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Re: Linux kernal going to drop i486 support

If Linux becomes an OS that targets modern hardware all the time, then what's the purpose of it? 😟 Then it's nolonger useful to the hardware hacker who wants to get a 35 year old webcam going. Or likes to use Linux for testing purposes, for all sorts of hardware, no matter the age. Why do you keep …

Re: Linux kernal going to drop i486 support

This brings me back to comments from industry insiders that they were still fabbing around a million 486 CPUs a year into this century, still wondering where they were going in 2007. Critical embedded and insustrial systems. Definitely not running a bleeding edge Linux kernel, many possibly not …

Re: Linux kernal going to drop i486 support

It's also worth remembering that Debian, a distro famously focussed on compatibility and stability, stopped supporting Pentium 1 class processors in Stretch, well ahead of the kernel itself: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2016/05/msg00001.html You haven't been able to run any …

Re: Linux kernal going to drop i486 support

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-04-30, 22:48: SquallStrife wrote on 2025-04-30, 22:42: Even stoic, conservative, risk-averse IBM has Linux on z/Series. IBM bought Red Hat for that. They stand behind one of the oldest pillars of Linux distribution. Indeed!

Re: Linux kernal going to drop i486 support

if not for sake of old hardware, then what's Linux actually good for? You keep saying this... Meanwhile, somewhere between 80 and 96% of web servers run Linux (depending on how you measure it). All but a handful of the supercomputers on the Top 500 list run Linux. Linux Kernel is used by the …

Re: Linux kernal going to drop i486 support

kagura1050 wrote on 2025-04-29, 07:59: The concept of the distribution is "use and preserve 486", so somehow I feel like I've lost the battle. You'll still have 486 support in the current LTS kernel for a number of years, and the SLTS kernel for 10+ years past that.

Re: Linux kernal going to drop i486 support

Isn't it the case, though? 🤷‍♂️ No, for the reasons I already explained. You are completely free to maintain your own branch of the kernel that still has the math-emu feature, and backport future changes to it. If the prevalence of Linux on pre-i686 CPUs is as high as you seem to think it is, then …

Re: Linux kernal going to drop i486 support

Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if it has same fate in 2028, when another developer comes up with the brilliant idea of dropping another CPU generation. You're framing it like the decision was "let's stop supporting something because fuck those guys". There is code in the kernel that exists to …

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