Modern web browsers for your old computer

BLF Site-related Issues
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A recent site update left a few users commenting that they can’t use BLF anymore because support for their browsers was dropped. I must admit to being a bit alarmed.

Casually browsing the web on browser that is extremely out of date is risky. Malicious content (including ads embedded in otherwise-trustworthy sites) can exploit vulnerabilities in old browsers to install malware on your computer, add malicious extensions to the browser, or cause the browser to perform some other harmful action on the attacker’s behalf.

Running an outdated operating system isn’t a great idea either, and there’s a good chance some sort of modern Linux runs on your old hardware. Unfortunately, making that work does often require more technical expertise than any modern OS including Linux on modern hardware. Alternately, I would encourage those with the required financial resources to spend a little money to upgrade their hardware. Malware used to be a minor annoyance; now it tries to steal your bank account.

Here’s a table of browsers that get some level of security updates for old versions of Windows and Mac OS, which I will update as people post suggestions.

I added a column for whether BLF works. Unlike some sites that just check the name and version (user agent string, to be technical) of the browser, Discourse forum software tests whether features it needs are present and functional, so it’s probably correct when it says it won’t work. Some other sites do work if an unsupported browser claims to be a different browser.

OS Family Version Browser Notes BLF works
Windows XP and later Supremium Chromium fork (like Google Chrome), works on 32-bit hardware yes
Windows 7 and later Falkon Chromium core, lightweight UI yes
Mac OS 10.5-10.6 PowerFox PowerPC and Intel ?
Windows 7 and later Pale Moon 32 and 64 bit no
Mac OS 10.7 and later Pale Moon 64-bit Intel or ARM no

Not on the list: modern Chromium browsers like Brave and Ungoogled Chromium. These don’t support Windows older than 10, Mac OS older than 11, or 32-bit CPUs. They do support modern Linux on fairly old hardware.

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[2026-03-01] Routine site engine update applied
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reserved

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I don’t really know what’s good for browsers for old operating systems, but personally I’ve gotten good mileage from Ungoogled Chromium. It’s basically Chrome, but with all the corporate google junk removed so it can be more private.

Might be worth checking if it runs on your system.

OTOH, if you’re on a really old Mac or Windows OS, you’ve probably got bigger things to worry about. So I have to second Zak’s recommendation to look into Linux. It typically runs pretty well on old hardware, and can allow you to run the latest browsers and stuff.

For example, a couple months ago an old 80-something-year-old lady I know asked me to put Linux on her notebook, because Windows 10 is unsupported and she doesn’t want Windows 11 even if it could run on her computer, which it can’t. It’s a budget model notebook from like a decade ago. So I put Linux Mint on it, and it pretty much “just works”. She hasn’t even asked me for any tech support, aside from one time asking how to add grid lines to spreadsheets in LibreOffice, because everything has been easy to figure out on her own.

She used to ask me for tech support pretty often, back when she was using Windows, and complained about how slow everything was. Like, she’d turn on the computer then go make coffee while waiting for it to boot. But now it runs quite a bit faster and isn’t full of ads and popups and stuff, and she hasn’t needed help with pretty much anything.

I know it’s not an option for everyone, but if you can, I’d definitely recommend it. A lot of people are switching these days, and for good reasons.

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People can also buy a used computer with W11 on Ebay.

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Hmm…
I use Brave for some websites because it’s Chromium-based and it still offers uBlock Origin.
If Brave were to stop offering that extension, my plan was to use an older version of Brave and make it so that Brave does not update (which is not super-easy, by the way.)
I know that using an old browser is risky, but I really want a Chromium-based browser with that extension. :thinking:

EDIT:
For those that don’t know, some websites work best (or only work) with Chromium-based browsers.
I actually prefer Floorp, which is Firefox-based, but it doesn’t work for all sites. :upside_down_face:

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Websites are pure shiite nowadays, which is the main problem.

“Developers” just lego together bits and pieces from webkits, and call it a day.

Worse when the entire page is more javascript than html/css.

Gone forever are the days when devs would actually make any effort to make sure their webpages rendered correctly across multiple browsers and even versions. (Exploder being the worst of the lot, as you’d need tweaks for IE6, IE5, etc.)

Especially with pages being so js-dependent, that’s how malware gets installed. You can’t even trace through the html to see what’s going on, as now you gotta trace through js in realtime.

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Successfully migrated from Firefox to Supermium on Win7. All bookmarks and passwords can be imported. uBlock works the same way. Do it and forget it.

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Thanks for that info! :+1:

If Brave discontinues uBlock Origin and if Supermium doesn’t, I’ll consider switching.
Right now, Brave is working fine for me (for the sites that don’t play nice with Floorp.) :slightly_smiling_face:

EDIT:
By the way, Supermium doesn’t have much feedback on the following website, but the program looks interesting to me.
https://alternativeto.net/software/supermium/about/

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Mypal browser is based on Mozilla Firefox adapted for winxp/ win2003.

