"Privacy Preserving" feature that sends even more data to advertisers

[gepus]

With the constant changes Mozilla keeps pushing, I assume it will require time and attention.

May I remind you that during an ESR-cycle no new features get pushed.

Especially betterfox

Did you read Moonchild's post? If so, does Betterfox support Win7?

And some sites will eventually drop support for Windows 7.

Yet another well thought out argument.

My previous LibreWolf experience indicates there's a chance that "MoonFox" (or whatever), with its own ID/user agent etc. or even just different feature set, may still hit compatibility issues.

I could be all wrong here, of course.

I'm afraid you are ...
_____________________________________________________

Bottom line, I couldn't find a decent fork of Firefox ESR. The best choice for me was to decrapify the original which I use as secondary browser.
Anyway, after ending Win7 support the number of forks for this OS will decrease.

[suzyne]

I am giving mixed messages, previously saying don't do it (worried about dilution of "brand") and then suggesting do it anyway, with a "why not?".

But I agree that this is a very real possibility for future heartache and pain.

Lastly, if Moonchild makes a bare bones version of Pale Moon to support end of life Windows 7, then he will eventually have the same problem he has/had with Windows XP users who were "vocally adamant" on here, he should provide support for a version of Pale Moon for Windows XP.

(I presume that was meant to be bare bones version of FireFox)

[frostknight]

Off-topic:

If you're going to make damning statements like that, then I'd like to know what you're basing this on.

https://thehackernews.com/2015/08/windo ... osoft.html

If you read it, it also mentions about disabling unauthorized hardware. So... what does that even mean?

That sounds very dubious, doesn't it?

My take is, its probably hardware that they don't want to support, perhaps even open source stuff like ath9k. But I am not sure as of yet, because no information exists to prove this.

[frostknight]

Did you read Moonchild's post? If so, does Betterfox support Win7?

Actually, I don't know. I was under the assumption that it was just a glorified set firefox to turn off all the bloatware switch.

And if mozilla still supports windows 7, then it likely supports betterfox.


At least that is my understanding

Oh btw, I should also address the "microsoft windows has backdoors thing"

Microsoft is a member of prism as is google and both surveil their users, so how would this be done without some kind of backdoor?

[suzyne]

Off-topic:

Microsoft is a member of prism as is google and both surveil their users, so how would this be done without some kind of backdoor?

I remember when the Edward Snowden/NSA revelations were first released, it was all jaw-dropping stuff. Facebook was also named as a member of Prism, and they aren't putting hardware and computer operating systems into people's homes, so I don't really think that Prism is about backdoors on the desktop. Isn't it more about giving USA government agencies access to the servers of the companies who are signed up or coerced to be part of Prism? At least that's how I remember it. If Windows had government backdoors, surely they would have been discovered and be big news by now?

[frostknight]

Off-topic:

Off-topic:

Microsoft is a member of prism as is google and both surveil their users, so how would this be done without some kind of backdoor?

I remember when the Edward Snowden/NSA revelations were first released, it was all jaw-dropping stuff. Facebook was also named as a member of Prism, and they aren't putting hardware and computer operating systems into people's homes, so I don't really think that Prism is about backdoors on the desktop. Isn't it more about giving USA government agencies access to the servers of the companies who are signed up or coerced to be part of Prism? At least that's how I remember it. If Windows had government backdoors, surely they would have been discovered and be big news by now?

My understanding was that was only a part of it. Besides, microsoft regularly gives zero days and backdoor info to the NSA on a regular basis. I forget when I heard this.

Although, GNU.org/malware usually says something on this note

Just look at the microsoft part for microsoft tho

[andyprough]

*shrug* There just doesn't seem to be a good solution to the dilemma as long as major players keep shitting the bed.
I'd just like to give people on Win 7 and 8 an option after March 2025 that "just works" and the way things are going with Pale Moon perpetually playing catch-up to Chrome's constant draft churn that web devs are drooling over to use the moment they "canIuse" it, I was thinking a low-effort Firefox rebuild that doesn't make the user the product would be an idea. But if y'all think it's a bad idea then I'll just leave it.

Just do it, I'm sure it will turn out well enough.

But I wouldn't have as a primary goal to give any set of users a browser that "just works" as compared to Pale Moon. I've done the work in the past of checking user complaints site-for-site between Firefox and Pale Moon, and I found that the data clearly shows that using Firefox does not in any way give a problem-free experience.

[moonbat]

You'll end up with the problem of entitled noobs acting like this place is premium tech support, but times ten.

[Moonchild]

Off-topic:

https://thehackernews.com/2015/08/windo ... osoft.html

If you read it, it also mentions about disabling unauthorized hardware. So... what does that even mean?

That sounds very dubious, doesn't it?

