Quote:Security giant Avast Software published version 18.8 of its consumer-oriented security products for Windows recently.

The company, which acquired AVG back in 2016 and Piriform, maker of CCleaner in 2017,  released Avast Free Antivirus 18.8 and the commercial products Avast Internet Security and Avast Premier.

The new releases fix a critical security vulnerability in the products. Avast notes that version 18.8 is the last version that it plans to release for Windows XP or Windows Vista.

Microsoft ended support for Windows XP in 2014 and support for Windows Vista in 2017 officially. Companies like Google or Mozilla ended support for their products on these operating systems at a later point in time due to the large number of systems still in use.

Mozilla, for example, ended support for Windows XP and Vista in June 2018 officially while Google dropped support for XP and Vista in 2016. Coincidentally, that meant that Google ended support before Microsoft did in the case of Vista.

Avast planned to end support for Windows Vista and Windows XP with the release of version 18.7 but it appears that the company had a change of heart. It is likely that the security issue that was patched in version 18.8 had something to do with the decision but the company did not explain why it made the decision to release this new version for XP and Vista as well.

Full reading: https://www.ghacks.net/2018/11/19/avast-18-8-is-the-last-version-for-windows-xp-and-vista/