So a lot of people seem to be furious that Microsoft is blocking Firefox from Windows 8 on ARM. However, I have also seen a lot of misinformation being spread and I thought I should clear some of it up.
A lot of people seem to think that Microsoft won't allow Firefox at all. This is wrong. They are only blocking Firefox from running in the classic mode (as in, desktop/non-metro) and only on Windows RT (Windows on ARM). Microsoft will still allow Mozilla to distributing the regular desktop browser for regular x86 machines, but on ARM it will be limited to Metro Firefox only.
So what does this mean? It means that if you are using an x86 machine (like Intel i3and AMD Phenom) then you will be able to install both the regular desktop (also called Classic) version of Firefox, as well as the Metro version. However, if you are using an ARM based machine (those processors found inside smartphones and lots of tablets) then you will only be able to install the Metro version, and not the desktop version.
So this means that the only "classic desktop browser" you will be able to use on an ARM machine, will be Internet Explorer.
I don't think this is a huge deal to be honest. Why? Because if you are using a tablet (which most ARM machines will be) then you won't really want to use the classic desktop anyway. You will mostly stay on metro, where the programs are much more touch friendly, and Firefox will work on there.
The only real negative impact I see with this is that I can see myself going into "classic mode" quite a lot if I had a tablet like the Asus Transformer, where you can dock it and basically turn it into a netbook/laptop.
Anyway, I think people are kind of blowing this out of proportions. Yes it's obviously not good that Microsoft are kind of limiting developers what they can and can't do, but this thing will most likely not affect that many people, and it's not really a big deal anyway if you were affected.
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