Mozilla has already supported the old EOL Windows 7, 8, 8.1 for over two years longer compared to when Chrome/Chromium based browsers dropped Windows 7, 8, 8.1 back in Jan/Feb 2023.

Mozilla cannot be expected to continue to use up resources that they could use elsewhere to keep providing updates to the older Firefox 115 ESR channel (based on the old Firefox 115.0 released July 4, 2023) forever. They originally planned to make the older Firefox 115 ESR EOL as of 115.15.0esr but decided at last day to extend updates the first time.

If you do use Linux look for more lighter desktops like Xfce, Mate over say the heavier KDE and Gnome. Also make sure packages like FFmpeg is installed so you can fully support the HTML5 players used for video, audio, games in websites all around including Youtube.

You should also learn how to setup and use the Firefox Linux tarball archives from Mozilla to get internal Firefox updates from Mozilla (like with Firefox for macOS and Windows). Why because packages support in some Linux distros may only be supported for so long (if it is not a LTS version) and once that version of distro is EOL in packages updates then Firefox package updates are also no more and you would be stuck on a old Firefox version. For example I have seen lots of Ubuntu (or flavour of) users posting here stuck with the old Firefox 113.0 due to their version of distro no longer being updated with packages.

Hi James,

I never meant that ESR should be extended "forever". Just, maybe, a couple more years or so?

The distro I know the most about is PCLinuxOS. But, I'm also looking at others. I don't like any of the *buntus. They use too many resources. I do like KDE the most of all the UIs I've seen, so far. I have a 3.60 gigahertz AMD Ryzen 5 2600X Six-Core processor and 32718 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory. The caveat is that I have a NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 [Display adapter]. I've heard that this is a bad thing for running Linux, in general. BUT, I have run several distros of Linux from bootable CD with little problem that I know of.

As I am coming from a Windows environment, have a modicum of experience with PCLinuxOS and have some, at least, semi-decent hardware I'm wondering if there are any other Linux distros that I could investigate by bootable CD for free. Would you have any other suggestions beyond what you stated above? Any other info you have would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: OH! And I am stumped as to how to unwrap a tarball. I would love to know an easy way of doing that. Being of the age I am, my memory is not what it should be so having to remember a bunch of command line is, basically, not something I am capable of any more. Sorry for that!

This is really off topic here but it may help you enjoy Firefox and maybe someone else. You'll have to purge firefox from your install first and set it up in your home directory. pclinuxos forum can help here. Use mc to unroll the tar balls. mc is the old midnight commander - see screen shot - choose the x in the menu and the chosen file (here FF 136) will immediately expand and replace the firefox installed with the new. Your profile is left untouched. You're on pclinuxos (I use with enlightenment e26) so go to synaptic and freeze ff on whatever vers shows so upgrades won't hit it - you make the changes. If you don't have mc, use synaptic to install it (another s/shot). This is not as difficult as it sounds - if you want to use linux, this is an example of how to simplify your life and upgrade t/bird and ff. You'll need to get used to desktop files.

Hi Jeff,

Thank you for your input. Sorry about the OT thing. Didn't really expect it to go this far. I'll have to get into the PCLOS forum and ask about what you suggested. You seriously lost me. But, I digress. I'll give James until Sunday afternoon/evening to answer me and if he doesn't, I'll close the thread. OK? Thanks, again! :D

James reply was spot on but if you're new to linux, well, everything will seem confusing. If you go this route, its good to start by grasping the idea of disk partitioning and how things are separated. If you haven't been there, you may browse www.distrowatch.com just to look around and get an idea of just how much is available. James is also mentioned desktops and that is a personal thing for the user - aside from ease of use, appearance is important - xfce to me looks kinda clunky at 1st, remember the old windows 3.1? But you have themes to suit your taste But you can do it all with xfce if you like it. KDE is a heavyweight desktop as is ubuntu a heavyweight distro. Guess I'd say, it all depends how much time you can put into it.

Hi James, I never meant that ESR should be extended "forever". Just, maybe, a couple more years or so? The distro I know the most about is PCLinuxOS. But, I'm also looking at others. I don't like any of the *buntus. They use too many resources. I do like KDE the most of all the UIs I've seen, so far. I have a 3.60 gigahertz AMD Ryzen 5 2600X Six-Core processor and 32718 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory. The caveat is that I have a NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 [Display adapter]. I've heard that this is a bad thing for running Linux, in general. BUT, I have run several distros of Linux from bootable CD with little problem that I know of. As I am coming from a Windows environment, have a modicum of experience with PCLinuxOS and have some, at least, semi-decent hardware I'm wondering if there are any other Linux distros that I could investigate by bootable CD for free. Would you have any other suggestions beyond what you stated above? Any other info you have would be greatly appreciated. EDIT: OH! And I am stumped as to how to unwrap a tarball. I would love to know an easy way of doing that. Being of the age I am, my memory is not what it should be so having to remember a bunch of command line is, basically, not something I am capable of any more. Sorry for that!

The thing with Firefox 115 is that some sites are already saying it is too old or it does not support changes that works in newer Firefox versions for example.

