Linux kernel is leaving 486 CPUs behind, only 18 years after the last one made | Hacker News Reader

Linux kernel is leaving 486 CPUs behind, only 18 years after the last one made

arstechnica.com

35 pointsrickcarlino14 comments

There is always netbsd, which prioritizes portability.

Whether you like it or not, linux is a commercial operating system primarily designed and built by people working for commercial entities, to solve commercial problems.

Nobody in the commercial world is running 486, and supporting old CPUs makes it harder to maintain and build features for modern hardware that commercial entities use.

It looks like NetBSD and FreeDOS are the last major operating systems that support 486s. Even OpenBSD and Minix require at least a Pentium processor.

What does "commercial" have to do with anything? As a personal user, I have absolutely no need for 486, and I doubt anyone outside of extremely narrow group of people digging old hardware does. 486 was a history when I was a kid, and I am not even remotely young anymore.

Title is slightly misleading, it is not leaving behind 486 types of CPUs individually, but the "486 CPU".

Absolutely nobody was confused by this.

I definitely was BUT I figured it out myself, without help.

I was not, but now that it was pointed out, I can totally see why would many people be confused, at least after reading just the title. :D

Can most software even compile for 486? I don't think there's anybody out there testing their software for that target.

Good.

Removing tech debt is important

Agreed, if you're running a 486 machine the least of your problems is running the latest Linux kernel.

I feel like at this point they could’ve waited more years just for bragging rights.

(I don’t mean to say 18 years is not brag worthy, but 20 rolls off the tongue better.)

Well, actually... The LTS kernel with longest support before 6.15 is 6.1. It will be supported until December 2027 [1] which is a few months over 20 years after the last 486 CPU [2].

[1] https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20061009060120/http://developer.... as linked in the Ars Technica article

Cool, we’ll be able to say “Linux supports hardware for over two decades after it’s stopped being shipped”!

Thanks for the info, btw. (:

Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43928570

Reply on news.ycombinator.com