For over a decade almost everyone running Linux on a laptop would have
had a PCMCIA slot.
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.
On 27 Apr 2026 08:43:10 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
For over a decade almost everyone running Linux on a laptop would have
had a PCMCIA slot.
Yeah, but that decade was 20 years ago.
On 26/04/2026 23:43, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
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.
Crap. PCMCIA is at least 20 years since last made.
On 27 Apr 2026 08:43:10 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
For over a decade almost everyone running Linux on a laptop would have
had a PCMCIA slot.
Yeah, but that decade was 20 years ago.
On 4/27/26 00:18, rbowman wrote:
On 27 Apr 2026 08:43:10 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
For over a decade almost everyone running Linux on a laptop would have
had a PCMCIA slot.
Yeah, but that decade was 20 years ago.
The age of the Pentium single Core computers. PCMCIA to Ethernet and to Wireless, and USB.
Happy it is over.
bliss
On 26/04/2026 23:43, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
True, but usually niche things like the Micro Channel bus, orCrap. PCMCIA is at least 20 years since last made.
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.
It is already doubtful that a 20 year old machine would have enough RAM
or CPU grunt to run a modern desktop effectively.
Back then I was running Win XP with 2GB RAM
On 4/27/26 00:18, rbowman wrote:and to
On 27 Apr 2026 08:43:10 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
For over a decade almost everyone running Linux on a laptop would have
had a PCMCIA slot.
Yeah, but that decade was 20 years ago.
The age of the Pentium single Core computers. PCMCIA to Ethernet
Wireless, and USB.
Happy it is over.
The only laptop I had with PCMCIA was a 1995 Compaq Concerto that ran
Win 3.1. It doesn't have enough harddrive or RAM to run anything
from this century.
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 26/04/2026 23:43, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
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.
Crap. PCMCIA is at least 20 years since last made.
Maybe Kev is counting Expresscards as a special case of PCMCIA?
On 27 Apr 2026 18:14:48 GMT
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
The only laptop I had with PCMCIA was a 1995 Compaq Concerto that ran
Win 3.1. It doesn't have enough harddrive or RAM to run anything
from this century.
You could still get them at least into the Core 2 era
On Mon, 27 Apr 2026 07:59:03 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 4/27/26 00:18, rbowman wrote:
On 27 Apr 2026 08:43:10 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
For over a decade almost everyone running Linux on a laptop would have >>>> had a PCMCIA slot.
Yeah, but that decade was 20 years ago.
The age of the Pentium single Core computers. PCMCIA to Ethernet
and to Wireless, and USB.
Happy it is over.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Concerto
I have a PCMCIA CD drive for it. I should see if it will still boot for shits and giggles.
That's the CPU the newest laptop I use uses, an old Thinkpad with
lots of features you don't get with the new ones. You can easily
run Linux with its 3GB RAM, and in fact far less. I mean they're
still selling Raspberry Pi Zeros (and Zero 2s) with 512MB RAM to
run Linux on (actually you can still boot it with 20MB RAM or
less), so nobody's really thinking about these dumb statements that
Linux would never run on laptops with PCMCIA anyway. I basically
read it as "doesn't affect me so piss off!".
That's the CPU the newest laptop I use uses, an old Thinkpad with
lots of features you don't get with the new ones. You can easily
run Linux with its 3GB RAM, and in fact far less. I mean they're
still selling Raspberry Pi Zeros (and Zero 2s) with 512MB RAM to
run Linux on (
actually you can still boot it with 20MB RAM or
less), so nobody's really thinking about these dumb statements that
Linux would never run on laptops with PCMCIA anyway. I basically
read it as "doesn't affect me so piss off!".
Well, those of us who have tried to run Linux with a GUI and a
browser on a 1GB machine know whet we are talking about and what you
clearly do not
Depends on the GUI - the freenix world has *plenty* of lighter-weight
options than the megalithic whizbang duzitall GNOME/KDE type everything- suites. I find WindowMaker and SpaceFM on my "portable typewriter" (an
Asus Eee 904 with 1GB RAM) perfectly comfortable, and those aren't even particularly bare-bones.
