More ancient Linux device support faces the chop
(2026/04/24)
- Reference: 1777040110
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2026/04/24/ancient_linux_drivers_going/
- Source link:
One tactic to deal with LLM-powered vulnerability detection is simple – just speed up the removal of old code. If it's gone, it no longer matters if it's buggy.
Bot-powered bug-busting is [1]in the news of late , with scary-sounding reports of automated tools detecting flaws and vulnerabilities far faster than any unaided humans. Some of these are long-standing howlers, such as a [2]27-year-old bug in OpenBSD and a [3]23-year-old flaw in the Linux in-kernel NFS code. Even [4]stable-kernel supremo Greg Kroah-Hartman says it works .
The good news is that there's one fairly dramatic but simple approach to handling this: if the bugs are in very old drivers for very old hardware, then don't even try to fix them – just [5]remove them . This is a theme behind multiple recent changes in the kernel. Andrew Lunn's [6]18-patch series removes the drivers for 3Com's 3C509, 3C515, 3C574, 3C589 and 3C59x hardware. The Reg FOSS desk suspects he may still have some of these in his parts boxes somewhere. It also removes 13 other devices, including some old Xircom parallel-port and PCMCIA slot cards. If we manage to find one of them, perhaps it will still work in our Amiga 1200.
[7]
Also [8]up for the chop are some newer – but still over two decade old – cards: the Hamachi and Yellowfin PCI gigabit adaptors. The AX.25 and HAM Radio drivers are also [9]slated to go , as is [10]Asynchronous Transfer Mode networking . This vulture remembers when ATM was still being promoted as [11]'the strongest choice for public and private network interconnectivity' , despite the rapid rise of TCP/IP in the late 1990s. So much for that. The writing was on the wall at least 15 years ago, when this vulture removed the ATM card and associated drivers from a client's PC who had just moved back to London from Singapore. ISDN CAPI support [12]looks set to go , as well, including over Bluetooth. Linux benchmarking and news site Phoronix reckons just the Ethernet devices will remove [13]nearly 30,000 lines of code .
[14]Linux 7.1 will have an optional new NTFS driver
[15]Linux may get a hall pass from one state age-check bill, but Congress plays hall monitor
[16]What the Linux desktop really needs to challenge Windows
[17]You can now run WSL on Windows 95, in case you're crazy, too
Another device-support removal that may happen in kernel 7.1 is one that was last proposed almost a year ago for kernel 6.15: [18]removal of 80486 support . It wasn't new last year, either – the change was [19]already being discussed in 2022 .
Even if all these changes are approved, it doesn't spell instant doom: old kernels with the support present will still be maintained for years to come. The Register also heard from René Rebe, lead maintainer of the [20]T2 distribution , who told us:
Just wanted to let you know that T2/Linux will of course continue to support this. It's trivial to support early and simple 32-bit CPUs.
We provided i486 releases all the last years, recently fixed some bugs, and still run it on the fastest i486 class CPUs (AMD 5x86) overclocked at 160 MHz, or Vortex86 Embedded and Industrial boards.
We met Rebe at this year's FOSDEM conference in Brussels, where the project was demonstrating the distro on several older RISC computers, including a dual-core PowerMac G5, which was happily running the latest Firefox on T2/Linux, complete with hardware-accelerated 3D and video playback. ®
Get our [21]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/24/ai_finding_bugs/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/07/anthropic_all_your_zerodays_are_belong_to_us/
[3] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=5133b61aaf437e5f25b1b396b14242a6bb0508e2
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/26/greg_kroahhartman_ai_kernel/
[5] https://lwn.net/Articles/1068928/
[6] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20260421-v7-0-0-net-next-driver-removal-v1-v1-0-69517c689d1f@lunn.ch/
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aeuTq19m4wthMj3zEvJlXAAAA4I&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[8] https://lwn.net/ml/all/20260422044820.485660-1-25181214217@stu.xidian.edu.cn/
[9] https://lwn.net/ml/all/20260421021824.1293976-1-kuba@kernel.org/
[10] https://lwn.net/ml/all/20260421021824.1293976-1-kuba@kernel.org/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/1998/11/03/atm_fends_off_ip_insight/
[12] https://lwn.net/ml/all/20260421022108.1299678-1-kuba@kernel.org/
[13] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Old-Network-AI
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/20/linux_71_new_ntfs/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/22/linux_us_state_age_verificaiton_laws/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/22/what_linux_desktop_really_needs/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/22/wsl_windows95/
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/06/patch_to_end_i486_support/
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/25/486_support_linux_kernel_ending/
[20] https://t2linux.com/
[21] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Bot-powered bug-busting is [1]in the news of late , with scary-sounding reports of automated tools detecting flaws and vulnerabilities far faster than any unaided humans. Some of these are long-standing howlers, such as a [2]27-year-old bug in OpenBSD and a [3]23-year-old flaw in the Linux in-kernel NFS code. Even [4]stable-kernel supremo Greg Kroah-Hartman says it works .
