Linux will remove i486 support:
More than 36 years after the release of the 486 and 18 years after Intel stopped making them, leaders of the Linux kernel believe the project can improve itself by leaving i486 support behind. Ingo Molnar, quoting Linus Torvalds regarding "zero real reason for anybody to waste one second" on 486 support, submitted a patch series to the 6.15 kernel that updates its minimum support features. Those requirements now include TSC (Time Stamp Counter) and CX8 (i.e., "fixed" CMPXCH8B, its own whole thing), features that the 486 lacks (as do some early non-Pentium 586 processors).
It's not the first time Torvalds has suggested dropping support for 32-bit processors and relieving kernel developers from implementing archaic emulation and work-around solutions. "We got rid of i386 support back in 2012. Maybe it's time to get rid of i486 support in 2022," Torvalds wrote in October 2022. Failing major changes to the 6.15 kernel, which will likely arrive late this month, i486 support will be dropped.
The fact that this is news is actually the news. Microsoft dropped 486 support when the released Windows XP (!) in 2001, basically a quarter century ago. Linux has the all time record for backwards compatibility.
Full disclosure: I don't believe that I ever had a computer wit a 486 processor - I'm pretty sure I jumped straight from 386 to Pentium. That said, I bought a used computer to turn into a Linux firewall back around 2000, and that ran until The Queen Of The World and I opened up Castle Borepatch in 2016.
Fare thee well, 486. You've earned a rest after 36 years.
7 comments:
Sigh... I had an original 486 as a test machine... Hard to believe it was 'that' long ago.
I still have several "Super 7" mother boards and AMD K6-II and K6-III processors.
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NetBSD still supports 32 bit machines.
That long ago? I think it was '92 or '93 when I started to see 486s in desktop computers where I was working (sales & service).
I believe an i486 was the only desktop computer I bought for myself that I didn't home-build. I think it still was an AMD, however.
I build my own and use Ryzen.
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