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I try Supremium today on Windows XP machine - Pentium D 3.0 GHz with 2 GB RAM and it is better than Mypal! It works OK with BLF forum and few other sites which wasn’t supported on last winxp Firefox version.

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This thread is a very useful idea, thanks @zak.wilson! I moved it to BLF Site-related Issues and pinned it to the top.

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Gone forever are the days when devs would actually make any effort to make sure their webpages rendered correctly across multiple browsers and even versions. (Exploder being the worst of the lot, as you’d need tweaks for IE6, IE5, etc.)

I prefer developing to web standards rather than testing a bunch of browsers. The problem today is people developing for the latest Chrome rather than the standards.

My reviews site requires no JS for anything other than comments, and you can get to those with your favorite Activitypub-enabled social thing (e.g. Mastodon, but that needs JS) if you prefer. It does use modern CSS and might look bad on an old browser. I should check that.

Forum software is trickier though. Attracting new users is hard if it doesn’t look and feel like a native phone app, which is hard to achieve without a bunch of JS.

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Depends on the dev.

I’ve been testing on a wide variety of browsers and versions lately, because the thing I’m making is intended to be as compatible as possible. A big part of its purpose is to make it easy for users to switch browsers without losing their data, because vendor lock-in is bad.

So I’ve been supporting Firefox-based browsers and Chrome-based browsers, going back as far as the API will allow. And I switch between browsers a lot while testing.

I hadn’t heard of Supermium before, so I’ll probably try to test that too… though it seems to be Windows-only, so I won’t be able to run it without an emulator or WINE or something…

… okay, gave it a try. It does NOT work well in Wine. It runs at like 3 seconds per frame, the top ~50 pixels of the window are missing, and it crashes consistenly after 3 minutes and 3 seconds no matter what I’m doing. It’s not really usable. Probably needs some different Wine settings, or a different environment.

I got it to run long enough to confirm it can load and run my extension, though. It seems to be extremely similar to Ungoogled Chromium, and even includes most of the same patches.

Would be helpful if someone with a working Supermium install could give it a try. Here’s a link to the Chrome version of it: TKTSTO for Chrome

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Discourse doesn’t complain about Kagi Orion and its WebKit version.

But it’s very much a 1.0 product, and only in alpha for Windows.

For such essential tools, browsers don’t make good business cases.

Only large, self-interested corporations can afford to subsidize their development, which they recoup indirectly though means which might not sit well with some users.

Even Mozilla heavily relies upon Google to support Firefox’s development.

Otherwise, they’re passion projects from volunteers, and all that implies in terms of good and bad software, and frequency of updates.

Add in lazy web developers who only aim at the easiest, largest target, and it muddles things further.

The IE hegemony, which also also a time when proprietary plug-ins were a thing, gave a taste in the past.

Thankfully, the latter isn’t an issue now, but Chrome, or any single browser’s, dominance, isn’t necessarily good for users.

But truth be told, most users aren’t as picky about browsers as they could, or probably should be, and just use whatever default the OS offers, unless prompted to do otherwise.

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Orion requires at least Windows 10 or Mac OS 10.14. Linux support is coming later.

That means it’s a possible option for people with a fairly recent OS, but doesn’t solve the original problem.

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It solves the problem for Mac users who aren’t using desperately out of date hardware.

This round of discussion was precipiatated by Firefox 115ESR reaching EOL, coinciding with Discourse taking Windows 7 and Mojave with it, no?

They are contemporaries in terms of when they were disowned by their makers; WIn 7 in 2020 and Mojave in 2021.

There are users who choose to run Mojave because it was the last version to support 32-bit apps, and also provides a classic UX without the cruft of more recent versions. On hardware that does support newer OSes.

Orion’s developers chose to support Mojave for some very good reasons, as a sweet spot of modernity with legacy compatibility.

But by Apple’s definition, it is not considered fairly recent, and trying to view it through the prism of MS’ support windows is not applicable.

Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion are ancient history. Apple users who are still using those OSes are doing it as a hobby, to give old PPC or early Intel hardware some exercise, not as a primary tool. Or at least one should hope not.

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However, I’d argue the change isn’t the best.

Currently, endless-sphere still seems to work quite well on older browsers, with similar features to BLF.
Maybe Xenforo doesn’t have some things the BLF software doesn’t.

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FWIW, Firefox 115ESR has been give yet another stay of execution, until August 2026.

However, that doesn’t change anything regarding this forum and Discourse, as well as the fact that Gmail has now declared that it, too, no longer supports it.

The walls are closing in.