SHORK 486 Linux kernel patching A side-project of SHORK 486 is patching bleeding-edge Linux kernels to ensure they operate with the hardware and specifications SHORK 486 is intended to work with. This will include restoring removed build targets for older platforms and removed drivers for older hardware, as well as patching bugs noticed on older hardware.
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Anonymous2026-08-23 11:20
@pseudoblivious 3 days ago We desperately need stainless forks for the kernel. It is clear that the institutions who have held almost unparalleled dominance in the open source community are beginning to realize that control and are deafening themselves to their constituents. 11 @someusername1 3 days ago In the case of the Linux Foundation, their constituents are the corporations who fund them. These companies care nothing for ancient hardware. The people who pay the money are getting what they want and the Linux Foundation is fulfilling its function as set out for it.
If hobbyists want a Linux that still supports old hardware then the answer is either (1) to use old kernels (which is entirely valid for old hardware) or (2) to fork the current kernel and go their own way, i.e. take their fork back to hobbyist roots. It need not even be called "Linux" any more. 1 @tom-hy1kn 3 days ago @someusername1 The Linux Foundation is fulfilling its function as set out for it. Yes the Linux foundations function is to destroy Linux. 1 @pseudoblivious 3 days ago 'member when the goal of the Linux Foundation was to improve and protect Linux? @someusername1 3 days ago @pseudoblivious From their perspective and the perspective of those who pay the bills, they are successfully improving and protecting Linux. This is what it looks like to them.
Their concerns and interests have long since ceased to coincide with those of the hobbyists.
I hate to say it but I think this was inevitable. I don't like it but it was inevitable. The market and commercial success of Linux makes it so.
@emilianopepa8678 3 days ago It's time to make a Fork Old Linux Kernels 4.0 or 5.0 series ... And Develop and indipendent version for Old style HW .. same as the XLibre way
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Anonymous2026-08-23 23:49
@bbcpropaganda514 4 days ago TSC was useful in the Pentium 1 one core era. I used it all the time to do optimization. Windows handled compatibility with earlier CPUs. It became unreliable in high end multi-CPU or the later more common Intel Core Duo multicore era. It is even less reliable in the power saving frequency changing "We must compete with ARM" era. Out of order also limits its usefulness. Intel only fixed it with constant rate TSC in later models. Microsoft discourages its use. This is not about Linux requiring a critical feature. It's politics or technical ignorance - which often go hand-in-hand in the "Thing-that-worked, but rewritten in Rust just to annoy people who were cording before I was born" era
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Anonymous2026-08-23 23:49
@patrickmclaughlin6013 4 days ago I think they Xed out my touchpad, it quit working in fedora 44
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Anonymous2026-08-23 23:51
@tech-bore8839 4 days ago Torvald can F-off with that "fork it" nonsense. Forking is the reason we're stuck with duopolies/oligopolies in tech as it is. Nothing new is created, and it's still shackled to code maintained by the company/group you're trying to move away from in the first place. Yet people pretend it's "new & different".
All this push for using AI tools to make things easier, yet nobody is building anything truly new. Still relying on Google, Mozilla, Apple's browser engines. Still relying on Android, iOS for mobile. Just continuing to leach off of infamous companies.
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Anonymous2026-08-23 23:52
@paleopteryx 4 days ago It's time for a serious Linux kernel fork. Really. 1 @TheItalianJoe 4 days ago Something like a OHS-kernel (Old Hardware Support kernel), that still have the discarded modules. It's feasible.
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Anonymous2026-08-23 23:53
@PlasticCogLiquid 4 days ago You can't convince me they aren't doing this for nefarious reasons..... Cash for clunkers type stuff, gotta get rid of all that old hardware that can't be tracked and traced.
