Message-ID: <69f28e2d@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> <69ee94fe@news.ausics.net> <10snd8b$29c0d$2@dont-email.me> <20260427121054.00003218@gmail.com> <69efe7b1@news.ausics.net> <10sphtg$ka69$1@news1.tnib.de> <69f13be9@news.ausics.net> User-Agent: tin/2.6.5-20251224 ("Glenury") (Linux/2.4.31 (i586)) NNTP-Posting-Host: news.ausics.net Date: 30 Apr 2026 09:03:09 +1000 Organization: Ausics - https://newsgroups.ausics.net Lines: 59 X-Complaints: abuse@ausics.net Path: csiph.com!news.samoylyk.net!news.ausics.net!not-for-mail Xref: csiph.com comp.os.linux.misc:86019 Richard Kettlewell wrote: > not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) writes: >> Yes, which I repeat works very well on my old Thinkpad running current >> Linux with its 3GB RAM and PCMCIA. "It won't run Linux anyway" is a >> dumb excuse for removing PCMCIA support on any level. > > I'm not convinced 'excuse' is really an accurate framing here. True it's really an excuse being given by people in this group rather than the kernel developers. Which makes the point I've been wasting my time by responding to them really. > If something is attracting trouble then the question is more > whether there is a justification for keeping it than for removing > it. Yes and if they don't think remaining users of older hardware justify that, yet BSD developers do, those users like me know where to look. > Regardless of that, the problem is not just usage but maintenance. > From [1]: > > | These are all ISA and PCMCIA Ethernet devices, mostly from the last > | century, a couple from 2001 or 2002. It seems unlikely they are still > | used. However, remove them one patch at a time so they can be brought > | back if somebody still has the hardware, runs modern kernels and wants > | to take up the roll of driver Maintainer. > > As you can see it does consider the possibility that the affected > hardware is still used, but that is only part of the story: drivers will > only stay in the kernel if someone is willing to maintain them. Yeah, which is why I say if they're not interested anymore, time to look elsewhere. Indeed beyond the process of removing PCMCIA itself, I see the statement in the other PCMCIA removal patch that computers from "~2009" are "almost completely obsolete" as a red flag that this is only going to continue with other drivers for hardware from that era. Then what? I spend $100 on a laptop from 2014 with a more annoying design (or more on an obscure old model that I don't find so bad) and set it all up, then five years later they say "driver xyz was for hardware last made ~2014 is unmaintained and due for removal" and I do it all again? So far people have been doing the maintenance work fairly blindly for drivers going back to the 1990s. If that's not happening anymore, how do I guess what to buy now if I don't want to start doing hardware upgrades routinely? https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=b3c26ea81ccc522e77ed0b1707add61fc9206216 Yes I get your point not to complain about what you get for free, but like I say the BSDs have the same price tag, and if Linux starts forcing me to spend time and money on upgrading to new (old) hardware every few years (or more money buying brand new hardware to get driver support for longer) when my old hardware still runs all the application software I use, is it really free for me? -- __ __ #_ < |\| |< _#