My take is, its probably hardware that they don't want to support, perhaps even open source stuff like ath9k. But I am not sure as of yet, because no information exists to prove this.

First off, you really should use offtopic tags. You know they exist, you've been around for long enough to know you should mark offtopic what is offtopic.

Then the article you linked to... I'm not sure how you didn't read that critically to know it's hyperbole... A few critical notes:

• It's 10 years old. In all that time none of the things you allege have happened. Microsoft has, in the meantime, also updated their agreements to clarify their wording.
• It draws wild conclusions based on a single clause from a Microsoft Online Services agreement (governing Xbox and specific on-line services), which has nothing to do with your use of Windows or the software agreement for the O.S. It seems clear to me that the agreement, when talking about "software" pertains to services client software and licensing obtained through it.
• The article itself even has to come out at the end that it's all guesswork, and admit "there isn't any mention of counterfeit software" and the originating article this parrots (being just as much a wild blame game) "The list of services covered by the agreement doesn’t explicitly include Windows 10."
• The services agreement also doesn't mention anything about "scanning" so I'm not even sure where that part came from, either. Seems to have been made up out of whole cloth, too.

There's more I'm not going to spell out here.

So... really? REALLY? That is what you base this on?

And... throwing in "backdoor" claims for good measure I guess?

Please be a bit more critical in your reading in the future.

[andyprough]

You'll end up with the problem of entitled noobs acting like this place is premium tech support, but times ten.

Yeah, there's some real value in having such mature and integrated code with Pale Moon, rather than trying to piece together various Google parts and other random bits and pieces to make a working browser like Firefox. The support burden appears astronomically higher in the case of Firefox, even though the number of desktop users is not so many more, less than a multiple of 30 based on the global browser usage stats I saw last year. Possibly closer, with Pale Moon use appearing to increase while Firefox desktop use has definitely been on the decline.

[Moonchild]

I did some research and it doesn't seem to be straightforward to rebuild anything past ESR115 with win7, 8 and 8.1 compatibility since a lot of specific code paths have been removed. So if I were to make a rebuild it'd have to be Firefox 115-ESR based. Anything later would be a fork with required undoing of most of the dependent tasks listed on bug #1594270.
So, there would have to be a choice: either build 115ESR with continued sec updates, which I could do but that would literally not be long-term usable, or actually do more work to restore NT6 compatibility to a later ESR (which I likely don't have the free time for).

[gepus]

IMHO the first choice would make little sense since the usability of ESR 115 would be prolonged only for aprox 1 year by now onward.
Regarding the second choice, the start would be more complicated/time consuming as I initially thought.

Anyway, thank you for taking a closer look!

---------------------------------------------
Win7 users (like me) are left with 3 choices:
- to switch their OS
- renouncement of a secondary browser
- hoping that someone will make an usable ESR-fork for Win7

[Shadow]

I did some research and it doesn't seem to be straightforward to rebuild anything past ESR115 with win7, 8 and 8.1 compatibility

Then how does r3dfox do it? That person certainly had trepidation about starting a fork which leads me to believe they are on an amateur tier.

I know I've read they used a patch of some sort. Think they've covered most of those tracks since. They would probably tell you how, or I might be able to find mention again, but my guess is they probably discussed about it mostly in friggin' discord.

Maybe you can look into this unbranded 122 build and uncover what they did.

Convinced it can't be that difficult for someone with your experience.

[Moonchild]

Convinced it can't be that difficult for someone with your experience.

It's not about experience. It's about resources (primarily my time and energy). I can look into it more after the December release of Pale Moon, since I won't have anything specific on my plate over the holidays. I'm sure it can be done but it needs a pretty large initial chunk of dedication to get it off the ground.

[frostknight]

First off, you really should use offtopic tags. You know they exist, you've been around for long enough to know you should mark offtopic what is offtopic.

Off-topic:
Yeah... sorry, your right.

It's 10 years old. In all that time none of the things you allege have happened. Microsoft has, in the meantime, also updated their agreements to clarify their wording.

Off-topic:
Oh, okay nevermind then.

And... throwing in "backdoor" claims for good measure I guess?

Please be a bit more critical in your reading in the future.

Off-topic:
Well, the backdoor claims is not based on just that, microsoft is a part of prism from the snowden revelations.

Wasn't trying to be just critical. And I wasn't aware this hadn't happened, I guess maybe at most they have the power to do so the above? Idk.... I find it very odd that they even suggested that in the agreement tho. Btw, also adding this too:

https://theintercept.com/2015/12/28/rec ... ption-key/ If it happens once, it may happen again

Sorry if I pissed you off...

[Night Wing]

I'm going to make a suggestion and I'm going to base it on logic and common sense. I am going to quote parts of two of your previous posts into my one post for today.

