Supermium drags Google Chrome back in time to Windows XP, Vista, and 7
- Reference: 1709717409
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/03/06/supermium_chrome_for_xp/
- Source link:
The [1]third-party adaptation of Chrome works on versions of Windows that the official product no longer supports. It installs and runs on Windows 7, which [2]stopped getting updates for Edge and Chrome at the start of 2023. It's even able to log into a Google account, as well as synchronize settings and addons.
Chrome version 121 isn't completely current – at the time of writing, [3]that is version 124.0.6329.0 – but it's substantially more recent than the previous best official offering of version 109. Developer [4]Shane "win32ss" Fournier previously developed the [5]Vista Extended Kernel , which allowed the exceptionally determined to run some Windows 7 apps on its much maligned predecessor. He offers both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Supermium, and the [6]source code is on GitHub .
[7]
Please don't try this at home. But, if you need evidence, here's Chrome 121 on Windows XP, more or less (click to enlarge)
More impressively, it works fine on Windows XP, giving this ancient OS its most current browser by quite some way (you do need a CPU capable of SSE2, though). When we looked at [8]running XP in 2023 , the Mozilla-based [9]MyPal68 was the most complete modern browser we could find. We tested Supermium on our Core 2 Duo XP64 laptop, and not only did it work well, it was also surprisingly fast. Sites such as Gmail and Facebook were perfectly usable.
[10]
This, on the other hand, is a more defensible proposition: Supermium 121 on Windows 7, running very nicely thank you (click to enlarge)
Once again, we urge you not to run Windows XP on any internet-connected computer in the third decade of the 21st century. Some users, though, have no choice, such as those running expensive peripherals – like an [11]$18,000 X-ray machine – that don't work with anything newer. If you have no alternative but to keep XP alive, Supermium does work. You can't install it in the normal way – the installer crashes with an error. However, you can manually unzip the package – [12]7-Zip works fine on XP and XP64 – then copy the files into C:\Program Files\ and run the binary directly.
[13]Tiny Core Linux 15 stuffs modern computing in a nutshell
[14]KDE Plasma 6.0 brings the same old charm and confusion
[15]Lightweight Windows-like desktop LXQt makes leap to Qt 6 with version 2.0
[16]On-disk format change beckons for brave early adopters of Bcachefs
Windows 10 will [17]reach its end of life in 17 months and a lot of perfectly serviceable Windows 10 PCs can't run Windows 11, [18]even if there are workarounds . If you can't handle Linux for some reason and therefore must run an unsupported version of Windows, we have to agree with those who feel that Windows 7 is a lot more pleasant and attractive than any later version.
There are other ways to run newer Chrome-based browsers on Windows 7, such as [19]Reinhard Blaukovitch's crack . However, Supermium is rather less intimidating, and because of Fournier's changes to the Chromium code to use older Windows APIs, it also runs on Windows XP, Vista, and 8.x. ®
[20]
Get our [21]Tech Resources
[1] https://win32subsystem.live/supermium/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/09/microsoft_windows_7_8_support_ends/
[3] https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/
[4] https://github.com/win32ss
[5] https://ximonite.com/win32/
[6] https://github.com/win32ss/supermium
[7] https://regmedia.co.uk/2024/03/05/supermium-xp64.jpg
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/24/dangerous_pleasures_win_xp_in_23/
[9] https://github.com/Feodor2/Mypal68
[10] https://regmedia.co.uk/2024/03/05/supermium-win7.jpg
[11] https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/28996931/Old-Xray-equipment-running-on-Win-XP-so-can%27t-upgrade-to-the-latest-Eaglesoft.html
[12] https://www.7-zip.org/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/04/tiny_core_linux_15/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/29/kde_plasma_60_released/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/29/lxqt_2_is_coming/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/28/new_vers_bcachefs_zfs/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/06/microsoft_windows_10_security/
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/04/rufus_explorerpatcher_windows_11/
[19] https://github.com/Blaukovitch/GOOGLE_CHROME_Windows_7_CRACK
[20] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZehM2IwHBaL4a122C7MoDgAAAMA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[21] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
My thoughts exactly...
Even using SMB to transfer files between XP and windows 10/11 (like you'd need to do on the x-ray machine mentioned in the article) is a pain in the ass these days, requiring you to open up security vulnerabilities you don't want on any internet-connected network.