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Anonymous2026-08-23 23:55
@ChadDerekJacobson 4 days ago this approach sadly proves that key linux developers as well as the foundation brainlessly have no clue how to properly seek out properly trained AI coding models nor remotely use them 12 @toolman1990 4 days ago It is called growing up LInux is no longer an enthusiast project that only a few select people use anymore. They have to at some point make tough decisions like when to remove support from legacy hardware. 1 @ChadDerekJacobson 1 day ago (edited) ai should be simplifying code bases and debugging hardware quirks and not making them more complicated or buggy is all I said, but as for the topic of hardware support in general, the idea that a "grown up" system can't support as much hardware as reasonably possible doesn't sound like any sort of technical argument deserving analysis; at the very least an overworked team could find new innovative ways to make their direct hardware support "limited" like, I don't know, just use safety warnings (and quarantines) or find new ways to just modularize back in old code for old hardware (since I imagine not everything has to run on the exact same code in an era when modern CPUs act like compilers and the science of "cross-platform" and higher level languages should supposedly be at their zenith, particularly with ancient hardware with tiny resource demands) and then pass on the rest to other teams or end users, assuming I'm grasping the behind the scenes situation accurately from Lunduke's presentation @cyberfroze 4 days ago @toolman1990 Honestly im just confused on why people are crying about support for irrelevant mid 90s hardware being tossed. 1 @toolman1990 4 days ago @cyberfroze I think a lot of it are Linux enthusiasts who are not happy that Linux is changing from a niche operating system to a more mainstream operating system like Windows. 1
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Anonymous2026-08-23 23:56
@anotherelvis 4 days ago This chat is full of socialist tears: "I don't want to contribute, but I still complain because someone else isn't willing to offer me free software support for a chipset that I don't own." 5 @dftfire 4 days ago Or people do own an old CPU of that vintage as a "retro PC", but it's not their main system, and as such they could run use an older kernel on it, especially if its never used online 3 @Minuteworld-s8x 4 days ago why would contributing any line of code fix what the foundation was dead set on removing anyway? if they were going to remove support, they would still remove support even if you added it back in. 1 @Miller43210 4 days ago @Minuteworld-s8x The Linux Foundation doesn't direct kernel development. 2
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Anonymous2026-08-23 23:59
@mrtransistor6173 3 days ago The war on compatibility and building systems based on ideas, not reality is incredibly infuriating. People wonder why I despise the ARM ecosystem so much with their locked down SoCs. I'm tired of hardware becoming more and more enshittified and less flexible.
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Anonymous2026-08-23 23:59
@ruthlessadmin 4 days ago I wouldn't consider machines older than about 20 years, to still be worth using day-to-day. At that point, it's a fun retro machine you're most likely running a period-correct OS on. Going back even further, into the 90s, now you're definitely talking about hobby-level retro gaming & nostalgia (or industrial machines that aren't going to be upgrading their software). Very VERY few people are going to consider Linux to be a part of that, and the tiny percent that do, are going to want to run a period-correct version.
Either way, there's definitely no excuse to drop support for anything within the ~20-25 year window. 3 @quarteratom 4 hours ago Stop using re, art,ded video filters, re, art,d.
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Anonymous2026-08-24 0:01
@johnmichalek9802 3 days ago Is Linus now getting funded by MS? 🤷♂️
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Anonymous2026-08-24 0:01
1 @jeanlucbiellmann9909 3 days ago C'est quand même amusant. Quand microslop n'est pas capable de supporter un matériel récent (moins de 5 ans) en version ascendante, tout le monde ferme sa gueule. Mais quand les mainteneurs du noyau Linux retirent du code de processeurs qui datent de 30 ans, là, c'est le drame ?! A un moment donné, un peu de sérieux ne tue pas... Je vais pas demandé à du matériel d'il y a 30 ans de supporter les normes actuelles : déjà en crypto, ils ne marcheraient pas ! Alors où est le problème ? @makumbaDE 3 days ago Everything that can't run Rust will be removed, is visible on other project infested by it.
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Anonymous2026-08-24 0:02
@reecesx 3 days ago (edited) Its even funnier when you consider the TSC is utter trash. Each core is allowed its own independent TSC value, making it useless for a source of steady monotonic platform time. Its' timer, like on AMD platforms, is that of max(core[...]) frequency, allowing for dynamic boosting to mess all your timings up - only intel asserts (a) fixed frequency is also (b) that of the cpuid string. It doesnt work well in virtual machines. Old CPUs dont have it. Only a performance larping idiot would use rdtsc directly. Here's your developers behind the abstraction of underlying clock truth, siree. People who seemingly think TSC is king. @sbin-init 3 days ago This is a Linux systemd, i know thisface-blue-smiling @VV-who 3 days ago Big business is slowly taking control of Linux. We can't support all those old systems; you've gotta buy NEW hardware!
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Anonymous2026-08-24 0:03
@Jeff-i8u 3 days ago (edited) Linux is no longer suitable for embedded computing or any legacy application (like ATMs, like Ham radio, like infrastructure computing, ....)
Most infrastructure and B2B embedded computing application have operational lifespans of 30-50 years.
The current Linux developers are low-skill, history-unaware, amateur programmers.
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Anonymous2026-08-24 0:03
@cmtptr 4 days ago You're making the wrong argument here. I don't want Linux to be attractive to more people. Microsoft-brainwashed Windows users migrating to Linux is why the ecosystem keeps getting worse. 14 @raphaelmsx 4 days ago Exactly. 1 @jmppodcast 4 days ago Exactly. People who use the term 'market share' when talking about linux are exactly the type of people we ran away from when we abandoned windows.