On Tue, 28 Apr 2026 09:56:56 +0100
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Well, those of us who have tried to run Linux with a GUI and a
browser on a 1GB machine know whet we are talking about and what you
clearly do not
Depends on the GUI - the freenix world has *plenty* of lighter-weight
options than the megalithic whizbang duzitall GNOME/KDE type everything- >suites. I find WindowMaker and SpaceFM on my "portable typewriter" (an
Asus Eee 904 with 1GB RAM) perfectly comfortable, and those aren't even >particularly bare-bones.
Adding a browser to the criteria changes the equation, and it greatly
depends on what kind of sites you're trying to browse, but there are
still options. ELinks and Netsurf do me just fine for static sites (and
even in this day and age, more places than you'd think will function
without JS,) and while fancier stuff is more of a challenge, it'll
still handle Chromium and webnovel sites (e.g. ScribbleHub) with only a
bit of panting and wheezing. Good enough for my purposes!
On Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:27:28 -0700, John Ames wrote:
Depends on the GUI - the freenix world has *plenty* of lighter-weight
options than the megalithic whizbang duzitall GNOME/KDE type everything-
suites. I find WindowMaker and SpaceFM on my "portable typewriter" (an
Asus Eee 904 with 1GB RAM) perfectly comfortable, and those aren't even
particularly bare-bones.
I have antiX on my 701. It works. I had been running Q4OS with the Trinity >desktop which was a little more polished. antiX would install on the 4 GB >SSD drive but there wasn't enough free space to update, let alone install >much so I set it up to use the SD card.
People who actually work with the machine usually can't choose which
web sites to visit, and a _typical_ 2026 workload will make the
browser's memory footprint so HUGE that the resource "hunger" of the
GUI doesn't matter any more.
It is a typical case that those "my machine has 2 GB of RAM and works
fine" people come around with info like quoted above, admitting that
their workload is FAR from what an average user in $YEAR does.
On 27/04/2026 23:48, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
That's the CPU the newest laptop I use uses, an old Thinkpad with
lots of features you don't get with the new ones. You can easily
run Linux with its 3GB RAM, and in fact far less. I mean they're
still selling Raspberry Pi Zeros (and Zero 2s) with 512MB RAM to
run Linux on (
But not a GUI desktop
actually you can still boot it with 20MB RAM or
less), so nobody's really thinking about these dumb statements that
Linux would never run on laptops with PCMCIA anyway. I basically
read it as "doesn't affect me so piss off!".
Well, those of us who have tried to run Linux with a GUI and a browser
on a 1GB machine know whet we are talking about and what you clearly do not
not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) wrote:
That's the CPU the newest laptop I use uses, an old Thinkpad with
lots of features you don't get with the new ones. You can easily
run Linux with its 3GB RAM, and in fact far less. I mean they're
still selling Raspberry Pi Zeros (and Zero 2s) with 512MB RAM to
run Linux on (actually you can still boot it with 20MB RAM or
less), so nobody's really thinking about these dumb statements that
Linux would never run on laptops with PCMCIA anyway. I basically
read it as "doesn't affect me so piss off!".
I think it is safe to assume that laptops are commonly used by a human
on the graphical console for some GUI apps
while Raspberry Pis usually do headless control stuff or
non-challenging display tasks.
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 27/04/2026 23:48, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
That's the CPU the newest laptop I use uses, an old Thinkpad with
lots of features you don't get with the new ones. You can easily
run Linux with its 3GB RAM, and in fact far less. I mean they're
still selling Raspberry Pi Zeros (and Zero 2s) with 512MB RAM to
run Linux on (
But not a GUI desktop
I've run X on a RPi Zero, and it can display a remote Firefox
window running on a PC with more RAM. Firefox will also run on the
RPi Zero itself (I think v145 was the most recent one I tested, on
a RPi Zero 2), but you do run out of RAM quickly on sites that need Javascript. Dillo, Links, etc. will run fine.
actually you can still boot it with 20MB RAM or
less), so nobody's really thinking about these dumb statements that
Linux would never run on laptops with PCMCIA anyway. I basically
read it as "doesn't affect me so piss off!".
