Re: PixInsight 1.8.8-3 Released

[pavolg]

There is still some problem with Win7. After rename dll mentioned above, it starts correctly but after closing the program stop to response (see image). There is some problem with Qt5WebEngineCore.dll - see log file from Event Viewer.

[Juan Conejero]

I assume the screenshot you have attached says 'PixInsight stopped working...' or something like that, since I cannot understand it. This cannot be reproduced on any of our working and testing Windows machines.

We have provided a fix to let you run version 1.8.8-3 of PixInsight on Windows 7 SP1 and Windows 8.1, but despite that, please note that these versions of Windows are not supported. We only support Windows 10, where we test each new version of PixInsight thoroughly.

[pavolg]

Hi Juan,
you are right. But, there is in English in log viewer. Here are details:

- <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
- <System>
  <Provider Name="Application Error" />
  <EventID Qualifiers="0">1000</EventID>
  <Level>2</Level>
  <Task>100</Task>
  <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
  <TimeCreated SystemTime="2019-12-16T16:01:58.000000000Z" />
  <EventRecordID>139768</EventRecordID>
  <Channel>Application</Channel>
  <Computer>PavolG-NTB</Computer>
  <Security />
  </System>
- <EventData>
  <Data>PixInsight.exe</Data>
  <Data>1.8.8.3</Data>
  <Data>5df3c331</Data>
  <Data>Qt5WebEngineCore.dll</Data>
  <Data>5.13.2.0</Data>
  <Data>5dc1834c</Data>
  <Data>c0000005</Data>
  <Data>0000000001c3d1c3</Data>
  <Data>1f78</Data>
  <Data>01d5b429e755f64b</Data>
  <Data>C:\Program Files\PixInsight\bin\PixInsight.exe</Data>
  <Data>C:\Program Files\PixInsight\bin\Qt5WebEngineCore.dll</Data>
  <Data>63371750-201d-11ea-96f5-e89a8fda6e37</Data>
  </EventData>
  </Event>

[Juan Conejero]

The log simply tells us that there has been an access violation error (c0000005) that originated in Qt5WebEngineCore.dll, which is the Qt support library for PixInsight's integrated web browser component. This does not happen under normal working conditions on any supported platform.

[danoid]

Windows 7 still accounts for approximately 30% of PC users vs. Mac OS 8% and Linux 1.7%.

https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/01/net-applications-windows-10-windows-7-market-share/

Thank you for patching your release to suit your customers.

[pavolg]

I have Win7 SP1 x64. The error shows every time I run PI. I just start PI and after that close it - without any action in PI. Here is the video: http://pavolg.6f.sk/astroforum/video.mp4.

[Juan Conejero]

Windows 7 still accounts for approximately 30% of PC users vs. Mac OS 8% and Linux 1.7%.

https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/01/net-applications-windows-10-windows-7-market-share/

Thank you for patching your release to suit your customers.

Currently we release PixInsight on four major platforms: FreeBSD, Linux, macOS and Windows. The operating systems supported by current PixInsight versions (>= 1.8.7) are:

- FreeBSD 12
- Linux with glibc version 2.27 or later
- macOS 10.12 or later
- Windows 10

We cannot have the human and time resources necessary to support Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 actively. Both are dead operating systems without any future:

Windows 8.1: End of mainstream support happened on January 9, 2018
Windows 7: End of extended support will happen next January 14, 2020

Asking us to support those Windows versions actively would be the same as asking us to support any Linux distribution released in 2010, or macOS 10.6 Snow Leopard, or 32-bit operating systems, which were still mainstream in 2009. That just does not make any sense. We must look forward, not backward.

As for market shares, the PixInsight project has never worked that way. We don't care about the percentages of users on each platform. We just want to do our work the best way we can on the platforms where we can develop our software better and more efficiently. We need to be happy doing our day to day development and programming work, and for this reason our primary development platforms are without any doubt Linux and FreeBSD. The macOS and Windows versions of PixInsight are ports of the main development trunk on Linux.

[danoid]

My intent was to actually thank you for quickly fixing the Win 7 installation.  Microsoft is attempting to kill Windows 7 for financial gain, once they think they've succeeded, Windows 10 will be a subscription service.  For many of us, 7 is still very viable.  I have computers running Windows 10, Windows 7, and Ubuntu.  If Ubuntu ran all the software I wanted it to, they would all run that.  But it doesn't.  If Windows 10 supported all the hardware I have, they would all run that.  But it doesn't.  Windows 7 is still my workhorse.

I'm not going to change your mind but I'll agree to disagree.

[pavolg]

The problem with PI on Win7 (crash on exit) disappeared in the latest version 1.8.8-5 Thank you a lot!