installer user interface glitch ?

[alister]

On Sun, 01 Nov 2015 08:24:22 -0800, rurpy wrote:

> On Sunday, November 1, 2015 at 8:52:55 AM UTC-7, Chris Angelico wrote:
>> On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 2:43 AM, rurpy--- via Python-list
>> <python-list at python.org> wrote:
>> > Why, oh why, do the python.org front page and other pages that offer
>> > a Windows download not say a word about it not running on Windows XP?
>> >
>> > Even if one is anal enough to go to the page about the 3.5 release.
>> >   https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-350/
>> > a page with a lot of Windows-specific info, there is not a word about
>> > XP.
>> 
>> A partial answer to that is in PEP 11:
>> 
>> https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0011/#microsoft-windows
>> 
>> Windows XP isn't special here. There's no mention of Python 2.7 not
>> working on Windows 95, because it's simply an unsupported operating
>> system. The only reason that people keep coming asking about XP and not
>> (say) Win2K is that there are a lot more XP boxes out there. Do the
>> other download pages need to stipulate which versions of which OSes
>> they support, or should that be left up to the installer?
> 
> I dont recall seeing anyone posting asking why they could not get Python
> to install on Windows 95 recently.  I only read this group
> intermittently but I have seen *many* posts asking why they couldnt
> install on XP.
> 
> You acknowledge yourself: "there are a lot more XP boxes out there."
> 
>> There *is* a plan to have the installer give a better error message for
>> this situation.
> 
> A better message from the installer is necessary but not sufficient.
> Don't make people go through the effort to download the whole thing, do
> their planning and preparations for using or upgrading Python only to
> discover at the last moment it wont work.
> 
> That is really shitty customer relations.
> 
> The reality is that people trying install Python-3.5 on XP *is* a
> problem.  Telling them they should have read some obscure release notes
> is not a solution.
> 
>> But I don't think the web site necessarily has to have noise about old
>> versions of OSes. Where would you draw the line?
> 
> I think my responses above answer that.

I would have to agree, at least in general

1) The web page should always list the Versions of Windows that ARE 
supported.

2) As support for Win XP has only just ceased it should be specifically 
mentioned for V3.5, I would see no need to continue with this for V3.6 +
Likewise Win95 2000 etc. should have been mentioned at the release when 
support was dropped & no further

As adding a "Not supported on Win XP or Win 7 Minimum" notice is such a 
minimal "Bug Fix" I don't see the issue. 



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