this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
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Linux kernel is leaving 486 CPUs behind, only 18 years after the last one made (arstechnica.com)
submitted 20 hours ago by ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml
65 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I didn’t know whether to mark this NSFW or not but it’s time to buy a new computer if you haven’t upgraded in multiple decades.

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[–] Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works 23 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I think it should be possible to still run Linux on almost every 25 years old computer.

If the computer is older than this, it really becomes a piece of history and I can accept that it’d take efforts from the user to keep it in use, just like a collection car.

I only hope no bricking update is gonna be proposed to the people running such old hardware. The distribution should check if the hardware is compatible with a newer kernel before updating.

Still I think it’s important that Linux remains the OS of choice for old hardware and that the some distros remain deficated to these museum pieces.

[–] HulkSmashBurgers@reddthat.com 5 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I think older versions of the kernel (that support 486 hw) would still be available to download so someone could use them if they wanted. Not sure what other extre work would be involved though.

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

The issue is that older kernel versions will lose support and stop getting security updates eventually. I don't know if there is enough of a community around old CPUs for fixes to be backported by the community.

[–] spv@lemmy.spv.sh 9 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

i love backwards compatibility as much as the next guy, but at some point, if there isn't enough of a community to backport fixes, there probably aren't many using them. if a tree falls in the forest, you get the idea.

[–] Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 hours ago

You wouldn't want to keep such old equipment connected to a network anyway. That's only inviting trouble down the line.

[–] Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 8 hours ago

Sorry, my bad. I found my old 486 PC in my parent's attic recently, and started planning to get it running again

[–] pineapple@lemmy.ml 60 points 15 hours ago

That's a real showcase of how linux actually cares about its users over other companies. It's great to see that hardware I buy now will be supported on linux for a long long time into the future.

[–] peetabix@sh.itjust.works 23 points 14 hours ago (5 children)

Linux newb here. So I'm assuming this would make the kernel smaller, and take up less space. Would it be significant?

[–] _edge@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 31 minutes ago

Actually, most devices today run an amd64 kernel (amd or intel cpus in typical desktops or servers) or arm (phones, some modern notebooks). Those architectures never supported 486 cpus.

I assume, the code removed is in the x86 branch, excluded when compiling for other architectures. As others said, I guess this is mostly about maintainance effort and testing.

(But then i don't know much about the kernels. Maybe there's some interplay between amd64 and x64 architectures.)

[–] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 24 points 8 hours ago

The size difference is not significant. This is about the maintenance burden. When you need to change some of the code where CPU architecture specific things happen you always have to consider what to do with the code path or the compiler flags that concern 486 CPUs.

Here is the announcement by the maintainer Ingo Molnar where he lists some of the things he can now remove and stop worrying about: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250425084216.3913608-1-mingo@kernel.org/

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 33 points 12 hours ago

The Linux kernel is well over 30 million lines of code (lots of that is drivers).

This change shrinks the kernel by about 15,000 lines. That is not nothing, but it hardly moves the needle.

It is just one less thing to have to worry about and one less constraint to limit flexibility in the future.

[–] ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 48 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

It’s probably less about making the kernel smaller and more about security and reviewing code. The less code you have to maintain, the fewer vulnerabilities even if it’s old code.

I would doubt almost 20 year-old code is taking up a lot of space or presenting new vulnerabilities. And it’s obviously open source so if anyone needs it, they can always use an older kernel or maintain it. Sometimes, your oldest code is insane. I wish there was a budget for every company and government to pay retirees part time to go back over their oldest code that’s still in use. A lot of retired programmers would do it for fun and nostalgia. And to be horrified something they wrote 20 years ago hasn’t been updated or replaced.

[–] utopiah@lemmy.ml 14 points 13 hours ago

I wish there was a budget for every company and government to pay retirees part time to go back over their oldest code that’s still in use. A lot of retired programmers would do it for fun and nostalgia.

