Since today, login to the Forum is no longer possible from Windows 7. I tested several browsers (Firefox, PaleMoon, Chrome, Chromium, Opera), and all are declared as unsupported. The Forum can be opened, but no login is offered any more.
What has happened there?
Unannounced (uncontrolled?) forum software (Discourse) upgrade.
A lot of other things changed too - reply form layout for example.
Was this ever tested? The intro page shows an option to upgrade to a supported browser, but, for Firefox and Chrome, it just reinstalls the versions already installed in Windows 7 - the last ones supported there, while Brave cannot even be installed at all.
This is just a bad regression, because it removes functionality needed by users relying on Qubes to provide a secure environment for the last usable version of Windows, without forewarning and without providing an alternative.
Furthermore I am writing this with Firefox from an AppVM running under Fedora 44, and I see no improvement in normal Forum usage provided by this change. Even, the reply form is now less flexible. So, what the heck?
For this reason; I urge you strongly to fall back to the previous version of the Forum software, or, at least, to provide an option to do so.
Caution: The following text is a private opinion about software engineering. I do not wish to offend anyone by this, but instead just hope to start a bit of discussion or, at least, cogitation. So, please, before reading on, just take some valium, or so … 
When changing software, existing functionality should always be retained, unless this would create a severe security risk. Dropping functionality is just bad software engineering and therefore should be avoided by all means. If a new function is added preventing the use of some old interfaces and functions, this change should check the environment before dropping existing functions. If the environment will not allow to use the new functions, the old structure should be kept, perhaps even at the cost of not performing the intended upgrade, or the old and new structure should be kept in parallel, selecting the appropriate one according to the present environment. If this is not possible for technical reasons, the upgrade should be aborted, possibly after a suitable warning (which should be displayed just once, not on each further activation of the software).
Neglecting this rule is just a sign of bad software quality, and allowing that is a sign of lacking quality management, because it shows neglect of the consumers’ needs. Qubes, with its extremely high quality, deserves a much better presentation of itself to its users!
The Qubes OS Forum uses Communiteq, a third-party hosting provider which automatically updates Discourse versions:
I think @GWeck concerns are valid -they should be addresses to
Communiteq and Discourse. (I suspect that the answer from Discourse
would be that they have no interest in supporting long eol Windows
systems.)
I now checked some comments about Discourse and have not much hope that they will provide a solution, because they regard most browsers that are still supported under Windows 7 as obsolete and possible security risks. From a security point of view, this is a rather bad decision, because it forces Windows 7 users to move to 10 or 11, which are, among other reasons, because of the telemetry, top security risks. As Qubes users, we have the option to switch to a Linux AppVM, but Windows 7 users who are forced by some software restraints to continue using Windows are in a very bad situation.
Fortunately, there is a workaround that is not yet broken: For Forum access, you might use the Supermium browser, a special version of Chromium, which is accepted by Discourse and is working. I was able to write this comment using Supremium under Windows 7, so it seems to work as claimed.
Have you probably tried modifying the user-agent string of some Win7 browsers? In case Discourse check is based on that…
In Firefox, I tried several different user agent strings, but with no effect. They seem to check something else.
Anyhow, I have serious doubts whether Discourse is a suitable service in a security environment, especially when looking at their heavy use of JavaScript.
sorry for the headache, i’m glad you found a win7 solution with Supermium browser.
the hosting provider did indeed upgrade our discourse software from an old version to keep it up-to-date, as the forum was targeted by a DDoS attack last month & the hosting provider wanted to keep the forum software more up-to-date to help mitigate such attacks in the future (in addition to their own mitigations on the hosting side).
if there are any other issues that crop up flag them & let’s try to solve them.
You can interact with Discourse using the API.
I suppose you have tested Tor Browser for Windows as well.
Generally, it is practically impossible to hide the OS with JS enabled. A quick search through the source code showed this:
If just browsing (without login) is OK for your needs, you can probably do it with disabled JS, and handle posting using a mail client.
Anyhow, I have serious doubts whether Discourse is a suitable service in a security environment, especially when looking at their heavy use of JavaScript.
I agree but who’s asking us anyway…
I just hope you don’t keep anything important in it, while going online with Win7.
