[2h]

why should Mozilla let Microsoft or anyone else dictate what they support?

I agree that Windows 7 should be dropped, but only because its quite old, not because Microsoft has dropped support for it. Frankly Windows 7 is better than Windows 11, I think many would agree with that.

[gochi]

It's a dependency, and unless you're going to devote resources into testing and proving that support on your own, it doesn't make sense to extend it past what the dependency's support lifecycle is.

Which is why most places are dropping W7 this year. Microsoft's last extended security update was this year. The age is kind of irrelevant, if Microsoft wanted to support it for another 5 years, then places like Mozilla would continue as long as people used it.

[brucethemoose2]

> Frankly Windows 7 is better than Windows 11, I think many would agree with that.

I would not. Windows 10 has improvements to the compositor, scheduler, settings and seemingly other things that make it faster in many applications, even on low resource systems. It has other features (like HDR, DirectML) that make it far better for some more cutting edge apps.

One could argue the "stock" config of Windows 10 and 11 is really trashy... Which is true. But its not really a fair argument, as OEMs loaded Windows 7 systems with bloatware (where Microsoft is doing more of that these days).

[2h]

> settings

is this a joke? ever tried user management with Windows 10/11? its a hellscape of clicking through the Control Panel, the Settings app, and countless crosslinked pages with no rhyme or reason. same for microphone levels. same for device management.

[nicce]

Long live the PowerShell. Yes, old control panel was much more manageable. Most of the important settings have been hidden from the end-user these days.

[heywoodlh]

I am normally a Linux or MacOS user exclusively, but recently I reinstalled Windows 11 on my somewhat recently purchased Lenovo Yoga 7i. I tried to get as far as I could getting as much of my configuration codified with PowerShell in a git repo[0].

I got really far with it and the end result was super nice, I thought! But a lot of the stuff I wanted was very deeply buried.

Also, the defaults that Microsoft assaults Windows users with are insane! I can't believe what Microsoft gets away with.

[0] https://github.com/heywoodlh/windows-configs

[HideousKojima]

And you still can't open multiple instances of the settings app at the same time. God forbid you want to check your network settings and printer settings at the same time when trying to troubleshoot an issue with a network printer.

[andirk]

Windows XP was great. Windows 7 was best. The rest fall short of those two.

[johannes1234321]

Aside from potential security issues newer versions of windows always provide new APIs and changes to old ones. Keeping support requires keeping track of that and testing, which costs resources.

[nicce]

There is actually dilemma about potential security issues; since the development has been stopped, no new features are introduced and hence no new bugs.

Windows 7 is quite battle-tested. Can the system be so stable that there aren't security issues anymore? On the other hand, one is too much if it is not fixed.

> windows always provide new APIs and changes to old ones

I don't think that is visible or significant. Windows changes APIs but always provides backwards compatibility. It is the major reason why it is dominating in many industry areas. You can run Windows 2000 apps in Windows 11.