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Anonymous2026-08-24 0:05
@dr.strangelove5708 1 day ago Use AI to put back support using the older kernels as guide, problem solved! @boyscout399 4 days ago I support this. And the premise that linux is tossing support faster than microsoft is absurd... you can't run windows 11 with a processor from 2016, never mind 1996... 1 @SkyFly19853 3 days ago I said this before... I say it again....
Linux has betrayed its users...
Maybe BSD and React OS are the last hope... 1 @dftfire 3 days ago Is it realistic to expect the Linux kernel to support every device that ever exists from now until the end of the universe? 1 @SkyFly19853 3 days ago @dftfire If Clinics and many other places are still using Windows Xp with their oldest hardware...
As a matter of fact, Linux must support...
Supporting older hardware also helps against E waste...
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Anonymous2026-08-24 0:06
@Minuteworld-s8x 4 days ago wow linux is just dead set on destroying itself huh? 4 @XeonProductions 4 days ago I mean some of the removals i could justify. If someone really wants ancient hardware support they will probably have to maintain an old kernel fork themselves. Outside of hobbyists and really bad companies who is really still running hardware that ancient? 1 @Elknkam 4 days ago (edited) What a bunch of cope. To this day the average pc user is still windows. Windows site at 72% of average user while Linux site at 5% that's pathetic! People aren't rushing to Linux.
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Anonymous2026-08-24 0:07
AMD's long term support for AM4 was such a big W for everybody. The 5800X3D is like the CPU equivalence of the GTX 1080ti. 1.6K @M4chin3G1rl 1 day ago bought a 5800xt (shouldve gotten an x3d) specifically for garrys mod since its so cpu bound 28 @gamingwolf7895 10 hours ago @M4chin3G1rl honestly same man but i bought the 5900xt because it was like $120 cad less and its a beast! 3 @sundog. 1 day ago @M4chin3G1rl Older games like the HL2 engine are more limited by single thread performance, than total multicore performance. Though Gmod did finally get a multicore update a couple years back, it's still primarily single threaded code. So an x3d will still be an improvement over the xt in fps 7 @kurtangusofficial 1 day ago
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Anonymous2026-08-24 0:08
@Androidonator 3 days ago Yes bro we use linux on our industrial machines. Lmao no. @nicolagiovannii 2 days ago I'm in manufacturing. Yes, we do!
@lochsstudios 14 hours ago Soy devs start contributing to the linux kernel, rewritting the kernel in Rust, and begin adding bloat poorly optimized code. Linux kernel goes from minimalistic and performant to bloated that can't run on old hardware... Who would have guessed?! I wonder?! Making linux increasingly similar to Windows 11, agentic OS and bloated... Great!
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Anonymous2026-08-24 2:04
@grantskolos4128 15 hours ago 486 type CPUs are common in old industrial machines using PC/104 standard, not sure if Linux is a OS used by them or how often they would get OS patches as industrial machines are "don't mess with them if they still work"
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Anonymous2026-08-24 2:05
@neilpatrickhairless 1 day ago Linux kernel struggles with hardware that is over 4 years old when it comes to driver support, really nothing to worry too much about
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Anonymous2026-08-24 2:06
@JanKowalski-vj9py 1 day ago Microsoft like stupidity enters Linux world in big leaps. @mrkosmos9421 1 day ago I thought the 486 was already out of the kernel, so sure this isn't too bad Now... how long do you think x86-32 is going to last? I give it 10 years given this trend @dragons_advocate 1 day ago Dismissing the complaints about support for decades old hardware being dropped is one thing. But do mind, these changes that strip out support happen at a much faster pace than those old systems being released. Now, ask yourself: when would the line be crossed to unacceptable, and can you empathize with someone drawing that line elsewhere? 1
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Anonymous2026-08-24 2:25
Because this is code actual hackers/hobbyists wrote and it was hard fought for. Deleted by the corporate takeover and Linus' paid serfs. Just like they removed ReiserFS (first journaling file system added to linux: and the reason it did well on laptops and data centers after it's inclusion). Linus first took implementation ideas from his reading of the MINIX source code; when he couldn't take anymore he asked for hackers to help him (Gnu Hackers, etc): and they did. For decades. Now all hacker code from the 90s has been ripped out. It's disrespectful and a conversion/theft essentially. He mockingly says "go fork it" knowing that: just like him: no one person could do it alone. From version 0.01 linux was a group project.