I did some research and it doesn't seem to be straightforward to rebuild anything past ESR115 with win7, 8 and 8.1 compatibility since a lot of specific code paths have been removed. So if I were to make a rebuild it'd have to be Firefox 115-ESR based.

So, there would have to be a choice: either build 115ESR with continued sec updates, which I could do but that would literally not be long-term usable, or actually do more work to restore NT6 compatibility to a later ESR (which I likely don't have the free time for).

You state you don't have the free time for it. That is understandable since you have a lot on your plate. But if you drop Windows 7 support, the Windows 7 people will be "upset" (to put it mildly).

It's not about experience. It's about resources (primarily my time and energy). I can look into it more after the December release of Pale Moon, since I won't have anything specific on my plate over the holidays. I'm sure it can be done but it needs a pretty large initial chunk of dedication to get it off the ground.

Since you state it is going to need a large chunck of dedication to get it off the ground, you could do that "when" you have free time". But there will come a time when you don't have the free time to continue on with it. Which means you're going to run into "Murphy's Law" sooner or later in the near future if you go down this path.

But here is a suggestion I am putting forth and you might want to consider it "if" you think it might be feasible. But first, I have to go back in time for an analogy.

Back in 2013 there were people on here asking if there was a way to get a linux Pale Moon. You stated you could do all the ground work, "the heavy lifting" so to speak to get linux Pale Moon off the ground.

But there was a caveat. You stated you would most likely not have the time and energy to maintain it. You asked for a maintainer for linux Pale Moon to make linux Pale Moon become Reality for the linux people who were making the request (which includes me). And one person did step up and became the first maintainer for linux Pale Moon. And linux Pale Moon was publicly released in January of 2014.

Time passed and the first maintainer had to "move on" and he asked for a second maintainer and another person stepped up and maintained linux Pale Moon. More time passed and the second maintainer had to move on and he asked if there was another person who could maintain linux Pale Moon.

Trava90" (Travis) stepped up to be (and has been the third maintainer) for linux Pale Moon and he has been making the GTK2 and GTK3 builds for linux Pale Moon. And Travis has been a "god send" for maintaining linux Pale Moon for many years now.

Could you do the same thing above and lay the ground work for the version for the Windows 7 people who want this version with the caveat that one of the Windows 7 users would have to be the maintainer for this version? This means you could save the time (and energy) you really don't have because your plate is very full.

So if the Windows 7 users want this version, see if one of them would step up and maintain this version "for all of the other Windows 7 users" on here as well as the lurkers on here who still use Windows 7. If none of the Windows 7 users want to maintain this version, your decision for you becomes a little easier whether to continue going forward or not.

To sum up. This post of mine is just "food for thought" for you.

[Moonchild]

I did have a look at what can be done with Firefox to make later versions Windows 7 compatible but it's not easy, and the reason for that is primarily because Mozilla has pretty much locked in browser DRM (disable-eme is no longer a thing) and they have been shoving in Microsoft's WMF CDM, AKA "PlayReady", post-115, all in such a way that the control mechanisms for building in any way other than the default setup on Windows no longer builds. Since that apparently requires certain features not present with WINVER < 0x0A00 (Windows 10), builds do not complete unless EME would be completely stripped out (and since it's no longer conditional code, it'd have to be done manually...) What conditional code there is, also only seems to half-work.

[frostknight]

(disable-eme is no longer a thing)

That is so like Mozilla...

*

I did have a look at what can be done with Firefox to make later versions Windows 7 compatible but it's not easy, and the reason for that is primarily because Mozilla has pretty much locked in browser DRM

Sigh*

I wouldn't bother, you do enough as it is. This might drive you batty trying to maintain both. This is why waterfox, librewolf, mullvad and others exist anyhow. And also betterfox and arkenfox too.

[Moonchild]

That is so like Mozilla...

Actually, it wasn't. Mozilla was very much against EME when it was first proposed. But it does look like the current Mozilla has eroded to the point where they are peddling Google stuff just as hard as Chrome is, without reserve.

I wouldn't bother, you do enough as it is.

Well, it depends. If there are enough people on Win 7-8.1 who would like a browser getting continued security updates then I can extend the life support of ESR-115 for them with little effort.
If there aren't, then I can see what can be done to have a rebuild of it removing all the potentially problematic but otherwise not UX impacting stuff from what Firefox has become, but as said that would get us into the path where some alternatives already exist and the last thing the browser market needs is more competition among independents (a lesson Linux still hasn't learned) so I'd rather not from a moral perspective.

[gepus]

This is why waterfox, librewolf, mullvad and others exist anyhow. And also betterfox and arkenfox too.

It is for the second time you are repeating the above!

Once again: could you please point me to one of them which will continue support for Firefox ESR on Win7 after Firefox will end the 115- cycle?

Off-topic:
Many people are well educated not to speak with a full mouth, but they have no qualms about doing so with an empty head.