Support for Windows XP and Vista ending soon

Since the public forum doesn’t exist any more, this is the only place they could put it

That’s Windows 10, the latest version of Windows…

Windows XP has been out of support for 4 years now. The most users have, and Roblox is barely interested in porting Roblox to Linux, let alone rolling their own distro.

There are warnings when you start Roblox on these OSes

No.

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My experience with putting new programs on XP says otherwise.

What programs did you port then?

Port isn’t the right term, but I’ve moved the files for PDN and WinRAR to an XP machine and they just worked.

Of course, this was a little over a year ago.

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yes, because they support windows xp, and might not just want to provide technical support for users of windows xp

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F

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They won’t be able to run Roblox at all…

When support for these operating systems ends people could move to Linux or Mac.

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This update leaves me just sitting on the fence. How much did supporting XP and Vista take from improving the platform? Did certain updates release slower than intended because of XP/Vista support? I believe maybe so, but I’m not certain. It could probably be a multitude of different reasons as well.

The savings mostly fall within engineer’s time (they have to spend longer keeping things XP and Vista compatible) and with back-end things, they can now do things that wouldn’t work on XP/Vista.

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That makes a lot of sense, thanks. Helps a lot.

Just FYI, the client does not run on Linux and I’m not even sure if a Linux port will ever be made, and Macs can be very steep when it comes to price (excluding older models which may become software EOL’d without any warning, well you can run Windows 10 just fine on a 2007 C2D iMac or Macbook (pro), though I would certainly not recommend it, unless you have maxed out the RAM and put a SSD).

You don’t have much other options than shelling out bucks for a W10 license/product key (although rumor has it that you can use a valid Windows 7 or 8.x license/product key to activate Windows 10 EDIT: That’s what basically I did when I installed Windows 10 on my PC, as I already had a valid and legitimate W7 Ultimate product key… So it seems that this workaround still works) in these cases… Or if your hardware is too ancient, buy another PC.

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This is probably the fifth time someone’s told me that.

Like I said, the blog.

@theLMGN, I’ve already got a good answer from @UnderMyWheel. Thanks for trying to help, but you’re basically repeating replies I’ve already gotten, and info I had already read in the main post. I even replied to someone with a list of about five people who had given me the same information, but I suspect that post was removed :laughing:

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I think this is a good call… I hate to think there will be people who can no longer play now because they can’t afford higher then then XP or Vista, but at the end of the day ROBLOX is only going to constantly improve and I don’t believe players stuck on XP or Vista will be able to play new ROBLOX games eventually anyway.

Does this also mean that Windows 7 or 8 is also losing support soon?

I am currently running Windows 10 but I know a lot of people didn’t want to make the upgrade to the newer OS.

Considering the fact that a considerable number of people use Windows 7, probably not soon. Steam lists Windows 7 as making up around 20% of userbase operating systems, as opposed to the 70%+ that Windows 10 has - nothing to scoff at, even though it’s a minority.

That being said, I suspect the number will decrease by quite a bit when Windows 7 support ends in early 2020, which will in turn lead to ROBLOX likely ending support for the OS (though Vista has lasted two years after the official end of Microsoft’s support for the OS, so it could take a while). ROBLOX likely has different user OS statistics as well, though to what extent is of course a mystery.

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It’s not just about EOS for the OS, but also a careful balancing act of how complicated is it for us to maintain this userbase.

If Windows XP had a hold of 0.001% of all Roblox users, but it took them no extra work to support it, they would’ve likely kept it.

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That is true, yes. Windows 7 and 8 are each less of a mess than Vista and less archaeic than XP in design (obviously), so I’d say their lifespan is going to be pretty fair.

I would say it would probably be at least 2022 before the end of support for Windows 7 and 8. ROBLOX’s core audience isn’t the same audience that would be reluctant to switch to Windows 10, from my perspective, so the effort needed to maintain support would be the heavier side of the balancing act. Though without insight into ROBLOX user OS stats it’s just guesstimation.

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It is a shame that XP and Vista will be ‘ending’, however the fact that it is mainly for security reasons, then I am in full support. Ok there will be a small percentage of users that will be effected by this change, but it is for the better.

I believe the last time I even used windows XP must be about 10 years ago, it is quite amazing how quickly technology moves on… and it is also almost impossible to keep up too! :smile: .

For those who are affected by this and are looking for a new operating system I would highly recommend Windows 10. I have been using it since it released back in 2015, and it is waves ahead of the older version of Windows (7 & 8). I would personally avoid Windows 8, as from my experience and from a usability perspective it was just a nightmare. So my suggestion, would be to go for Windows 10, if you cannot, then go for Windows 7. Thanks!

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We all knew this day would come. Windows XP is VERY likely to get viruses. Vista is very laggy. There are tons of software that ended support for windows xp and vista already. For example, chrome. All in all, this was long overdue. And it would be sad to see it go, but as time goes on, we would only remember and miss roblox running on windows xp.