Never used distros much outside of openSUSE for so long since as early as Suse 9.1 back in 2004 when I dual booted on my WinXP gaming system. Have not done LiveCD's since the earlier days as the iSO's soon got large enough to require DVD or booting usb flash drives.

With the Firefox tarbal you just extract the archive and run the firefox script or firefox-bin is the basics as there is no package or installer or such. However you may want a launcher or shortcut to it so you can say create a launcher on the desktop to it though every desktop window manager my have slight differences on creating them apart from right-clicking desktop and create launcher. There are Firefox icons you can use in the firefox/browser/chrome/icons/default/ folder (chrome folder has nothing to do with Google Chrome). Do make sure the Firefox folder has read/write permissions for the user to get internal Firefox updates from Mozilla as a user and not as root. If you are the only user then a popular place to have the Firefox folder in is in /home/username/

While the GT 610 is a basic low end card from April 2012, the Ryzen 5 2600X does not have a integrated graphics unit as an option so you need something for display output.

I know what that is like as I have a old i5-2500k system I got used six years for almost nothing and turned into a occasional Win10 gaming system with a AMD 8GB Sapphire NITRO+ RX 470 I got cheap then. The issue with this setup is the motherboard, while it is a nice Asus Sabertooth P67, that damn P67 chipset does not support IGU so It will always need a dedicated GPU when in use.

James is also mentioned desktops and that is a personal thing for the user - aside from ease of use, appearance is important - xfce to me looks kinda clunky at 1st, remember the old windows 3.1? But you have themes to suit your taste But you can do it all with xfce if you like it. KDE is a heavyweight desktop as is ubuntu a heavyweight distro. Guess I'd say, it all depends how much time you can put into it.

I have used used mainly Gnome 2, KDE, Xfce, iceWM and a couple others more briefly over the years. It was mainly Gnome 2 until that stopped and as I did not like Gnome 3 so I went back to Xfce as it is like a lighter version of Gnome 2. Though yes MATE is a option in place of Gnome 2.

Went about the same route but hit Bodhi along the way which was specifically based on enlightenment, which gave me an intro to that d/e-w/m package. Once I got into enlightenment, I was hooked but its devs were slower than molasses in Dec. - the e16 version didn't move for years. pclinuxos had a contributor who specialized in enlightenment , I went there and eventually got to e26, current. bodhi is still on e17 but he forked off and did his own thing. My last windows was 2000 pro, had a copy of XP but never used it and I was tired of playing with the registry any way. Windows is a good system now, doesn't deserve the hate it had during the height of spam days and the nanae newsgroup, late 80s and early 90s which really sparked an interest in linux, (which initially flipped the bird at nvidia... )

James reply was spot on but if you're new to linux, well, everything will seem confusing. If you go this route, its good to start by grasping the idea of disk partitioning and how things are separated. If you haven't been there, you may browse www.distrowatch.com just to look around and get an idea of just how much is available. James is also mentioned desktops and that is a personal thing for the user - aside from ease of use, appearance is important - xfce to me looks kinda clunky at 1st, remember the old windows 3.1? But you have themes to suit your taste But you can do it all with xfce if you like it. KDE is a heavyweight desktop as is ubuntu a heavyweight distro. Guess I'd say, it all depends how much time you can put into it.

Like many others I've seen here in this forum and some others, I still run Windows 7. I will _NEVER_ buy another Microsoft OS ever, again! And that goes even if I wasn't a senior on a fixed income. That said, like many others, I would very much appreciate the ESR version of Firefox being extended for the foreseeable future beyond the 6-month extension that you just posted about. I use many of the extensions quite copiously and can't even think of not using them as some are so extremely protective and some are especially utilitarian, at that. A lot of them are not supported on other browsers even IF those browsers have extensions at all. I've used Firefox since Version 2. Now, in case this is pertinent: I lock the desktop computer [that I built, myself] down seriously tight with several good quality but free 3rd party soft-wares which overlap protection just enough to keep my computer safe but not so much as to conflict. I've formulated my "cocktail" over the past 30 years since I started with Windows 95 through XP and now 7. I do NOT do bu$ine$$ of any kind on line. I do not peruse the back alleys of the internet and I'm not interested in the Black Web. I don't even use on board e-mail opting for on-line email that, again, I do not do bu$ine$$ through and don't open anything that comes in that I don't know the party which sent it. (I do find some of the scam spam rather amusing, though. LOL!) In other words, I follow all best practices other than falling into the update trap that MS has created for end users due to their incessant greed. When or, maybe, just before I can no longer get on the internet at all with Windows 7, I WILL do my best to complete my switchover to Linux for the few on line activities that I enjoy. In the long run, I plan on utilizing a multi-boot configuration as I have software for Windows XP that I find either very useful or very amusing that won't run on 7 or Linux. I also have some software that I like for Windows 7 that won't run on Linux. I'm just not ready to do that now and won't be for quite a while in the future as I continue to learn about and how to administrate my future chosen distro of Linux as I can Windows. All of this is why I'm asking for your patience and continued support for Firefox ESR on older OSes.

