hopefully someone forks off a decent kernel that bridges the gap between older hardware and modern Linux because this feels like a valuable door to keep open in this regressive age of "you'll own nothing and you'll like it".
this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2026
30 points (96.9% liked)
Technology
42671 readers
283 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
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.
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.
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.
I get that, but how many people are still running a 486 without a bespoke use case in 2026? The older kernels still work, and no software targeting the 486 architecture is relying on the latest Linux kernel.
As long as the PC isn't being connected to the internet, there's no reason you can't just keep running an old kernel.
Even if it is connected, you can keep running an old kernel.
You can, but it’s a bad idea. Pretty major security risk.
What kind of security risk are you at running a 486? You can barely handle the TLS handshake. Modern malware would just brick your system the same way any other modern software would.
What are you running on a 486 these days that needs to be online? A pihole? Like, even if this is a CNC controller or vinyl cutter (if you need a dongle to run your output, this is a valid concern; not a lot of parallel ports hanging out on mobos these days), the internet is not required.