Linux

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[–] Feyter@programming.dev 7 points 7 months ago* (3 children)

Exactly! Just because there is support for a stone age CPU in the Linux Kernel, doesn't mean every single modern Linux compatible software is running smoothly on this.

Of course, from the Mac/Windows point of view it was the correct thing to ditch such old stuff. Because they are concerned about having a stable product that is running on modern hardware. Keeping this old stuff in, makes it more complicated to maintain their system and therefore more suspectable to errors.

Linux could only keep this support up for so long, because somewhere there where people that though it would be worth care about for 28 years. And even now it's not over. You can modify the kernel and patch 486 support back in again on your own. So "incompatibility" doesn't really exist with a open system. It's just that nobody at the core kernel team will do this service for you anymore.

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[–] 0x0@lemmy.zip 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I'm not so sure Microslop dropped 486 support.
Like someone else said, there's a lot of industrial hardware still running these.
Just because it doesn't make sense for your bubble doesn't mean it's the right approach. Luckily, quite a few distros still support 32 bit. Less ewaste.

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[–] halcyoncmdr@piefed.social 7 points 7 months ago

A lot of industrial and commercial hardware using Windows was abandoned by the manufacturer decades ago. There is a lot of hardware that still needs Windows XP to control, some even stuck on Windows 98. As aging hardware breaks it is becoming harder to find replacements. For a lot of this, the software to run it is so focused that emulation layers cause issues.

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[–] Feyter@programming.dev 5 points 7 months ago

I'm pretty sure those machines still run WinXP at best ;)

And yes that's exactly what I said. You still can run Linux on a 486 for this special edge cases, it's just that the Linux Kernel team will no longer provide the service for maintaining it. If it is such an important thing for crucial industry machines, they can definitely pay someone patching it back in.

For the overwhelmingly majority of Linux use cases it's not a concern anymore. So why should they do the extra work, instead of spending the time elsewhere?