this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2026
33 points (97.1% liked)

Technology

42671 readers
295 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
alyaza@beehaw.org
TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org
gyrfalcon@beehaw.org
rs5th@beehaw.org
coldredlight@beehaw.org
SemioticStandard@beehaw.org
TheRtRevKaiser@kbin.social
remington@beehaw.org
33
Linux kernel maintainers are following through on removing Intel 486 support (arstechnica.com)
submitted 11 hours ago by Powderhorn@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org
13 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

One point in favor of the sprawling Linux ecosystem is its broad hardware support—the kernel officially supports everything from ’90s-era PC hardware to Arm-based Apple Silicon chips, thanks to decades of combined effort from hardware manufacturers and motivated community members.

But nothing can last forever, and for a few years now, Linux maintainers (including Linus Torvalds) have been pushing to drop kernel support for Intel’s 80486 processor. This chip was originally introduced in 1989, was replaced by the first Intel Pentium in 1993, and was fully discontinued in 2007. Code commits suggest that Linux kernel version 7.1 will be the first to follow through, making it impossible to build a version of the kernel that will support the 486; Phoronix says that additional kernel changes to remove 486-related code will follow in subsequent kernel versions.

Although these chips haven’t changed in decades, maintaining support for them in modern software isn’t free.

“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,” writes Linux kernel contributor Ingo Molnar in his initial patch removing 486 support from the kernel. “This compatibility glue is sometimes even causing problems that people spend time to resolve, which time could be spent on other things.”

Too soon?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] spit_evil_olive_tips@beehaw.org 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

hopefully someone forks off a decent kernel

uhhh...do you have any idea how much effort would be involved in maintaining a fork of the Linux kernel, just to preserve 486 support?

this feels like a valuable door to keep open

it's not.

it's a vanishingly small install base, because of how slow and limited those chips are. the 486 had a whopping 1.2 million transistors. compare that to the big list on this wikipedia page. a few that stand out:

  • Playstation 2 (2003) had 53 million
  • Intel Core 2 Duo (2008) had 230 million
  • Apple A7 (2013) used in the iPhone 5S and iPad Air had 1 billion

transistor count isn't an exact proxy for performance, but with those orders of magnitude it puts into perspective just how underpowered that little 486 is going to be, for anything you might try to do with it in 2026.

an original, first-generation Raspberry Pi will absolutely run circles around a 486. same with going to ebay or a local pawn shop / computer refurbisher and buying the absolute oldest/cheapest used laptop you can find.

for people who already have 486s and really want to keep them going, the current Debian release still supports 486, and it's supported until 2028 - meaning you have 2 more years of continuing to receive security updates and theoretically being safe to connect it to the internet.

and even after that, FreeBSD has "tier 2" support for 386 and higher, and NetBSD supports it as "tier 1"

and of course, nothing stops anyone from running an old kernel on their old hardware.

[–] JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

I would really want to know what kind of a use-case results in using a 386 or 486 computer in 2026 in such a manner that not being able to install the latest kernel updates would in any way be an actual issue.

[–] Powderhorn@beehaw.org 3 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Anything you still need a 486 for outside of hardware edge cases is handled far better and faster by a Pi Zero W, at a fraction of the power envelope. Thing is, they won't be running Linux in that case, given vendor lock-in.