Well, those of us who have tried to run Linux with a GUI and a browser
on a 1GB machine know whet we are talking about and what you clearly do not
I guess you're probably trying to run the latest Linux MINT on it
or something. I run JWM for a window manager and do most of my web
browsing in Dillo, ragardless of how much RAM the PC I'm using has.
For that, it's not a problem.
Are you actually WORKING with that machine? What's your browser?
Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam2616@zugschl.us> wrote:
not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) wrote:
That's the CPU the newest laptop I use uses, an old Thinkpad with
lots of features you don't get with the new ones. You can easily
run Linux with its 3GB RAM, and in fact far less. I mean they're
still selling Raspberry Pi Zeros (and Zero 2s) with 512MB RAM to
run Linux on (actually you can still boot it with 20MB RAM or
less), so nobody's really thinking about these dumb statements that
Linux would never run on laptops with PCMCIA anyway. I basically
read it as "doesn't affect me so piss off!".
I think it is safe to assume that laptops are commonly used by a human
on the graphical console for some GUI apps
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.
while Raspberry Pis usually do headless control stuff or
non-challenging display tasks.
They do put a HDMI port on the things.
Anyway some people use old
laptops as headless routers, network file storage, or servers too.
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.
not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) wrote:
Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam2616@zugschl.us> wrote:
not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) wrote:
That's the CPU the newest laptop I use uses, an old Thinkpad with
lots of features you don't get with the new ones. You can easily
run Linux with its 3GB RAM, and in fact far less. I mean they're >>>>still selling Raspberry Pi Zeros (and Zero 2s) with 512MB RAM to
run Linux on (actually you can still boot it with 20MB RAM or
less), so nobody's really thinking about these dumb statements that >>>>Linux would never run on laptops with PCMCIA anyway. I basically
read it as "doesn't affect me so piss off!".
I think it is safe to assume that laptops are commonly used by a
human on the graphical console for some GUI apps
Yes, which I repeat works very well on my old Thinkpad running
current Linux with its 3GB RAM and PCMCIA.
For nothing that vaguely resembles a 2026 end user workload.
"It won't run Linux anyway" is a dumb excuse for removing PCMCIA
support on any level.
"Noone is maintaining it any more" is a perfectly valid approach for
a volunteer-driven open source project to ditch a feature
Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam2616@zugschl.us> wrote:
"Noone is maintaining it any more" is a perfectly valid approach for
a volunteer-driven open source project to ditch a feature
One of the very common reasons that was always given over the years for
"get your driver into the kernel" on the kernel mailing list back to
anyone with an out-of-tree driver was that once that was done, the
kernel maintainers would then perform "upkeep" on your driver as the
kernel shifted and moved.
I suspect this may reveal how many (most?) kernel maintainers are now >corporate employees rather than volunteers, and their corporate
overseers are not willing to pay them to patch these bugs in "someone
else's driver code".
I suspect this may reveal how many (most?) kernel maintainers are now corporate employees rather than volunteers, and their corporate
overseers are not willing to pay them to patch these bugs in "someone
else's driver code".
Rich <rich@example.invalid> writes:
I suspect this may reveal how many (most?) kernel maintainers are now
corporate employees rather than volunteers, and their corporate
overseers are not willing to pay them to patch these bugs in "someone
else's driver code".
I suspect there is a large element of “nobody knows much about PCMCIA
any more”.
... remember that PCMCIA stands for
"People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms"
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.
If something is attracting trouble then the question is more
whether there is a justification for keeping it than for removing
it.
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.
Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
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?
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?
Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
[snip]
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.
[snip]
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?
What we are seeing now is that no one is stepping up to bearHear Hear!
that continued cost, and so the effort has ceased; again, no
one is "forcing" you to do anything. A way to look at it is
you can't force developers to continue to support something on
their own dime that you're not willing to pay for yourself,
either monetarily or with your own time and effort.
It's really no more complex than that, I'm afraid.
- Dan C.
In short, yes, if what you want is old hardware then you are going to be constantly experiencing decline in support for it in modern software.
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=b3c26ea81ccc522e77ed0b1707add61fc9206216
That's a revealing one to quote:
| The i82092 driver has almost certainly not been used in over 20 years.
| It was broken by a null pointer dereference since the dawn of Git
| history (2.6.12-rc2 in 2005) until someone fixed it in 2021 in commit
| e39cdacf2f66 ("pcmcia: i82092: fix a null pointer dereference bug").
| From their dmesg log [3], it is clear they were testing in an emulated
| environment and not on real hardware.
i.e. one of the drivers went a minimum of 15 years with nobody noticing
that it was broken. Some of this stuff was already unmaintained to the
point of being broken 20 years ago or more.
(AFAIK the Linux kernel handles null pointer dereferences quite well so
this was probably just an availability bug rather than any kind of vulnerability.)
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?
The point is not so much about complaining, nobody can stop you doing
that, but about the realistic expectations about maintenance and, in the longer term, availability of drivers for very old hardware. If what you
want is ancient hardware then you get to deal with the consequences of
that, and those consequences are (at least very broadly) predictable.
The BSDs are maintained by different people with different priorities,
so the outcomes are likely to differ. But they do face related
pressures, and they do sometimes remove functionality for various
reasons.
For example here's a PCMCIA driver being removed from OpenBSD in 2020;
it was broken and (I infer) nobody was sufficiently interested in it to
fix it.
https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/1f9d569892d2e153e862c87145e03403415b4ee0
So, to answer the question, "is it free for me?" the answer is
no, it is not. But it never has been. Yes, presumably you
installed whatever distribution you are using gratis, and yes,
it has worked for you for some time. But that's largely
coincidence: if you had some obscure hardware device that had
never been supported at all, you would be in largely the same
situation. The reality is that it only ever "worked" because
someone ate the cost of doing the work to make it work, and
offered the result of that work up for no charge; but the cost
was still paid in terms of someone's time and effort, with no
guarantee of continued effort indefinitely into the future.
What we are seeing now is that no one is stepping up to bear
that continued cost, and so the effort has ceased; again, no
one is "forcing" you to do anything. A way to look at it is
you can't force developers to continue to support something on
their own dime that you're not willing to pay for yourself,
either monetarily or with your own time and effort.
It's really no more complex than that, I'm afraid.
Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
In short, yes, if what you want is old hardware then you are going to be
constantly experiencing decline in support for it in modern software.
This does not surprise me. In your terms all I was proposing is
that Linux support appears to be declining now faster than BSD, and
I believe that warrants my investigation. I was vaguely hoping for
a response like "yes I see the BSD I'm using fixed a similar issue
in driver x and has a group of people working on supporting
PCMCIA", or even "no way, all the BSDs never had those drivers or
dropped them years ago already" (I've since confirmed they do at
least still have a driver for my Xircom PCMCIA ethernet card that
Linux is dropping). Instead I got all these "duh, your hardware
must be from 30 years ago and useless anyway so who cares"
responses. Ho hum.
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=b3c26ea81ccc522e77ed0b1707add61fc9206216
That's a revealing one to quote:
| The i82092 driver has almost certainly not been used in over 20 years.
| It was broken by a null pointer dereference since the dawn of Git
| history (2.6.12-rc2 in 2005) until someone fixed it in 2021 in commit
| e39cdacf2f66 ("pcmcia: i82092: fix a null pointer dereference bug").
| From their dmesg log [3], it is clear they were testing in an emulated
| environment and not on real hardware.
i.e. one of the drivers went a minimum of 15 years with nobody noticing
that it was broken. Some of this stuff was already unmaintained to the
point of being broken 20 years ago or more.
