Mozilla Ending Firefox Support For Windows XP And Vista By September 2017
Firefox users who are still clinging to Windows XP or Windows Vista will soon have reason to consider upgrading to Windows 7 or Windows 10. Mozilla announced in a blog post that it is phasing out support for Microsoft's legacy operating systems in 2017. The phase out period will begin in March of next year when Mozilla moves users on XP and Vista to the Extended Support Release (ESR), a version of Firefox that is not updated as frequently.
After that Mozilla will continue providing security updates until September before pulling the plug completely. Users do not need to take any additional action to receive the security updates. In the middle of next year, Mozilla said it will reassess how many users are still running XP and Vista, at which time it will announce a final support end date.
"In the meantime, we strongly encourage our users to upgrade to a version of Windows that is supported by Microsoft. Unsupported operating systems receive no security updates, have known exploits, and are dangerous for you to use. For planning purposes, enterprises using Firefox should consider September 2017 as the support end date for Windows XP and Vista," Mozilla said.
Windows XP and Windows Vista combined now account for less than 10 percent of all PCs, according to data collected by Net Applications. Windows 7 is the most popular OS in the world with a greater than 47 percent share of the market, followed by Windows 10, which now accounts for nearly a quarter of all PCs (23.72 percent).
Firefox is not alone in abandoning official support for older OSes. The latest version of Internet Explorer (Microsoft) and Chrome (Google) both do not support versions of Windows older than Windows 7, the latter of which stopped supporting XP and Vista earlier this year.
After that Mozilla will continue providing security updates until September before pulling the plug completely. Users do not need to take any additional action to receive the security updates. In the middle of next year, Mozilla said it will reassess how many users are still running XP and Vista, at which time it will announce a final support end date.
"In the meantime, we strongly encourage our users to upgrade to a version of Windows that is supported by Microsoft. Unsupported operating systems receive no security updates, have known exploits, and are dangerous for you to use. For planning purposes, enterprises using Firefox should consider September 2017 as the support end date for Windows XP and Vista," Mozilla said.
Windows XP and Windows Vista combined now account for less than 10 percent of all PCs, according to data collected by Net Applications. Windows 7 is the most popular OS in the world with a greater than 47 percent share of the market, followed by Windows 10, which now accounts for nearly a quarter of all PCs (23.72 percent).
Firefox is not alone in abandoning official support for older OSes. The latest version of Internet Explorer (Microsoft) and Chrome (Google) both do not support versions of Windows older than Windows 7, the latter of which stopped supporting XP and Vista earlier this year.
