Deprecate support for older OS?

[Alex Farlie]

Certain operating systems are now reaching (or have reached end of life.).

As certain older OS are decreasingly in use as people upgrade, and may not be supported by their original vendors, it seems sensible to have in place a transition strategy so that developers aren't focusing times on minority bugs in relation to older OS, where any bugs are going to be increasingly esoteric in their manifestation and remedy.

The preferred option from the developers would be to follow Mozilla's example and have an "extended support" release of an appropriate branch, in which very few other than critical bugs were patched, and certainly no new features were implemented directly.

Attention on a 'stable' release could then be focused on more obvious bugs which manifest in respect of OS that are in majority use.

(I am still as user of a now ancient OS, so would be directly affected by any changes in the stable release which caused it to cease working with that OS. This may occur even with the best of intentions from developers, as other libraries on which Inkscape is based also drop support.)

[jazzynico (jazzynico)]

Related discussion in the inkscape-devel list:
http://inkscape.13.x6.nabble.com/Roadmap-for-Inkscape-0-93-on-Windows-GTK3-devlibs-MSYS2-and-support-for-Windows-XP-td4979046.html

[Qantas94Heavy (qantas94heavy)]

Windows XP/Vista are no longer supported as of Inkscape 0.92.4.