Though The Xircom driver was working for me and they're removing it
now, so I _know_ they consider useful (to me) drivers for removal
too and the significant thing is they are considering all the
PCMCIA drivers "almost completely obsolete", so the problem for me
is likely to get worse.
Plus I guessed (maybe ignorantly) they'd drop common 1990s PC
hardware drivers while keeping drivers from 2000s for a decade
after doing that. But if "~2009" is "almost completely obsolete"
that means their idea of "obsolete" has overtaken mine and
therefore I might be using the wrong OS. (yes I know the reasons
why they might define obsolete differently, including developer
resources and funding, in the end that doesn't really matter to
me _if_ the BSDs turn out to be different)
(AFAIK the Linux kernel handles null pointer dereferences quite well so
this was probably just an availability bug rather than any kind of
vulnerability.)
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?
The point is not so much about complaining, nobody can stop you doing
that, but about the realistic expectations about maintenance and, in the
longer term, availability of drivers for very old hardware. If what you
want is ancient hardware then you get to deal with the consequences of
that, and those consequences are (at least very broadly) predictable.
I _could_ use all your reasoning to predict that the very moment a
model of PC hardware device goes out of production and all the
associated manufacturers are no longer contractually or legally
obliged to support it, support will be removed from the Linux
kernel, at least once the first new bug is discovered. That clearly
has not been happening as a rule so far, or all these drivers would
have been dropped already decades ago. I would go out and buy new
hardware all the time pointlessly based on that. Much smarter to
look at what's actually happening, and my point is that this
includes looking at BSD too.
The BSDs are maintained by different people with different priorities,
so the outcomes are likely to differ. But they do face related
pressures, and they do sometimes remove functionality for various
reasons.
For example here's a PCMCIA driver being removed from OpenBSD in 2020;
it was broken and (I infer) nobody was sufficiently interested in it to
fix it.
https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/1f9d569892d2e153e862c87145e03403415b4ee0
OK thanks, that's an interesting point of data, but unlike with the
Linux removals it's not obviously tied to claims about what PC
hardware the developers consider obsolete, or a broader project to
remove PCMCIA support entirely. Really it's the working drivers
being removed, like the Xircom one, that I care about, and Linux
just happens to have started with broken PCMCIA drivers before
moving on to them. Maybe the BSDs will do that too, it's what I
intend to investagate. So far that "esp" driver still seems to be
in NetBSD, working or not, FWIW.
Dan Cross <cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net> wrote:
So, to answer the question, "is it free for me?" the answer is
no, it is not. But it never has been. Yes, presumably you
installed whatever distribution you are using gratis, and yes,
it has worked for you for some time. But that's largely
coincidence: if you had some obscure hardware device that had
never been supported at all, you would be in largely the same
situation. The reality is that it only ever "worked" because
someone ate the cost of doing the work to make it work, and
offered the result of that work up for no charge; but the cost
was still paid in terms of someone's time and effort, with no
guarantee of continued effort indefinitely into the future.
Sure, I agree, and if BSD might still do that I should look at
them. That's all I've been proposing to do.
What we are seeing now is that no one is stepping up to bear
that continued cost, and so the effort has ceased; again, no
one is "forcing" you to do anything. A way to look at it is
you can't force developers to continue to support something on
their own dime that you're not willing to pay for yourself,
either monetarily or with your own time and effort.
It's really no more complex than that, I'm afraid.
Yes nobody's forcing me to use Linux, hence I'm not arguing with
the Linux developers about what they should spend their time on,
but looking at what the BSD developers are spending their time on,
in case it now fits my needs better.
Yes, this is going to be an issue. Hardware is going to be supported
fewer years.
