Post #1890205

2026-04-25 10:16 UTC

@kernellogger What bothers me is not "pls provide free support forever!", but rather visibility. Even if you constrain it to "people who make money running Linux on 15yo hardware they inherited", I don't think it's very reasonable to assume they subscribe to the firehose that is LKML. Running every .0 I can see in such a context, but I fear even then it's quite an uphill battle to at that point convince the kernel devs to undo a driver removal. 1/2

Replies (2)

@klausman@mas.to 2026-04-25 10:19

@kernellogger Worse, it hurts not just people who really should have the budget to upgrade their hardware and are just lazy --- because they will just run old kernels and happily be vulnerable. It also hurts those that are trying to not create e-waste when there is no reason to do so. One can argue that newer CPUs are more power efficient etc and thus upgrading is a net positive. I doubt that is true for most peripherals and things like NICs. As I said, it sucks for everyone, I realize that.

Open ##1890206
@kernellogger@hachyderm.io 2026-04-25 10:35

@klausman nobody asked "to subscribe to the firehose that is LKML", so sorry, that is a strawman. "quite an uphill battle": you have to make your case, yes -- and it can be an uphill battle occasionally *if* that can cause huge security problems for the kernel as a whole, as that it become a judgement call. But several removals were reverted over time, so from my point of view "quite an uphill battle" does not describe the situations adequately.

Open ##1890208