Continuing the discussion from Apparently I'm going to be kicked off the boards (Discourse upcoming incompatibility){New cheap PC posts moved out}:
I’m moving a lot of posts out.
Note: Many of these posts were relevant, but not helpful to the OP and overwhelming the thread.
Better to let people discuss it to death in a non-troubleshooting thread.
If it is a worst case scenario where you have to spend some money, the cheapest way is probably to buy a Tracfone (here’s one for $15) and use it in WiFi mode. Probably not an ideal solution from your POV, but if it is that or nothing…
You’ll have to buy a “plan”, but that can be a one month $10 card that you never need to bother refilling if you use WiFi.
Non-Windows 10 & 11 have a collective market share of less than 3% of just desktop windows and desktop windows likely is less than 50% of all access to this board. What’s more damning is that the market share of non-Win 10 & 11 appears to be very stable over time which means Discourse doesn’t gain much by dragging this out another year or two because it won’t substantially decrease the number of people it affects. They might as well rip the bandaid off now.
What you’re not seeing is the collective drag on software development speed from supporting a wider range of platforms. Every software development team constantly has to balance the tradeoff between supporting more users vs building more features. The costs are real, even if they’re invisible to the consumer.
This asinine decision isn’t just about non-Windows users, it’s also about legacy Windows users prior to Windows 10, particularly the enormously popular Windows 7. What’s the trade-off that’s so enormously important that legacy platforms have to be literally banned?
They could say those platforms are not supported and nothing is guaranteed to work in them without blocking users from logging in entirely, couldn’t they?
They could, but there is a cost of support that they don’t want to deal with even if they say buyer beware.
They aren’t being banned; Discourse, Firefox, etc just won’t spend the time and effort to make sure they’re compatible anymore.
“Why can’t I fill up my gas car at a EV charger? That’s unfair!”
In this analogy, what’s the analog of the still readily available gas stations?
“Why can’t I hitch my horse at the gas pump? It’s so unfair!”
“In this analogy, what’s the analog of the still readily available hitching post?”
There isn’t one - because horses are obsolete for practical transportation, just like a decade and a half old operating system.
Why should Discourse, or Firefox, or Google, or any other software company continue to spend dev time on maintaining compatibility with dinosaur computers, at the cost of fixing bugs or developing features for modern versions?
As @Babale pointed out, the people that are selling EV charging are pushing the benefits of driving an EV. They have no obligation to support IC engines.
If Discourse wants to use new features that obsolete browsers don’t support, that’s a business decision. Why does Google not support Chrome on old OS systems? Same thing,
iOS 15.7 was released in September 2022, and 16.7 in September 2023. Isn’t that getting a little quick for Discourse developers to age out support for prior operating systems?
I think so, and I’m wondering why they are doing that.
I assume so that they can sell new Chromebooks? I had to, but I was annoyed about it.
But this applies to all platforms, even where they don’t receive a penny directly from the consumer.
The actual reason is that the difficulty and dev time cost of bug fixing increases geometrically with the number of supported versions, and likewise the difficulty and cost of implementing new features increases exponentially with the number of versions you want to roll out your changes to.
If you clicked on the link, you’d realized what I was referring to was collectively Windows 8, 8.1, 7 & Vista/XP/2000/98/95/3.1 etc. Windows 7 specifically has a 2.3% market share.
I wouldn’t call that “immensely popular”.
My Chromebook from 2017 also no longer receives updates, including Chrome, so I will either have to use a different device to get here.
It certainly was very popular back at its peak. I think it had a very high uptake and acceptance rating compared to other versions of the os. I think that might have been what @wolfpup was talking about.