Message-ID: <69ee94fe@news.ausics.net> From: not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) Subject: Re: AI Is Killing Some Legacy Hardware Support Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc References: <10sbn6f$2kkkk$8@dont-email.me> <69ea9ec7@news.ausics.net> <69eb2a5f@news.ausics.net> <10skbd3$1cssv$3@dont-email.me> <10skfk3$93hh$1@news1.tnib.de> <10skglm$1ej2r$1@dont-email.me> User-Agent: tin/2.6.5-20251224 ("Glenury") (Linux/2.4.31 (i586)) NNTP-Posting-Host: news.ausics.net Date: 27 Apr 2026 08:43:10 +1000 Organization: Ausics - https://newsgroups.ausics.net Lines: 61 X-Complaints: abuse@ausics.net Path: csiph.com!news.bbs.nz!news.ausics.net!not-for-mail Xref: csiph.com comp.os.linux.misc:85957 Richard Kettlewell wrote: > Nuno Silva writes: >> On 2026-04-26, Marc Haber wrote: >>> Nuno Silva wrote: >>>>On 2026-04-24, Computer Nerd Kev wrote: >>>>> rbowman wrote: >>>>>> On 24 Apr 2026 08:35:51 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote: >>>>>>> Yikes, and I see as well as network drivers they're starting the >>>>>>> process of dropping PCMCIA support: >>>>>>> >>>>>>> https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.1-Drops-Old-PCMCIA-Code > > They started the process at least as far back as 2023: > > https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=9b12f050c76f090cc6d0aebe0ef76fed79ec3f15 > >>>>Sigh. My main laptop has PCMCIA, and I make use of it for a sane WLAN >>>>experience... >>> >>> You can probably get a twice as fast machine for a hundred euros. >> >> And then it will meet a similar fate when some other technology or >> hardware it uses is dropped by Linux? If I wanted that kind of >> treatment, I'd still be using Windows. >> >> Sure, there may be cases where such an upgrade is possible, money >> available, but this really sounds like a warning sign. > > Unmaintained code gets removed, this is not a new thing, ancient > hardware has been falling out of support for many years now. True, but usually niche things like the Micro Channel bus, or industry-specific hardware. For over a decade almost everyone running Linux on a laptop would have had a PCMCIA slot. Dropping that (and other relatively recent changes and discussions) is a new indication that the developers don't care anymore about keeping old hardware going. Even though Linux has really been very good at it and is now picking up many new users on that basis since Windows has become even more extreme with their enforcement of hardware obsolescence. > If you don't want to replace the affected hardware then your > options are to maintain the code yourself or pay someone to do > so. Nobody is doing it for free. That's a bit contradictory. If I chose to maintain the code myself then I _would_ be "doing it for free". But yes the most active Linux kernel developers will be in the employ of companies that won't have much incentive to maintain drivers for old hardware. That can also manifest as an unwillingness to even work with individuals who do want to maintain old drivers for free themselves. But in the BSD world I don't imagine anyone's employed to keep NetBSD running on the Amiga or 32bit SPARC, yet people do. So I don't think it's hopeless, it's just a matter of culture. I hope some BSDs will remain accommodating of old hardware users. -- __ __ #_ < |\| |< _#