772675 - We should change ESR/mainline system requirements if we support Windows Server 2008

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(www.firefox.com :: Release Notes, defect)

Description

[Alex Keybl [:akeybl]]

We should change ESR/mainline system requirements if we support Windows Server 2008.

Asa - can you confirm?

Comment 1

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

It's an NT 6.x based release so I imagine it works. I don't have a machine I can test on though. I don't think there are enough users out there to explicitly call this out as supported. No other consumer software I know of calls out support for Win2K8.

Comment 2

[Alex Keybl [:akeybl]]

(In reply to Asa Dotzler [:asa] from comment #1)
> It's an NT 6.x based release so I imagine it works. I don't have a machine I
> can test on though. I don't think there are enough users out there to
> explicitly call this out as supported. No other consumer software I know of
> calls out support for Win2K8.

FYI this was brought to our attention on the enterprise list. We currently call out Windows Server 2003 explicitly - don't know if that makes a difference.

If this is blocked on some minimal testing, we could try to line that up in the next cycle. Let me know.

Comment 3

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

(In reply to Alex Keybl [:akeybl] from comment #2)
> (In reply to Asa Dotzler [:asa] from comment #1)
> > It's an NT 6.x based release so I imagine it works. I don't have a machine I
> > can test on though. I don't think there are enough users out there to
> > explicitly call this out as supported. No other consumer software I know of
> > calls out support for Win2K8.
> 
> FYI this was brought to our attention on the enterprise list. We currently
> call out Windows Server 2003 explicitly - don't know if that makes a
> difference.
> 
> If this is blocked on some minimal testing, we could try to line that up in
> the next cycle. Let me know.

Worth checking with QA whether we actually test anything on Server 2003 (or have any developers running it or any confidence at all that we know it works.) If not, we should probably pull that from the list.

Comment 4

[Yuriy Look]

My two cents.  Windows Server 2003 R2 and Windows Server 2008 R2 are separate from their "straight" counterparts, plus Microsoft also has Windows Home Server (this was released in 2007) and Windows Home Server 2011, that are probably either supported or could be supported.  JIC, R2s are releases in their own right, sometimes with significant changes.  For instance, Windows Server 2008 was released both as 32 and 64 bit OS, whereas Windows Server 2008 R2 is 64 bit only.  If this would make things easier, our QA tested ff 10.0.5esr in Windows Server 2008 R2, and even though ff was not a subject of a test, looks like it works fine in this environment.

Comment 5

[Yuriy Look]

As two more cents, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc280356 illustrates that Microsoft can mention R2 when it represents a different case compare to its "straight" counerpart, and no mention it, if it's no different in the context.  Based upon this, I'd say R2s do not need to be mentioned in relation to ff.

Comment 7

[dynamis (Tomoya ASAI)]

Hi Sylvestre, Ritu, Liz (current release managers),

Why we only include "Windows Server 2003 SP1" without Windows Server 2008 or later?
Enterprise users sometimes ask us since the system requirements page only includes WinServer2003.

If we actually support all Windows Server or none of Windows Server, please update the page.
If we support Windows Server 2003 only, could you tell us why?

Comment 8

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (privacy/fingerprinting team)]

Good question!  I note that Windows Server 2003 is no longer supported by Microsoft as of this August: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/products/windows-server-2003/. 
We should probably take it off the system requirements page at some point soon. 

Would people running Windows Server need to deploy Firefox on it, in the first place? I'm trying to picture this use case, and I wouldn't want to be browsing on my server, and if I were deploying Firefox to my users I would assume they were running a version of Windows that isn't WS.

Comment 9

[dynamis (Tomoya ASAI)]

> Good question!  I note that Windows Server 2003 is no longer supported by
> Microsoft as of this August:
> https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/products/windows-server-2003/. 
> We should probably take it off the system requirements page at some point
> soon. 

Firefox's supported OS list should be defined by us, not by OS vendors. We actually continue support old, no longer supported Windows and Mac OS. Windows Server 2003 is incorporating compatibility and other features from Windows XP. So I suggest to drop WS2003 when we drop support for Windows XP.

At the same time, I think we should list or drop all of Windows Servers (corresponding to supported Windows for consumer) for consistency. If we actually run no QA on WS, we may drop all of them. If we keep Windows 2003, I think we should list later ones too.

In reply to Liz Henry (:lizzard) (needinfo? me) from comment #8)
> Would people running Windows Server need to deploy Firefox on it, in the
> first place? I'm trying to picture this use case, and I wouldn't want to be
> browsing on my server, and if I were deploying Firefox to my users I would
> assume they were running a version of Windows that isn't WS.

I'm not sure how many people use browser with windows server but I'm sure some of them actually use browser on Windows Server. Maybe it's not daily nor normal use cases but some people need to browse wind windows server. Enterprise users actually ask me about support. Some users also wrote about this in [e-mail] ML. (We can also find users searching with "windows server firefox". Not many but actually used by some users.)

If we decide support list of OSs depending on the user share/numbers, we just drop all version of Windows Servers. If we decide by platform compatibility, XP & 2003, Vista & 2008... should be listed in the same time.

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to dynamis (Tomoya ASAI) from comment #9)
> > Good question!  I note that Windows Server 2003 is no longer supported by
> > Microsoft as of this August:
> > https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/products/windows-server-2003/. 
> > We should probably take it off the system requirements page at some point
> > soon. 
> 
> Firefox's supported OS list should be defined by us, not by OS vendors. We
> actually continue support old, no longer supported Windows and Mac OS.
> Windows Server 2003 is incorporating compatibility and other features from
> Windows XP. So I suggest to drop WS2003 when we drop support for Windows XP.

This would be most appropriate, as the are cohorts.


> In reply to Liz Henry (:lizzard) (needinfo? me) from comment #8)
> > Would people running Windows Server need to deploy Firefox on it, in the
> > first place? I'm trying to picture this use case, and I wouldn't want to be
> > browsing on my server, and if I were deploying Firefox to my users I would
> > assume they were running a version of Windows that isn't WS.
> 
> I'm not sure how many people use browser with windows server but I'm sure
> some of them actually use browser on Windows Server. Maybe it's not daily
> nor normal use cases but some people need to browse wind windows server.
> Enterprise users actually ask me about support. Some users also wrote about
> this in [e-mail] ML. (We can also find users searching with
> "windows server firefox". Not many but actually used by some users.)

There are three use cases and I've seen all of them for Firefox and Thunderbird.
1. user as a consumer running windows server for personal use - quite rare but it exists
2. user as a server admin in a small business or larger corp environment, preferring Firefox to IE when doing application support and such (I do)
3. users (plural) running in a terminal server (TS) environment (perhaps users running as thin client) 

I suspect #3 might be the majority of server users.  

There are subtle differences between say server 2003 and XP, and these can cause difficulty when diagnosing problems.  (I'm actually helping an admin with a Thunderbird problem right now with environment #3.)  Saying we support server environments seems a bit false if we don't test there. OTOH, the differences between windows consumer OS and server seem to me to be minor.