[Interest] Qt 5.15 LTS vs Qt 6.2 LTS

[Roland Hughes]

On 9/30/21 3:44 PM, Ulf Hermann wrote:
>> As of last month, 1.26% of all laptops and desktop computers
>> worldwide were still running on the 19-year-old OS. That’s a greater
>> proportion than much younger operating systems Windows 8 (0.57%),
>> ChromeOS (0.42%) and Windows Vista (0.12%).
>> The only thing one has to do to keep these systems "secure" is not
>> connect them to the Internet.
> In that case, using e.g. Qt 4.8.7 (slightly younger than Windows XP) for
> those systems should be fine, too. Why do they need the latest and
> greatest Qt for something that old?
>
> Yes, Qt 4.8.7 is not supported anymore, but if you don't care about
> security, what do you need the support for? You're going to say
> "safety". Yet, let me remind you that MS are not fixing safety critical
> bugs in XP anymore, either. So that game is already lost anyway.
>
> best regards,
> Ulf

Goodness no Ulf, I would never say security or safety and Qt. There is 
far too much that has to be done to make anything on x86 even 
kinda-sorta secure if it is connected to the Internet. You forget, other 
than when I'm tapped to help create VPNs for ghosts, the bulk of my 
stuff is carried/rolled around hospitals with no Internet access and a 
manually configured point of outbound connection with all inbound 
connections disabled. The security problem is non-existent. It 
communicates with one and only one destination.

The problem is our friend Scott and his company aren't the only ones 
getting screwed. There is a lot of XP software done with Qt 5.x. The 
reason the industry wants a Qt 5.x **OpenSource** LTS is because of 
this. Those still at Qt 4.x are either maintaining their own Qt repo or 
have jumped ship to CopperSpice or left the Qt realm entirely, depending 
on their testing regulations.

https://www.copperspice.com/

Some jumped architectures to Fox Toollkit.

http://fox-toolkit.org/

There are two primary reasons to want to have the later/near latest Qt 
on the old platforms.

1) On rare occasions patient killing bugs like this one get fixed.

https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-12055 
<https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-12055>

This has very little to do with "security" unless one puts application 
stability under the security heading.

2) Updated hardware support.

There's lots of 4K stuff for XP. Even NVidia has been quietly slipping 
4K XP drivers out the door.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/game-ready-drivers/13/236142/which-dirver-for-gtx-1060-for-win-xp-sp3-/

Third party stuff is out there as well, I just don't know how much I 
trust it.

The 4K support for XP wasn't much of an issue until the monitors went 
under $300 (as brought up the issue for Scott.) and updated video cards 
supporting hardware that XP can run on came out "reasonably priced." No, 
customers don't like hearing "buy this $50 refurbished monitor and be 
happy" once they see 4K. They want to hear that you will fix your 
software to look good on 4K.

Lots of places are trying to switch some of their stuff to Blue Tooth 
Low Energy but they have custom hardware and drivers on XP and Windows 
10 is basically insecure because it mandates an Internet connection. XP 
is from a time when operating systems were perfectly happy without an 
Internet connection.

https://www.browsercam.com/bluetooth-low-energy-connector-pc/


The problem many will be facing with their XP support if they try to 
jump to CopperSpice is the mandate of C++17 compilation standard. That 
will also be the problem for those running on pre-16.04 Ubuntu systems 
as well although they have easier solutions.

Jumping to Fox will be a re-write for them and they will have to build 
their own XP libraries unless the faq is out of date.

http://fox-toolkit.org/faq.html

Given that it can build on Windows 2000 and current Linux it "should" be 
doable, just a hassle.


-- 
Roland Hughes, President
Logikal Solutions
(630)-205-1593

http://www.theminimumyouneedtoknow.com
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