you know, I only really care about linux support. More than anything, I am just curious.

[frostknight]

How are people still asking for this? Windows XP was introduced in 2001... 23 years ago.

Are we to support Linux distributions from 23 years ago too? Or MacOS X 10.1?

XP was supported till 2014+ though.

But no, you don't have to obviously. You are the devs. You can support what you want truthfully.

[back2themoon]

And yeah, I suppose on a purely emotional level, Windows XP users are nostalgic for an older way of doing things, and so are Pale Moon users. But the similarities end there, and the ways in which we go about dealing with those feelings of nostalgia tend to be very different. Pale Moon users are, at their best, people who want to create their own vision of the future that strives to incorporate the good things about the past into something new, while Windows XP users keep their feet firmly planted in the past and tend to see any deviation from it as a bad thing.

Extremely well said, thanks. A brilliant comparison that can be applied elsewhere, as well. This is why I (almost) never skim through athenian200's lengthy posts and neither should you, fellow Pale Moon forum members.

I'll take the above emotional, "ill-founded nostalgia" explanation over your well-thought-out factors. There is no valid computing, or privacy-related reason any more for users to be using XP, let alone expecting 3rd party support for it.

It's gone. Being unable to let go old relationships, a long-lost love, dead friends and relatives... yes. Still unhealthy but understandable, even decades later. Not a Microsoft OS though.

The freedom to use it is there. No one is taking that away and I'm not implying that. Lack of maturity seems to fuel this. Or whatever. Hardly a Microsoft fan anyway, so don't really care. I'd rather pay for AmigaOS, which appeared in 1985 from a now defunct company but is still in active development. Unlike XP, from the fabulously alive Microsoft.

Full circle to athenian200's "Vision of the future" reasoning above.

[frostknight]

Extremely well said, thanks. A brilliant comparison that can be applied elsewhere, as well. This is why I (almost) never skim through athenian200's lengthy posts and neither should you, fellow Pale Moon forum members.

I did read a good portion of it, but I did alas skim some of it. Just as you said.

Some people are even ruder and go TL:DR if its too lengthy.

Like that is so disrespectful and stupid that people have that nerve. Sigh...

It's gone. Being unable to let go old relationships, a long-lost love, dead friends and relatives... yes. Still unhealthy but understandable, even decades later. Not a Microsoft OS though.

To be honest, I cannot think of a reason why to use any windows os beyond below XP or after vista at least directly.

I

Off-topic:
say this because, dosbox-x allows you to install windows me or older into a hdd.img. I have done this to play really old windows games that no one plays anymore online.

Such as this one:

https://www.old-games.com/download/6299/sorry-

PS, that website throttles everything, don't bother using it for any dls.

I choose this website, cause it gives plenty of details on this game, nothing more, nothing less. Thus, don't recommend dling from it. Not worth it.

older windows games tend to have more charm to them in my experience, especially windows 95 ones.

as for why I don't recommend using vista or newer, the spyware and ugliness increases with each new version. Windows 10 however was unbearably ugly and absurd. No one needs forced upgrades. Users aren't stupid, they will update when they know its good to do so.

Microsoft going the apple route. smh...

Anywho that's my take on all of this.

[moonbat]

If people still think we're somehow a rebuild of Firefox 52, then that just makes me very sad.

You'd be surprised (or not), as to how many people remain clueless about the difference between a fork and a rebuild; putting Pale Moon on the same footing as Librewolf, Waterfox etc.

[Moonchild]

You'd be surprised (or not), as to how many people remain clueless about the difference between a fork and a rebuild; putting Pale Moon on the same footing as Librewolf, Waterfox etc.

Well it's exactly because those alternatives aren't forks. Lots of people (including techies who should know better!) just assume independent development isn't a thing on a web browser because it's "something only large companies can do", forever relegating indie software of any kind to "small, single-use tools".

Maybe I should make a write-up on the website about what a fork is and how Pale Moon is different. Sometime. When I have time.