Which Nodejs version should I set up on an old Windows XP machine?

Question

Trying to set up Nodejs on an old computer (1GB ram, 900 Mhz) with Windows XP SP3 on it.

I installed the latest x86 version of Node (4.4.5) but when I trying to access it at command line (like a simple version check node -version) it stops working and showing me that it encountered an problem and needs to close.

I suppose this newer versions not supporting XP anymore. Which version should I use on XP? Is it safe to use on a production environment?

Solution 1

Support for XP has been dropped in v6 so technically a v4 release should still work.

I think the problem is hardly anyone actually uses XP so you are going to be fighting a losing battle. Even if you raise an issue people aren't going to run to fix XP bugs.

You could try the latest 0.12 release.

Solution 2

I use WinXP SP3 32-bit and the version of NodeJS that I have installed is: Node.js 5.12.0

It can be downloaded from: NodeJS v5.12.0

I used the .msi installer: node-v5.12.0-x86.msi

Solution 3

It may have crashed in your case due to the CPU not having SSE2 support. In this case it is still possible to get it working by recompiling the Node.

Other than that 4.x and 5.x versions should work. Yet 4.x became LTS and it's not obvious, which would fit you better. 4.x received updates up to 2018, whereas 5.x stopped being updated in 2016.

Changes in an LTS-covered major version are limited to:

• Bug fixes;
• Security updates;
• Non-semver-major npm updates;
• Relevant documentation updates;
• Certain performance improvements where the risk of breaking existing applications is minimal;
• Changes that introduce large amount of code churn where the risk of breaking existing applications is low and where the change in question may significantly ease the ability to backport future changes due to the reduction in diff noise.

Source: https://github.com/nodejs/Release

Version   Date        V8          npm     NODE_MODULE_VERSION
5.12.0    2016-06-23  4.6.85.32   3.8.6   47
4.9.1     2018-03-29  4.5.103.53  2.15.11 46

Source: https://nodejs.org/en/download/releases/

Comments

[Fil]

Ok v6 is too new... but v0.12 is too old! You can use v5.12.0 [nodejs.org/dist/v5.12.0/]... maybe it was just a typo... I've tried on xp pro. Maybe v4.4.5 had some problem solved with latest versions?

[Matt]

Are you saying v5.12.0 and the v4.8.5 are working on XP? The v5 releases are no longer being patched so it's probably better to use v4

[Fil]

I only tryed v5.12.0 and it's working on xp pro sp3.