4 ms·

That seems like a lot of people to abandon! Perhaps the right financial decision, I don't know, but that seems like a significant number of users.

metalliqaz 1y ago
within those numbers are people who don't really have a preference one way or another, and just didn't bother to upgrade. I have to imagine that the group of people that must use 32-bit and need modern features is vanishingly small.
- kstrauser 1y ago
  I think that’s the right way to look at it. If you want a 32 bit system to play with as a hobby, you know you’re going to bump into roadblocks. And if you’re using a 20 year old system for non-hobby stuff, you already know there’s a lot of things that don’t work anymore.
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    >And if you’re using a 20 year old system for non-hobby stuff, you already know there’s a lot of things that don’t work anymore. Mate, 20 year old system means a Pentium 4 Prescott and Athlon 64, both of which had 64 bit support. And in another year after we already had dual core 64 bit CPUs. So if you're stuck on 32 bit CPUs then your system is even older than 20 years.
    - kstrauser 1y ago
      That was a transitional time. Intel Core CPUs launched as 32 bit in 2006, and the first Intel Macs around then used them. OS X Lion dropped support for 32 bit Intel in 2011. So you could very well have bought a decent quality 32 bit system after 2005, although the writing was on the wall long before then.
      - zokier 1y ago
        Maybe more relevantly, the first Atom CPUs were 32-bit only and were used in the popular netbooks (eeepc etc) during 2008-2010ish era.
      - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
        >So you could very well have bought a decent quality 32 bit system after 2005, although the writing was on the wall long before then. Not really. With the launch of Athlon 64, AMD basically replaced all their 32bit CPUs lineups with that new arch, and not kept them along much longer as a lower tier part. By 2005 I expect 90% of new PCs sold were already 64 bit ready.
        kstrauser 1y ago
        Intel didn’t do that by 2005, though. MacBooks weren’t the single most popular product line, but they weren’t exactly eMachines.
        FirmwareBurner 1y ago
        Macbook market share was irrelevant around 2005 for that to matter in the PC CPU statistics.
        axiolite 1y ago
        > By 2005 I expect 90% of new PCs sold were already 64 bit ready. You're several years off: "The FIRST processor to implement Intel 64 was the multi-socket processor Xeon code-named Nocona in June 2004. In contrast, the initial Prescott chips (February 2004) did not enable this feature." "The first Intel mobile processor implementing Intel 64 is the Merom version of the Core 2 processor, which was released on July 27, 2006. None of Intel's earlier notebook CPUs (Core Duo, Pentium M, Celeron M, Mobile Pentium 4) implement Intel 64." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Intel_64 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Intel_64 "2012: Intel themselves are limiting the functionality of the Cedar-Trail Atom CPUs to 32bit only" https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/no-emt64-on-intel-atom-n2600.204215/post-2883539 https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/no-emt64-on-intel-at... Intel had 80% of the CPU market at the time.
- pdntspa 1y ago
  I would bet a lot of those folks are running embedded linux environments. Kiosks, industrial control, signage, NUCs, etc. I know that as of about 6 years ago I was still working with brand-new 32-bit celeron systems for embedded applications. (Though those CPUs were EOL'd and we were transitioning to 64-bit)
