Linux 7.1 is lining up a change which starts sunsetting built-in support for Intel’s i486 CPUs, the sort of kit old enough to have nostalgia for dial-up.
Phoronix spotted a patch queued for 7.1 by Ingo Molnar titled “x86/cpu: Remove M486/M486SX/ELAN support”, and it is aimed squarely at ripping out ancient compatibility scaffolding.
The argument is that x86-32 has accrued too much weird emulation baggage for chips hardly anyone runs on a modern kernel, and developers keep tripping over it. The patch changelog spells it out like this:
“In the x86 architecture, we have various complicated hardware emulation facilities on x86-32 to support ancient 32-bit CPUs that very, very few people are using with modern kernels. This compatibility glue is sometimes causing problems that people spend time resolving, time that could be spent on other things.
IT’s Mr Sweary, Linus Torvalds recently remarked:
“I really get the feeling that it’s time to leave i486 support behind. There’s zero real reason for anybody to waste one second of development effort on this kind of issue.”
Chipzilla’s i486 first turned up in 1989, which means it has had a longer run than most tech fads, and Linux has been famously patient with old hardware. Linux 7.1’s first step is practical: deleting CONFIG_M486SX, CONFIG_M486, and CONFIG_MELAN so those targets no longer exist.
Nothing is merged yet, but when Torvalds is already sharpening the knife, the odds are not great for 486 diehards. If you are one of the rare souls still running an i486 for fun or for some industrial relic, you will be living on long-term support kernels and older distros while everyone else moves on.