I suspect this may reveal how many (most?) kernel maintainers are now corporate employees rather than volunteers,
Le 29-04-2026, Rich <rich@example.invalid> a écrit :
I suspect this may reveal how many (most?) kernel maintainers are now
corporate employees rather than volunteers,
Not so long ago I read that at least 80% of kernel contributors were
paid by societies.
I don't know neither how accurate that is nor where
the number were coming from. But the rest of the article was serious and >accurate and the number does make sense to me.
So, I consider it to be a good enough starting point without better >information.
In article <69f4705e$0$11451$426a74cc@news.free.fr>,
Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> wrote:
Le 29-04-2026, Rich <rich@example.invalid> a écrit :
I suspect this may reveal how many (most?) kernel maintainers are now
corporate employees rather than volunteers,
Not so long ago I read that at least 80% of kernel contributors were
paid by societies.
I assume you meant companies, or corporations, or something like
that instead of "societies."
At any rate, I suspect that that number is low.
Le 01-05-2026, Dan Cross <cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net> a écrit :
In article <69f4705e$0$11451$426a74cc@news.free.fr>,
Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> wrote:
Le 29-04-2026, Rich <rich@example.invalid> a écrit :
I suspect this may reveal how many (most?) kernel maintainers are now >>>> corporate employees rather than volunteers,
Not so long ago I read that at least 80% of kernel contributors were
paid by societies.
I assume you meant companies, or corporations, or something like
that instead of "societies."
Yes, you are right, sorry about that.
At any rate, I suspect that that number is low.
There's a difference between the number of contributors and the number
of contributions. A full time paid developer can contribute way more than a >developer contributing on his spare time. There was a Linux contributor
who only renamed the README.txt in README.md for example. If the biggest >contributors are, of course, mostly paid developers, there can still be >thousands of little contributors sending few patches on their spare
time.
Really, I don't know. Maybe that number is low, but I'm not sure it's
that low. And I have nothing else to estimate.
Le 29-04-2026, Rich <rich@example.invalid> a ecrit :
I suspect this may reveal how many (most?) kernel maintainers are now
corporate employees rather than volunteers,
Not so long ago I read that at least 80% of kernel contributors were
paid by societies. I don't know neither how accurate that is nor where
the number were coming from.
So when a patch gets merged by a new contributor I take it LWN (or
whoever provides their data) sends an email to their address asking
who they work for. Those who don't respond are counted as
"(unknown)", currently 9-10% of contributors. Therefore the number
of contributors employed by companies is over 80%, and probably
over 90% assuming non-responders are equally distributed.
On 2026-05-02 02:09, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
So when a patch gets merged by a new contributor I take it LWN (or
whoever provides their data) sends an email to their address asking
who they work for. Those who don't respond are counted as
"(unknown)", currently 9-10% of contributors. Therefore the number
of contributors employed by companies is over 80%, and probably
over 90% assuming non-responders are equally distributed.
Who they work for, is not the same as being paid to contribute by the company they work for.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
As a result, the Linux development community has decided that, to
maintain its sanity, they have to start dropping those old drivers
completely from the mainline kernel.
<https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/linux-may-be-ending-support-for-older-network-drivers-due-to-influx-of-false-ai-generated-bug-reports-maintenance-has-become-too-burdensome-for-old-largely-unused-systems>
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
I always considered installing Linux on brand new systems a bit
dodgy with drivers often still having bugs ironed out, but since I
personally use ancient tech I can assume everything will just work.
Indeed the older the better since with hardware made before the mid
2000s you don't have headaches with needing huge firmware packages
and the clunky way drivers can fail without them.
I've mainly avoided the BSDs for fear of driver issues, even while
the adoption of Systemd and Wayland by most Linux distros has been
making them more attractive. It looks like the balance might be
tipping in their favour now for me.
They are on its way at https://hyperbola.info creating a NON-GNU
libre OS (but GPL compatible) with obsd and Musl. They will do
wonders.
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