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    6 years ago was 2019. You were working in 2019 with "brand new 32-bit-only Celerons" which had no 64 bit support?! Nah mate, something doesn't add up. I can't buy this. Even the cheapest Atoms had 64bit support much earlier than that and Atoms were lower tier silicone than Celeron so you can't tell me Intel had brand new 32 bit only Celerons in 2019. My Google-fu found the last 32-bit only chips intel shipped were the Intel Quark embedded SoCs EoL in 2015. So what you're saying doesn't pass the smell test.
    - pdntspa 1y ago
      May have been 2018. Definitely not that long before covid. Suppliers in the embedded space will stockpile EOL parts for desperate integrators such as ourselves, and can continue to supply new units for years after they're discontinued. The product needed a custom linux kernel compile and it took a while to get that working on 64-bit and we had to ship new units. Yes the COGS get ridiculous.
      - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
        Sure, but in that case it probably wasn't a Celeron, and there's industrial players still keeping 386 systems alive for one reason or another, but it feels in bad faith to call it "brand new" when it's actually "~10 year old, new old stock". Do you know what I mean?
        pdntspa 1y ago
        I don't understand what the distinction/problem is. It's a new-in-box a la "brand new". You're really getting tripped up over semantics? My point is this stuff is still in play in a lot of places.
- waterhouse 1y ago
  "Modern features" are one thing; "security updates" are another. According to the blog post, security updates are guaranteed for 1 year.
- rolph 1y ago
  some people use older tech, precisely because it is physically incapable of facilitating some inpalatable tech that they dont require.
- pigeons 1y ago
  Its an actual migration to a new platform more than just not bothering to upgrade though.
lou1306 1y ago
Mozilla is in extremely dire straits right now, so unless this "lot of people" make a concerted donation effort to keep the lights on I would be hardly shocked by the sunsetting.
- nicoburns 1y ago
  Dire straights? They had $826.6M in revenue in 2024. They will be in dire straights if the Google money goes away for some reason, but right now they have plenty of money. (not that I think it makes any sense for them to maintain support for 32-bit cpus)
- hulitu 1y ago
  > Mozilla is in extremely dire straits right now, so unless this "lot of people" make a concerted donation effort Last i checked, Mozilla was an ad company with Google as the main "donor".
pavon 1y ago
They aren't ending support for 32-bit Windows. If the ratio of 32/64 bit users on Linux matched those on Windows, then this would affect 0.5% of their users.
- zozbot234 1y ago
  Does this mean that 32-bit Linux users will be able to run more up-to-date versions using Wine?
gweinberg 1y ago
Abandon is too strong a word. I imagine most people who are still using 32 bit operating systems aren't too concerned about getting the very latest version of firefox either.
- yreg 1y ago
  They might not be concerned, but websites using new standards will slowly start to break for them.
  - ryan-ca 1y ago
    Polyfills are standard for websites to be compatible with older browsers.
    - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
      It will all break in time. These things that look like institutions, that look like bricks carved from granite, are just spinning plates that have been spinning for a few years. When I fight glibc dependency hell across Ubuntu 22 and Ubuntu 24, I sympathize with Firefox choosing to spin the 64-bit plates and not the 32-bit plates.
      - ryan-ca 1y ago
        Not applicable, though javascript is a programming language not a standard library.
  - kstrauser 1y ago
    If I were a product decision maker, I’d be ok with that. It’d have to be a very unusual niche to make it worth the engineering effort to support customers who only run decades-old hardware. Employees: “We want to use new feature X.” Boss: “Sorry, but that isn’t available for our wealthy customers who are stuck on Eee PCs.” Nah.

