Extended Support Timeline
In a recent AMA session on Reddit, engineers from Mozilla shared exciting news regarding the future of Firefox support for older operating systems. The company has decided to extend its support for Firefox on platforms that are no longer officially supported, including Windows 7, 8, 8.1, and macOS versions 10.12 to 10.14. While specific timelines were not initially disclosed, further insights have since emerged.
The Firefox Release Calendar indicates that Firefox 115 ESR, the latest version compatible with Windows 7, 8, and 8.1, will continue to receive updates until April 1, 2025. The upcoming release, Firefox 115.21 ESR, is scheduled for March 4, 2024, providing users of these older Windows versions with a minimum of seven additional months of support.
Originally, Mozilla had planned to discontinue support for Windows 7 and 8.1 by September 2024. However, the company has since revised its strategy, now offering two Extended Support Release (ESR) versions: 115 for unsupported operating systems and 128 for Windows 10 and newer. By removing Windows 7 support from Firefox 116 and subsequent versions, Mozilla has streamlined its code base, alleviating the challenges associated with maintaining outdated libraries that no longer cater to pre-Windows 10 environments.
Mozilla’s decision to extend support is largely driven by the significant number of Firefox users still operating on Windows 7. As one engineer noted:
Continuing to support it past October isn’t going to be free (backporting security fixes is already getting increasingly painful due to the divergence which naturally happens over time as an ESR goes further into its lifecycle), but there’s still enough users there that we felt it was worth doing for now at least.
In addition, Mozilla anticipates providing more official updates regarding this support extension in the near future.
For context, major tech companies like Microsoft and Google ceased updates for their browsers on Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 as early as January 2023. This cessation of Chromium support prompted other developers, including Valve with its Steam platform, to halt updates for their software as well.