I understand using it offline, but this…
Windows 7 reached EOL 11 years ago in 2015. It’s not reasonable to expect anything to support it today.
Tor Browser can no longer be installed on Windows 7. Having Whonix under Qubes, that is no big loss, because it does not provide much security due to the insecurity of the underlying OS.
Windows 7 still may be acceptable if running under Qubes and being shielded by a sys-firewall, which is configured restrictively. As an additional measure, all relevant data are duplicated to a Debian-based VM having no network access, and my threat model does not include confidentiality but only availability.
On the one hand, you are right, but on the other hand, I wonder whether moving from unsupported Windows 7 to supported Windows 11 will improve a system’s security at all. Contrary to W11, W7 is probably no longer targeted by specific attacks, and the overall security of W11 is so bad and permanently broken that support is unlikely to close a significant number of the security holes. In 2025, W11 had 300 times as many reported security-relevant bugs as Qubes - 603 vs 2 non-XSA QSBs.M$ was even capable of including a bug in the Notepad editor that allowed a complete system compromise!
@qubist I read the discussion by Discourse that you pointed to. In my opinion, they have a peculiar way of regarding their customers, which indicates a lack of software quality management. They recognize that some users will lose full access to websites they created, but they just recommend switching to another OS or buying a new computer. So far, they seem to have never heard that this may be impossible due to software or hardware restrictions or even financial or organisational constraints. I wonder if they have ever had to do with large, slow organisations or governments.
Anyhow, in my opinion, the current industry-wide trend to force users to move to ever new software versions is a main reason for the deteriorating software quality, which can be observed in many areas for several years, and I am afraid that the current move to AI, whether it is needed or not, tends to make this still worse.
Meanwhile, I found another browser that allows login to the Forum: Thorium, which is also a version of Chromium.
This is completely twisted and weird logic that was normalized to us, just confirming that computers are the biggest con at least of the 20th century (at best it introduced/normalized consumerism, no other thing is responsible for that).
Just imagine I cannot show off with my Mach1 428 Cobra Jet (335–360 hp) on a new highway, just because it was made 57 years ago.
Because, well oh my, new highway supports only vehicles produced in the last 5 years. No doubt, that will happen some day, though, if that makes it easier for you.
Now I am expecting to hear infamous “That is not same” or that this is straw man logic, or Ignoratio Elenchi, or simply missing the point, but any of those would only confirm how deeply twisted logic is normalized to us.
I addressed the issue in the post more to inexperienced users. I remember you were saying frequently that you are using your Win7 only offline, so I was also surprised to hear now you are going online with it too.
In my mind, Win 7 is more analogous to the Ford Model C.. not that it would change your point at all.
That depends on your threat model.
Quite right. That happens when people don’t understand the true meaning of the word usability and confuse it with fancy modernistic design trends.
You don’t have to move from Windows 7 to Windows 11. You can instead move from Windows 7 to something more secure, like Linux or BSD.
Then why do FOSS operating systems like Debian, Fedora, and BSD variants also reach EOL? Is that also a “con” due to “consumerism”?
But you can. No one is stopping you from running an EOL operating system or browser. You can even take it on the “highways” (the Internet and the Web).
The “highways” (the Internet and the Web) are open protocols that still support ancient operating systems and browsers. Specific websites may not support ancient browsers, and modern browsers may not support ancient operating systems, but that doesn’t mean you can’t run an ancient browser in an ancient operating system and use it to browse the Web. There will still be plenty of websites and Internet protocols that still work.
Others aren’t under any obligation to modify their website to support your specific browser or modify their browser to support your specific operating system any more than you’re under an obligation to modify your operating system to support their specific browser or modify your browser to support their specific website.
However, if a website operator doesn’t support the browsers that most of their would-be visitors are using, they won’t get as many visitors, and if a browser developer doesn’t support the operating systems that most of their would-be users are using, they won’t get as many users. That’s their choice.
Likewise, if you choose to use a browser that doesn’t support most websites, you won’t have as many websites to browse, and if you choose to use an operating system that doesn’t support most browsers, you won’t have as many browsers to choose from. But that’s still your choice.
This is how the Internet and the Web have always worked.
Explaining how and why the wrong premise works will not make it right.