The good news is that there's one fairly dramatic but simple approach to handling this: if the bugs are in very old drivers for very old hardware, then don't even try to fix them – just [5]remove them . This is a theme behind multiple recent changes in the kernel. Andrew Lunn's [6]18-patch series removes the drivers for 3Com's 3C509, 3C515, 3C574, 3C589 and 3C59x hardware. The Reg FOSS desk suspects he may still have some of these in his parts boxes somewhere. It also removes 13 other devices, including some old Xircom parallel-port and PCMCIA slot cards. If we manage to find one of them, perhaps it will still work in our Amiga 1200.
[7]
Also [8]up for the chop are some newer – but still over two decade old – cards: the Hamachi and Yellowfin PCI gigabit adaptors. The AX.25 and HAM Radio drivers are also [9]slated to go , as is [10]Asynchronous Transfer Mode networking . This vulture remembers when ATM was still being promoted as [11]'the strongest choice for public and private network interconnectivity' , despite the rapid rise of TCP/IP in the late 1990s. So much for that. The writing was on the wall at least 15 years ago, when this vulture removed the ATM card and associated drivers from a client's PC who had just moved back to London from Singapore. ISDN CAPI support [12]looks set to go , as well, including over Bluetooth. Linux benchmarking and news site Phoronix reckons just the Ethernet devices will remove [13]nearly 30,000 lines of code .
[14]Linux 7.1 will have an optional new NTFS driver
[15]Linux may get a hall pass from one state age-check bill, but Congress plays hall monitor
[16]What the Linux desktop really needs to challenge Windows
[17]You can now run WSL on Windows 95, in case you're crazy, too
Another device-support removal that may happen in kernel 7.1 is one that was last proposed almost a year ago for kernel 6.15: [18]removal of 80486 support . It wasn't new last year, either – the change was [19]already being discussed in 2022 .
Even if all these changes are approved, it doesn't spell instant doom: old kernels with the support present will still be maintained for years to come. The Register also heard from René Rebe, lead maintainer of the [20]T2 distribution , who told us:
Just wanted to let you know that T2/Linux will of course continue to support this. It's trivial to support early and simple 32-bit CPUs.
We provided i486 releases all the last years, recently fixed some bugs, and still run it on the fastest i486 class CPUs (AMD 5x86) overclocked at 160 MHz, or Vortex86 Embedded and Industrial boards.
We met Rebe at this year's FOSDEM conference in Brussels, where the project was demonstrating the distro on several older RISC computers, including a dual-core PowerMac G5, which was happily running the latest Firefox on T2/Linux, complete with hardware-accelerated 3D and video playback. ®
Get our [21]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/24/ai_finding_bugs/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/07/anthropic_all_your_zerodays_are_belong_to_us/
[3] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=5133b61aaf437e5f25b1b396b14242a6bb0508e2
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/26/greg_kroahhartman_ai_kernel/
[5] https://lwn.net/Articles/1068928/
[6] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20260421-v7-0-0-net-next-driver-removal-v1-v1-0-69517c689d1f@lunn.ch/
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aeuTq19m4wthMj3zEvJlXAAAA4I&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[8] https://lwn.net/ml/all/20260422044820.485660-1-25181214217@stu.xidian.edu.cn/
[9] https://lwn.net/ml/all/20260421021824.1293976-1-kuba@kernel.org/
[10] https://lwn.net/ml/all/20260421021824.1293976-1-kuba@kernel.org/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/1998/11/03/atm_fends_off_ip_insight/
[12] https://lwn.net/ml/all/20260421022108.1299678-1-kuba@kernel.org/
[13] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Old-Network-AI
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/20/linux_71_new_ntfs/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/22/linux_us_state_age_verificaiton_laws/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/22/what_linux_desktop_really_needs/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/22/wsl_windows95/
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/06/patch_to_end_i486_support/
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/25/486_support_linux_kernel_ending/
[20] https://t2linux.com/
[21] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Steve Graham
If I remember correctly, an early work laptop I was given had a dual-port Xircom PCMCIA card, supporting (via dangly adaptors) ethernet on one side and 1200-baud modem on the other. And yes, they worked under Linux. After the laptop was declred obsolete, I took it home, rather than tossing it in the official skip.
Liam Proven
> a dual-port Xircom PCMCIA card
Xircom did some amazing stuff.
The RealPort cards worked either way up and you could fit a pair at once.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/273777849904
And no dongles -- full size ports on a card a few mm thick.
Its Portstation modular USB dock let you add and remove ports ad lib.
https://docs.rs-online.com/8350/0900766b8002d629.pdf
And it even offered USB drivers for Windows NT 4, which did not support USB at all!
Spring
elsergiovolador
Reminds me when at one outfit new CTO took complaint of developers to heart that there appears to be a lot of dead code nobody knows anything about that appears to be not used.
The cohort who developed that "dead" code was long gone.
They decided to put it on chopping board.
Then few months later panicked person from accounting wrote email that the reports they urgently need are not working.
Company was unable to publish accounts on time.
Code was entered back in.
Removing old code for old devices is not quite the improvement touted
as the old code will be in modules that are only loaded if the device is installed in the system. No device means no old code means little worry about old bugs.
Do not get me wrong: removal of old cruft is a good idea but do not expect vast bug reductions as a result.
A side benefit is that kernel maintainers will not need to waste time on unused code which means more time for what we actually use.