This sort of stuff needs to exist in their own little time capsule network, and any access has to be heavily firewalled or offline.
And software virtualized/sandboxed. Although i'd say that any business relying on 10-25 year old software, and is unable to affort another long-time investment for a newer version, should probably take a good look at how healthy their business actually is... (no comments on personal use there).
We have that problem at work. We have a couple of Windows 7 machines. Thankfully, they do not need internet access, so they have been physically disconnected. The offices the PCs are in do not need any data access, so we have just disconnected the network sockets at the patch panel end.
The PCs themselves are connected to (and controlling) large, expensive (> £100k to replace) scanning machines This large machinery is controlled by software that requires Windows 7. The manufacturer does have a Windows 10 compatible version we can download, but this does not support the model of the machines we have, so we'd need to replace them. Apart from the out of date software, the machines are still fine.
The fact the PCs are connected to these large scanners does a good job of discouraging people from moving them to a room with an active network port. That, and the fact that that department has a good supply of PCs that are up to date, and are allowed on the internet, so if any staff need internet access, there is probably a machine free.
it's "Deity"
a plan
If there was only a way of installing security/driver updates in Win 7 (or even win10 in the future) so many of us would be happy ...
If MS charged $15pa it would make them as much money as their average os lifetime ($100 over 7years perhaps), would be ongoing income and they wouldn't have to employ "coders" to produce awful new crapware ...
Re: a plan
I suspect that the quality of coders currently employed at MS is so low that any new security/driver updates they could write for ANY earlier version of Windows would be equally as crap as the current Win11 stack.
Re: a plan
They actually already do this, only for 3 years though. ( [1] windows 7 and [2]windows 10 )
For windows 7 it started at 70$, and doubled every year (the previous years were not included, so for 3 years the cost was 70+140+280=$490, [3]source )
The increasing price likely has to do with the increasing amount of work and the shrinking customer base each year.
The current lifecycle of windows is a new OS every 3 years, and 5+3 years of support. I think that's very reasonable.
Technology progresses, they need to launch new products, and it makes no financial sense to keep supporting older OSes.
They have also been doing a lot better in terms of backwards compatibility. I don't think i've ever had issues running windows 7 applications on windows 10/11. XP often works as well due to better emulation, most issues i have are related to drivers or old versions of protocols that have been disabled or removed due to security concerns.
Drivers are not really Windows' responsibility to begin with, they are also harder to make work with generic emulation. This is also why windows is going to Apple route of going with generic drivers that work for every device, that way they can ensure backwards compatibility themselves at the cost of reduced functionality in some cases.
Besides, they don't really care about the income of Windows licenses. I wouldn't be surprised if they made a loss on windows as a standalone product.
They care about office 365 subscriptions, advertisements, etc.
They don't employ anyone to make software for legacy OSes, someone just decided to do it themselves. MS doesn't care about XP anymore in the slightest, they don't want anyone to use it anymore. It's giving them headaches because they have to spend 10+ years with optional unsafe legacy protocols in their modern OS because some stubborn people refuse to upgrade. (see SMB1.0, only completely removed from windows quite recently, after a long time of warnings and pleas to please stop using it)
[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-client/windows-7-eos-faq/windows-7-extended-security-updates-faq
[2] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/extended-security-updates
[3] https://www.bemopro.com/cybersecurity-blog/windows-7-esu#:~:text=you%20stack%20up%20%F0%9F%91%87-,How%20Long%20Does%20Windows%207%20ESU%20Last%3F,-The%20short%20answer
I was actually on site yesterday as a vinyl cutters PC died. It was running XP. It was the 2nd time in around 5 years I had to repair it, the last time I dragged it from W95. Key issue is that it uses a sentinel dongle and the modern version is super expensive as they only do small inhouse jobs with it.
Fortunately they are a hording company and found a twin PC, swapped the IDE drive over, copied the files and off they went. I have pointed out that it's just a matter of time, however I think I have old IDE drives kicking around.
It was like an old friend
I can see very good reasons to keep XP and similar going for specialised hardware or software that has no (affordable) replacements, but why in $DIETY name would you be browsing the web from that?
If not tied to hardware then run in a VM and use the supported host for your email/browsing! If tied to hardware get a 2nd PC to browse!