Sorry, guys, for dropping off the face of the Forum. But, Life happens. I'll try to do better from now on.

James reply was spot on but if you're new to linux, well, everything will seem confusing. If you go this route, its good to start by grasping the idea of disk partitioning and how things are separated. If you haven't been there, you may browse www.distrowatch.com just to look around and get an idea of just how much is available. James is also mentioned desktops and that is a personal thing for the user - aside from ease of use, appearance is important - xfce to me looks kinda clunky at 1st, remember the old windows 3.1? But you have themes to suit your taste But you can do it all with xfce if you like it. KDE is a heavyweight desktop as is ubuntu a heavyweight distro. Guess I'd say, it all depends how much time you can put into it.

Thank you for the info. Yes, I know about Distrowatch. It's been a few years since I've been able to persue my Linux research, etc. And my laptop died and I haven't figured out how, exactly, to dual boot quite yet. I don't want to blow my Windows completely out of the water just yet, either. The *buntus were the first distros I tried and found out how heavy they are. I tried a few more before finding a LUG near me to go to where a guy turned me on to PCLinuxOS. I like it with the KDE desktop. Not all that crazy about Gnome. Haven't tried XFCE. I've been toying around with this stuff since about 2002. But, since then I was widowed, then remarried and five years ago my current husband had a brain aneurism rupture which almost killed him and caused his frontal right lobe to be almost destroyed and his left frontal left lobe injured, as well. I've been caring for him with no help. So, I stay really super bzzzzy at times......like the last couple weeks!....And the beat goes on!!! LOL! ... Anyway, I do seriously appreciate you guys giving me some refresher material and more things to think about.

btljooz said

Hi James, I never meant that ESR should be extended "forever". Just, maybe, a couple more years or so? The distro I know the most about is PCLinuxOS. But, I'm also looking at others. I don't like any of the *buntus. They use too many resources. I do like KDE the most of all the UIs I've seen, so far. I have a 3.60 gigahertz AMD Ryzen 5 2600X Six-Core processor and 32718 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory. The caveat is that I have a NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 [Display adapter]. I've heard that this is a bad thing for running Linux, in general. BUT, I have run several distros of Linux from bootable CD with little problem that I know of. As I am coming from a Windows environment, have a modicum of experience with PCLinuxOS and have some, at least, semi-decent hardware I'm wondering if there are any other Linux distros that I could investigate by bootable CD for free. Would you have any other suggestions beyond what you stated above? Any other info you have would be greatly appreciated. EDIT: OH! And I am stumped as to how to unwrap a tarball. I would love to know an easy way of doing that. Being of the age I am, my memory is not what it should be so having to remember a bunch of command line is, basically, not something I am capable of any more. Sorry for that!

The thing with Firefox 115 is that some sites are already saying it is too old or it does not support changes that works in newer Firefox versions for example.

Never used distros much outside of openSUSE for so long since as early as Suse 9.1 back in 2004 when I dual booted on my WinXP gaming system. Have not done LiveCD's since the earlier days as the iSO's soon got large enough to require DVD or booting usb flash drives.

With the Firefox tarbal you just extract the archive and run the firefox script or firefox-bin is the basics as there is no package or installer or such. However you may want a launcher or shortcut to it so you can say create a launcher on the desktop to it though every desktop window manager my have slight differences on creating them apart from right-clicking desktop and create launcher. There are Firefox icons you can use in the firefox/browser/chrome/icons/default/ folder (chrome folder has nothing to do with Google Chrome). Do make sure the Firefox folder has read/write permissions for the user to get internal Firefox updates from Mozilla as a user and not as root. If you are the only user then a popular place to have the Firefox folder in is in /home/username/

While the GT 610 is a basic low end card from April 2012, the Ryzen 5 2600X does not have a integrated graphics unit as an option so you need something for display output.

I know what that is like as I have a old i5-2500k system I got used six years for almost nothing and turned into a occasional Win10 gaming system with a AMD 8GB Sapphire NITRO+ RX 470 I got cheap then. The issue with this setup is the motherboard, while it is a nice Asus Sabertooth P67, that damn P67 chipset does not support IGU so It will always need a dedicated GPU when in use.

Hi James, I haven't run into many of the sites that don't work with 115. If I do, I just go to a different site. When I can no longer get into my banks and do what little I do with what I have now, I hope to be using Linux for the internet so I can keep a current browser updated. I know that day is coming sooner rather than later. When I posted my original comment on Firefox on older OSes I was hoping for just a little bit more time to try to get my switchover completed. I want to dual boot or, maybe triple boot my flavor of Linux with 7 and XP as both Windows OSes do things that I seriously like and use on a constant basis. Right now 7 is what I use the most. In the case of a multi-boot configuration, I would keep the Windows OFF of the internet and use only the Linux for the web and some things I like to do on it. I have a separate hard drive that I store stuff on that I want all 3 OSes to be able to see and use. That way I can seamlessly switch OSes without losing what I want to keep from each of them. Thanks, again, for the info you gave me as a refresher and things to think about and research.

PS: I think I"ll leave this open for now, but if an admin needs to close it, I will completely understand.