metalliqaz 1y ago

within those numbers are people who don't really have a preference one way or another, and just didn't bother to upgrade. I have to imagine that the group of people that must use 32-bit and need modern features is vanishingly small.

kstrauser 1y ago
I think that’s the right way to look at it. If you want a 32 bit system to play with as a hobby, you know you’re going to bump into roadblocks. And if you’re using a 20 year old system for non-hobby stuff, you already know there’s a lot of things that don’t work anymore.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  >And if you’re using a 20 year old system for non-hobby stuff, you already know there’s a lot of things that don’t work anymore. Mate, 20 year old system means a Pentium 4 Prescott and Athlon 64, both of which had 64 bit support. And in another year after we already had dual core 64 bit CPUs. So if you're stuck on 32 bit CPUs then your system is even older than 20 years.
  - kstrauser 1y ago
    That was a transitional time. Intel Core CPUs launched as 32 bit in 2006, and the first Intel Macs around then used them. OS X Lion dropped support for 32 bit Intel in 2011. So you could very well have bought a decent quality 32 bit system after 2005, although the writing was on the wall long before then.
    - zokier 1y ago
      Maybe more relevantly, the first Atom CPUs were 32-bit only and were used in the popular netbooks (eeepc etc) during 2008-2010ish era.
    - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
      >So you could very well have bought a decent quality 32 bit system after 2005, although the writing was on the wall long before then. Not really. With the launch of Athlon 64, AMD basically replaced all their 32bit CPUs lineups with that new arch, and not kept them along much longer as a lower tier part. By 2005 I expect 90% of new PCs sold were already 64 bit ready.
      - kstrauser 1y ago
        Intel didn’t do that by 2005, though. MacBooks weren’t the single most popular product line, but they weren’t exactly eMachines.
        FirmwareBurner 1y ago
        Macbook market share was irrelevant around 2005 for that to matter in the PC CPU statistics.
      - axiolite 1y ago
        > By 2005 I expect 90% of new PCs sold were already 64 bit ready. You're several years off: "The FIRST processor to implement Intel 64 was the multi-socket processor Xeon code-named Nocona in June 2004. In contrast, the initial Prescott chips (February 2004) did not enable this feature." "The first Intel mobile processor implementing Intel 64 is the Merom version of the Core 2 processor, which was released on July 27, 2006. None of Intel's earlier notebook CPUs (Core Duo, Pentium M, Celeron M, Mobile Pentium 4) implement Intel 64." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Intel_64 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Intel_64 "2012: Intel themselves are limiting the functionality of the Cedar-Trail Atom CPUs to 32bit only" https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/no-emt64-on-intel-atom-n2600.204215/post-2883539 https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/no-emt64-on-intel-at... Intel had 80% of the CPU market at the time.
pdntspa 1y ago
I would bet a lot of those folks are running embedded linux environments. Kiosks, industrial control, signage, NUCs, etc. I know that as of about 6 years ago I was still working with brand-new 32-bit celeron systems for embedded applications. (Though those CPUs were EOL'd and we were transitioning to 64-bit)
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  6 years ago was 2019. You were working in 2019 with "brand new 32-bit-only Celerons" which had no 64 bit support?! Nah mate, something doesn't add up. I can't buy this. Even the cheapest Atoms had 64bit support much earlier than that and Atoms were lower tier silicone than Celeron so you can't tell me Intel had brand new 32 bit only Celerons in 2019. My Google-fu found the last 32-bit only chips intel shipped were the Intel Quark embedded SoCs EoL in 2015. So what you're saying doesn't pass the smell test.
  - pdntspa 1y ago
    May have been 2018. Definitely not that long before covid. Suppliers in the embedded space will stockpile EOL parts for desperate integrators such as ourselves, and can continue to supply new units for years after they're discontinued. The product needed a custom linux kernel compile and it took a while to get that working on 64-bit and we had to ship new units. Yes the COGS get ridiculous.
    - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
      Sure, but in that case it probably wasn't a Celeron, and there's industrial players still keeping 386 systems alive for one reason or another, but it feels in bad faith to call it "brand new" when it's actually "~10 year old, new old stock". Do you know what I mean?
      - pdntspa 1y ago
        I don't understand what the distinction/problem is. It's a new-in-box a la "brand new". You're really getting tripped up over semantics? My point is this stuff is still in play in a lot of places.
waterhouse 1y ago
"Modern features" are one thing; "security updates" are another. According to the blog post, security updates are guaranteed for 1 year.
rolph 1y ago
some people use older tech, precisely because it is physically incapable of facilitating some inpalatable tech that they dont require.
pigeons 1y ago
Its an actual migration to a new platform more than just not bothering to upgrade though.

lou1306 1y ago

Mozilla is in extremely dire straits right now, so unless this "lot of people" make a concerted donation effort to keep the lights on I would be hardly shocked by the sunsetting.

nicoburns 1y ago
Dire straights? They had $826.6M in revenue in 2024. They will be in dire straights if the Google money goes away for some reason, but right now they have plenty of money. (not that I think it makes any sense for them to maintain support for 32-bit cpus)
hulitu 1y ago
> Mozilla is in extremely dire straits right now, so unless this "lot of people" make a concerted donation effort Last i checked, Mozilla was an ad company with Google as the main "donor".

pavon 1y ago

They aren't ending support for 32-bit Windows. If the ratio of 32/64 bit users on Linux matched those on Windows, then this would affect 0.5% of their users.

zozbot234 1y ago
Does this mean that 32-bit Linux users will be able to run more up-to-date versions using Wine?

gweinberg 1y ago

Abandon is too strong a word. I imagine most people who are still using 32 bit operating systems aren't too concerned about getting the very latest version of firefox either.

yreg 1y ago
They might not be concerned, but websites using new standards will slowly start to break for them.
- ryan-ca 1y ago
  Polyfills are standard for websites to be compatible with older browsers.
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
    It will all break in time. These things that look like institutions, that look like bricks carved from granite, are just spinning plates that have been spinning for a few years. When I fight glibc dependency hell across Ubuntu 22 and Ubuntu 24, I sympathize with Firefox choosing to spin the 64-bit plates and not the 32-bit plates.
    - ryan-ca 1y ago
      Not applicable, though javascript is a programming language not a standard library.
- kstrauser 1y ago
  If I were a product decision maker, I’d be ok with that. It’d have to be a very unusual niche to make it worth the engineering effort to support customers who only run decades-old hardware. Employees: “We want to use new feature X.” Boss: “Sorry, but that isn’t available for our wealthy customers who are stuck on Eee PCs.” Nah.