Just found out, that the forum doesn't work on my Win7 laptop.
Browser: Firefox 115.31.0esr (64-bit)
Absolutely no any problems with any other sites. Only discourse crap sites behave like this...
Can something be done with this?
Discourse is a platform which supports only latest versions of browsers. Win 7 is end-of-life. So no.
PS: this was exact the cause why I did not choice Discourse for one of my projects. They are too much “bleeding edge”.
The above version is also the latest one, it was released on 9 Dec 2025. But yeah, they require too much while giving nothing good. The worst forum software I ever saw. From design to functionality.
Firefox ESR 116 is unsupported. Discourse's decision. While I am a Firefox user I never understood the need for this ESR builds. I wouldn't call it bleeding edge, as 116 was released August 2023. 1,5 years in web is like 15 years in offline world.
But from the screenshot I get the impression that Discourse uses a different, minimal and unstyled theme for unsupported browsers. That's very aggressively pushing users to use a supported browser. Dark pattern I would say.
There are many Windows 7 users.
Such decisions would rather push users away from it. @memelchenkov's comment confirms that. And honestly I don't understand, why people even use it. Awful product.
P. S. What 116 from 2023 are you talking about? There are 115.31.0 for Win 7/8 and 140.6.0 for others. Both from Dec 2025.
You may try to change user-agent to a more compatible. It may work, if the browser itself has all the features which Discourse uses.
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Thanks. But unfortunately, it has no effect 
I'm honestly sorry. Firefox 115 ESR. It is based in 2023. with 2023 features. Now clear?
It is like when Mikrotik would have made ROS 7.8 a long term and only apply critical patches. Would you agree 7.8 is older with less features - even when releases are done to this lts version - than 7.20.6?
Funny enough, Firefox 115 is the last version for Win7 - but you don't ban Firefox for dropping Win7 support. But Discourse on the other hand you say is worse software because it drops browser support. Every Software Developer needs to cut compatibility when maintenance effort is more than worth it. Mozilla is a foundation and their funding is not endless. And I think it is similar with Discourse.
Windows 7 is one thing and browser is another.
It is the COMBINED decisions of Mozilla and Discourse that create this stupid limitation.
@teslasystems
Try a "special" build:
https://msfn.org/board/topic/186741-firefox-and-chromium-running-on-windows-7-by-e3kskoy7wqk/
Besides their utility, projects such as this one (OT, but I am using this forum from XP using Supermium browser) clearly show how there is not any technical, real, limitation, it is just the developers that don't care about people using older Operating Systems.
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Maybe there is a conspiracy going on. Windows 11 requiring TPM 2.0, MacOS dropping support for older but still powerful hardware, Android phones not getting updates anymore, ARM 32bit builds dropped by many software, and so on. It sucks.
As a web developer I can just say, supporting age old browsers like IE11 was the biggest PITA you can have. The day Microsoft retired this old piece of browser was a victory. When this common goal/enemy was defeated, people went ahead for another "higher goal". Nowadays web developers like to use bleeding edge browser features and don't want to polyfill every missing feature. Sometimes no polyfills or workarounds exist. And they bloat your code base, and relying on age old polyfill npm packages is another issue. It is a combination of reasons. Mainly because web development isn't just "HTML+CSS and a little of JS" as it was 10-15 years ago. It is a crazy build chain of dependency hell.
Except ROS developers of course 
How long does it take them to artificially ban Windows 10 and force everyone (that use Windows) to use Windows 11 to see the forum?
If until yesterday it was running on 7, what functionality will they have added to EVEN justify changing the computer to view a website,
which is anything but interactive...
I think a PC with the old Windows 95 would be able to render a very white page,
without borders, with lots of white space, with two lines of text thrown here and there...
Regarding esr understood, thanks.
Regarding "banning". I don't ban Firefox, because Win7 is still supported somehow, though limited. And what is most important, there are no problems with any other sites, except discourse-based. So, no reasons to ban it.
I said discourse is worst forum software not just because it drops browser support. There are many other issues. Just some of them, for reference:
- Very poor notification system (Migration process from our old phpBB instance to Discourse is now done - #474 by teslasystems)
- Very poor drafts handling (Draft issues)
- Awful design with low contrast (the reason for making own mod: Improved forum appearance (CSS based))
- It doesn't even have a basic password change feature (Password changing feature)
And with all of this they want super-new browsers. For what? For nothing... No any benefits compared to old forum (may be except better formatting), only disadvantages and PITA. From the user perspective.
Completely agree. And this is everywhere...
@jaclaz thank you very much, it works with these builds 
As they didn't manage to keep their own rendering engine & http ecosystem up to date.
A enterprise that makes billions of dollars profit was unable to continue developing their own HTML rendering engine. 
ROS developers and ROS update philosophy is an anachronism. Nowadays hardware is published and you know on release day when device is going EOL. This is ridiculous. I like to run devices as long as the hardware technically works. I am against planned obsolescence. That's a major reason why I like Mikrotik products.
If 110% resources is put on UI bells&whistles and making OS larger and more demanding then some outsorcing is needed to get proper pieces of code
What do you mean “it does not work”. It only shows you such a message, but it works.
Forum works fine, even in LINKS. You just won't see some fancy javascript effects.
It means, that it looks like some old site from 2000’s and it’s impossible to log in. And it’s done artifically by developers.
Linux is free, no need to pay for Windows. Works on any machine.
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