Why is it that LibreOffice no longer supports Windows XP or Windows Vista?

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#1

…I…am disappointed that I cannot install the latest version of LibreOffice on my beloved Windows Vista. Is there a reason for this other than old age? I thought that the open source community of such projects would be a last refuge of sorts to those still using their preferred operating systems.

UPDATE: I just wanted to write that due to the most arrogant, negative, and rude replies I have ever had the misfortune of experiencing in regard to an open source project (the only exception being erAck)—and these replies only just before the question was closed because it haphazardly and ridiculously deemed to be “not a real question”—I can no longer (and will no longer) recommend or even so much as mention LibreOffice to colleagues, friends, or relatives. Goodbye.

#2

Just a side comment: you deliberately opted to use a non-free operating system. Then what are you doing here? Go and nag Bill Gates. Or throw out that Microsoft trash and install a free operating system like Linux or BSD. Read more.

#3

Please @gabix try to keep this ask site a friendly helpful place. Thank you.

#4

Thank you @erAck for caring about being friendly and helpful unlike the other members who replied to this topic.

#5

These versions e.g. don’t have a proper thread-safe statics implemented, which are now used throughout our code instead of older hacks, to make it more robust. FLOSS is not about tormenting developers to disallow them evolve their software by mandating that they must keep support of each and every obsolete OS that might still have its users. We provide versions of LO able to run on these OSes; just new development (including making the code safer and cleaner) requires newer features not available there.

#6

“FLOSS is not about tormenting developers to disallow them evolve their software by mandating that they must keep support of each and every obsolete OS that might still have its users.”

Supporting these so-called obsolete operating systems (or at least Windows Vista) would not necessitate that progress be impeded or that developers be, ahem, tormented.

#7

Well - as I said, there are features absent in those OSes. You declare something (“Supporting these so-called obsolete operating systems (or at least Windows Vista) would not necessitate that progress be impeded”) that directly contradicts the facts, which are that in the absence of these features, it’s impossible to use certain features of C++, which allow to write less error-prone code, and do that using clearer syntax, less verbosely. And then - disallowing me to make use of those modern features of OS and language means that I have to work with bulkier and less transparent code, with subtle errors caused by race conditions that would be eliminated by simple fact of using features dedicated for that … well - that is a pain which you declare non-existing; and as I do the programming for LibreOffice, I know what I am talking about. That simply means that even if something is possible, I need to spend a week for what would take a day otherwise.

#8

We have never disallowed running of LibreOffice executable on any OS - except for the installer, which, of course, needs to know that it should refuse installation on OSes which known to not work. Please note: known to not work. But why believe my words? You are free to test yourself: you may use a portable version, and try to run it on Vista; or I may help you to modify MSI to successfully install on Vista. And what would you see when trying to run soffice.exe on your OS? Not a dedicated message telling you “Your OS is not supported - refusing” (like installer tells you). No - it will tell you something like “function Foo is not found in Bar.DLL” - which means that the program honestly tried to run, and searched for required functions in the OS - and didn’t find some.

#9

Why would we use those functions absent on older OSes? Do you think that just to nag people? No. Either they are required to make something possible; or even though it’s possible to implement something using other functions, the newer functions provide better tools. So - either way: not being able to use those newer functions absent in older OSes, we either are unable to implement something, or have to use worse tools - meaning poor performance in development, or at runtime; more bugs; less clear code = less people may jump in and continue hacking…

#10

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