Linux 7.2 has landed, dragging x86 timing clean out of the nineties by making the Time Stamp Counter mandatory.
I wrote up a quick article on why ditching those ancient legacy fallbacks is good housekeeping, plus a few other bits like cache-aware scheduling and memory tweaks worth noting.
Is anyone still using legacy hardware? If so, what do you use it for?
It makes more sense to do this in a major upgrade like from kernel 6 to 7 but some cleanup is good.
major upgrade like from kernel 6 to 7
What do you mean? The Linux kernel doesn't follow SemVer.
The 6.19 -> 7.0 version bump didn't have any more inherent meaning than 7.0 -> 7.1 or 7.1 -> 7.2.
Virtually nobody is going to run kernel 7.2 on a 90s CPU without a time stamp chip. Its good practice to prune old and largely unused features once and a while
Also kernel 6.12 has support until 2035, so it's not like anyone running these CPUs would be missing out on security updates for a while.
With an ifdef.
And this change basically just drops support for the i486. In 2026. 13 years after they dropped support for the i386. Those processors came out in 1985 and 1989 respectively. If this keeps up, we might lose support for the first Pentium CPUs (released in 1993) around 2040...
I couldn't imagine running a modern OS on those chips, or even how I would go about installing it. We are talking about computers pre-USB and CD-ROM drives. Average hard disks were under 100MB, average ram was under 10MB. The rare specialty distros that can fit on a floppy are likely heavily modifying their kernals to work / fit anyway. I don't understand why people are outraged by this.
There's just a few vocals not the majority. I know we still have a few i486 running and even 1 i386 running. There not connected to anything and just perform the same simple task they have for decades so updates are virtually meaningless. Not uncommon in power, water, rail, and other utilities.
It's easy to understand. They are objectively fucking stupid and like to be outraged for the sake of it. That or they are literally trolls
These people are literally not worth any amount of effort to pay attention to if they are the former and if they are the latter then remember rule 1. Don't feed the trolls.
You spell ReactOS so weird.
No - nobody is still using one that would be running a modern distro. Anyone relying on hardware this old is already managing their own ecosystem of software.
We're talking about computers that have clock speeds in the megahertz range FFS. They're slower than an ESP32 and take a lot more power.
Nothing of value was lost.
i486 is an antique now. It’s an artifact more expensive than less-ancient PCs.
It would require quite an expert to setup with a 7.X kernel, especially with network access.
I’m all for old hardware support, but there’s basically no scenario where this hurts anyone struggling to get by.
If you're using a 30+ year old computer in the modern day, you've already sacrificed security.
The price and availability of a 15 year old computer is almost the same as a 30 year old computer, you can get a fully functional 1st gen i5 PC that will sprint circles around the highest end 90's PC for $40. Honestly, most people are just e-wasting computers that old, I'm sure you could easily get them for free, hell, lots of people would pay you to take them off their hands.
No "poors" are running a 486. You would take the best part of and hour to boot a modern distro on a 66MHz (that's 0.066GHz for you kids) 486. That's if it would boot at all - which it likely wouldn't.
Those devices also don't get updated, touched or fucked with. So any changes to newer kernels matter as much as as the answer to what fucking dirt taste like.
It literally doesn't. So being mad at the removal is fucking retarded.
Yup. Linux isn't what it used to be anymore.
You're right, it's way better.
That's not an individual problem, but you liberals only work in an individual and monetary logic. The Evil Empire's propaganda is efficient.
This is so lemmy.ml it hurts. I’m bookmarking this comment, thank you.
You make it sound like no one can just go keep the older hardware alive by forking.
I love the "just fork it" argument.
Look, Elon, maybe we can't solo a project like that if we're still using old hardware, okay?
Sorry if that made you frown behind your shades. Ask the poolside waiter for a other cocktail.
I mean, most of the success of Linux comes from the freedom to solve local issues the way you want.
There have come lots of issues solved with a departure from the project from a need that drove the change. Want Debian without systemd? Devuan.
So yes, literally, if it's important to you, you can fork it. Whether that takes a big lift or not doesn't mean you're any less free to do so.
The fairy tale of fork freedom, just like the fairy tale of market freedom.
Y'all are really pathetic.
"downvotes won't change the reality, corpo boot lickers
This happens every time I point put that losing these "old" kernel capabilities is in fact a loss.
Let them be stupid about it, all the code still exists to undo these bad decisions one day. It'll just be more work than it would otherwise be to fix what they broke.
I put them in the same category as AI sycophants, they can't see three feet beyond their own nose.
Short-sighted kids are a little more common after we fired the mentors and documenters in our field: they don't know how or why we did such dumb things before and thus can't avoid them. It's like how America fired all its inspectors and now suffer en masse from salmonella and explosive diarrhea from tainted food: causal.
Why don't you support a Linux distro that runs on prehistoric hardware?
It's very easy to spend other peoples time than offer your own for something you clearly don't care enough about.
If you missed the comment. Previous kernel version is supported until 2035. That's 9 more years. You need any longer than that?
What exactly is the utility of the code, though? Is it so these really ancient machines stay up-to-date/secure in societal collapse or something?
I’d be sympathetic to that, but the chips this depreciates are so rare that you won’t find many to use, in that scenario… and in the rare exceptions, using an older kernel version would be fine.
@lemmy.ml
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@lemmy.ml
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
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Just a quick reminder: NetBSD still has it and will very likely in the foreseeable future
save