Bug 5360 - Remove Client support for Windows XP, 2003, 2003 R2, Vista, and 2008
Summary: Remove Client support for Windows XP, 2003, 2003 R2, Vista, and 2008
Status: CLOSED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: ThinLinc
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Client platforms (show other bugs)
Version: 4.2.0
Hardware: PC Unknown
: P2 Normal
Target Milestone: 4.8.0
Assignee: Peter Åstrand
URL:
Keywords: hean01_tester, ossman_tester, relnotes, samuel_tester
Depends on:
Blocks: 2672 5618 5879
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2014-11-18 14:08 CET by Peter Åstrand
Modified: 2017-03-20 17:09 CET (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Acceptance Criteria:


Attachments

Description Peter Åstrand cendio 2014-11-18 14:08:42 CET
At some point in the future, we should remove official support for running the ThinLinc Client on Windows XP. When this can be done depends on many relevant client machines are still running XP. According to http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0, XP is on 17.18%, which is still fairly high.
Comment 2 Pierre Ossman cendio 2015-07-15 10:34:27 CEST
Some interesting data points are how other application vendors are behaving.

Chrome was planning on dropping support now in April when Microsoft finally decided to stop extending their support and let XP die. They backtracked on that however and are now planning on dropping support at the end of 2015.

Firefox has not yet given any official plans for when they'll drop XP support.

Citrix dropped support for XP as a client the same time Microsoft did (April 2015), as did VMware.

Nomachine still supports XP. No information on what their plans are.
Comment 3 Peter Åstrand cendio 2015-08-11 13:15:54 CEST
Wikipedia has some good information about the status of the embedded variants:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP#Support_lifecycle

"Variants of Windows XP for embedded systems have different support policies: Windows XP Embedded SP3 will be supported until January 2016. Windows Embedded Standard 2009 and Windows Embedded POSReady 2009, will be supported through January and April 2019, respectively.[110]"
Comment 5 Peter Åstrand cendio 2016-01-05 14:16:45 CET
One question is if we should raise the minimum requirement to Vista or Windows 7. According to these:

https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0
http://www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-market-share-of-windows-7/

...the market share is about 1.7%. 

Google Chrome will require Windows 7 in April, according to http://chrome.blogspot.se/2015/11/updates-to-chrome-platform-support.html

Citrix, on the other hand, still supports Vista:
https://www.citrix.com/downloads/citrix-receiver/windows/receiver-for-windows-latest.html


We've decided to raise the requirement to Windows 7.
Comment 8 Samuel Mannehed cendio 2016-01-11 15:19:41 CET
I have verified that the code changes looks good. I have not found any mentions of windows xp in our documentation.

I have verified that a warning saying "This windows version is not supported" pops up on Windows XP and Vista in all the following cases:
* Starting the ThinLinc client installer
* Starting the Client Customizer installer
* Starting an installed ThinLinc client
* Starting a tlclient.exe from a bundle directory

I have also verified that the client still works on Vista and not on Windows XP.

I have verified that the warning does not show up on Windows 7, 8 or 10, and the client still works.

What remains to test is the windows server versions.
Comment 9 Samuel Mannehed cendio 2016-01-11 15:27:18 CET
Found something quite interesting when running build 4999 of the client on Windows XP:

Normally when you try to login you get an error message saying
"The procedure entry point InitializeConditionVariable could not be located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll"

BUT if you run the client directly from the installer (leave the "Run the ThinLinc client"-box ticked at the end of the installation) it will not show any error.
Comment 10 Samuel Mannehed cendio 2016-01-13 18:04:42 CET
I have verified that the warning pops up on Windows server 2003 and 2008. I have also verified that the client still works on 2008 and not on 2003.

I have verified that the warning does not show up and everything works fine on 2008r2 and 2012.
Comment 11 Pierre Ossman cendio 2016-04-12 14:38:08 CEST
We've decided to keep XP around for one more release, so we need to revert the changes here.
Comment 13 Henrik Andersson cendio 2016-04-21 12:31:52 CEST
Verified build 5099 on Windows XP. Both installer and tlclient.exe are not reporting "unsupported platform."

Works as expected.
Comment 14 Karl Mikaelsson cendio 2016-04-21 13:14:29 CEST
Reopening and moving this bug to '---' since we haven't actually removed support for XP and friends yet.
Comment 15 Henrik Andersson cendio 2016-11-16 07:43:21 CET
ThinLinc TAG does not mentioned the affected version in combination with the client. Also i could not found any information at www.cendio.com. Seems like reverting the commit is good enough.
Comment 16 Henrik Andersson cendio 2016-11-16 10:59:43 CET
(In reply to comment #15)
> ThinLinc TAG does not mentioned the affected version in combination with the
> client. Also i could not found any information at www.cendio.com. Seems like
> reverting the commit is good enough.

A miss made by me, TAG does mention supported client platforms which includes the affected version. see: clientplatforms.xml
Comment 20 Samuel Mannehed cendio 2016-11-23 16:12:34 CET
I have verified that the documentation looks good and that it doesn't mention Windows XP, 2003, 2003R2, Vista or 2008.

I have also verified that the "unsupported"-warning pops up for the client and the customizer on XP and Vista. Used build 5298. Seeing as the server versions were verified a couple of months ago, before the revert, I'm satisfied with this.

What remains is to remove the XP-specific hacks done for bug 5618.
Comment 23 Samuel Mannehed cendio 2016-12-03 01:10:43 CET
(In reply to comment #20)
> What remains is to remove the XP-specific hacks done for bug 5618.

Should be all done now.

Build works fine, client works fine on Windows 10. Tester should mainly verify the code changes and perhaps test the client on some other platform as well.
Comment 24 Samuel Mannehed cendio 2016-12-05 10:02:08 CET
Before closing this bug:

* compare the tigervnc diff with our vendor tree, there should be fewer ThinLinc specific changes now
* look if there are any further mentions of these platforms or any special code left
Comment 25 Pierre Ossman cendio 2016-12-07 11:08:36 CET
No special hacks left in TigerVNC and nothing obvious left in the tree that is XP related.

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