There is no budget for it AFAICT but there is https://github.com/abandonware and others trying to help on that path.

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[–] neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 103 points 19 hours ago

This is absurd! Think of all the 486 cpus that will become EWASTE! LINUX HATES THE ENVIRONMENT!

/s in case not obvious.

[–] moody 81 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

I'm kind of shocked that it's only been 18 years since the last 486 chip was made. It was launched in 1989 and discontinued in 2008, while the original Pentium was launched in 1993 and discontinued in 1999. Hell, the Pentium 4 was discontinued in 2007.

[–] superkret@feddit.org 15 points 13 hours ago

There's no way in hell 2007 was 18 years ago.

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 10 points 15 hours ago

I think you can still buy new 486 compatible chips today.

https://www.vortex86.com/

[–] Vopyr@lemmy.world 27 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

It's quite incredible, and very interesting. I wonder why they continued to produce these CPUs.

[–] bigkahuna1986@lemmy.ml 56 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Probably for industrial machines.

[–] mriswith@lemmy.world 6 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Yeah, the amount of industrial machinery being controlled by ancient hardware would baffle a lot of people.

For a comparison people might relate to: There are ATMs running twenty year old versions of Windows XP.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 31 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Yup. Airplanes, for example, take a lot of validation. It's extremely expensive to retest a new configuration, so they make one computer, get it validated, and use it unmodified for the next thirty years.

This is why the Boeing Max 8 thing was a big deal. They made approved modifications, but found in rare conditions it could cause unexpected and dangerous flight conditions. But, a times b times c was estimated to be less than the cost of doing it properly, so they didn't.

[–] dan@upvote.au 14 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

Same with industrial automation. There's some robotic arms, assembly lines, etc in use today that still use PCs with ISA slots - the predecessor to PCI, which was the predecessor to PCIe. Old 16-bit bus with a max speed of around 5Mbps. That's why you'll occasionally see newish "industrial" motherboards that have ISA slots and parallel ports.

They also often have a lot of the hardware in stock and ready to deploy, to handle replacements.

A project I worked on at university (way back in 2010) was for one of the largest providers of air traffic control systems. Our project was interesting - overlaying eye tracking data from Tobii eye trackers they provided (thousands of dollars each at the time) on top of screen recordings taken via VNC, to aid in training of air traffic controllers.

It was even more interesting to learn about some of their processes, though. Whenever they built an ATC computer system for a client, they'd build one or two spares at the same time, with exactly identical hardware. They did this for two reasons:

  1. If the hardware breaks down, they can supply a new system that exactly matches the hardware that was verified.
  2. If a client has an issue with their system, they can try and replicate the issue on a clone of that client's system.

We got to see a storage room with a large number of these systems. Lots of different PCs anywhere from a month to maybe 15 years old. :)

[–] LandedGentry@lemmy.zip 18 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Dude when those emails came out and we saw the engineer talking about how he wouldn’t let his own family fly on one to another engineer when asked…truly slackjawed moment.

[–] superkret@feddit.org 5 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

WTF can you link this?

[–] LandedGentry@lemmy.zip 3 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

It’s real bad

"This airplane is designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys."

"I still haven't been forgiven by God for the covering up I did last year," one employee says in 2018, referring to an exchange of information with the FAA.

"Would you put your family on a Max simulator trained aircraft? I wouldn't," says one employee to another, who responds, "No."

[–] TootSweet@lemmy.world 43 points 19 hours ago (4 children)

Whew. My 586 is safe.

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[–] davel@lemmy.ml 11 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (2 children)

but what abt my 386SX tho

[–] f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyz 8 points 13 hours ago

Also check out ELKS for your even older CPUs.

[–] inferni_advocatvs@lemmy.world 34 points 20 hours ago (5 children)

Nooooooooo my...wait I've never actually owned a 486. Carry On.

[–] balsoft@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 hours ago

First they came for 486, and I did not speak out - because I've never actually owned a 486...

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