Node.js supported operating systems

A year ago (in November 2015) there was a discussion on GitHub to drop support of Windows XP and Vista. See:

  • Issue #3804: Drop Windows XP (and Vista) support in 6.0

See also a notes from the meeting where that was discussed:

  • Issue #4901: Node.js Foundation Core Technical Committee (CTC) Meeting 2016-01-27

Finally, the commit named "win: prevent node from running on Windows Vista or earlier" has added this code to Node:

if (!IsWindows7OrGreater()) {
  fprintf(stderr, "This application is only supported on Windows 7, "
                  "Windows Server 2008 R2, or higher.");
  exit(1);
}

This commit landed in Node 6.0.0, see the announcement:

Windows XP and Vista are no longer supported #5167.

So from now on, that's official:

Node is only supported on Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, or higher.

But as you can see on https://nodejs.org/en/download/ both 32 and 64-bit versions are available.


As of Node 14, the minimum versions are Windows 8.1, Server 2012 R2, but a patch to check an environment variable NODE_SKIP_PLATFORM_CHECK=1 was just added, and should arrive in new versions soon.

Tags:

Node.Js