Well, actually... The LTS kernel with longest support before 6.15 is 6.1. It will be supported until December 2027 [1] which is a few months over 20 years after the last 486 CPU [2].
There is always netbsd, which prioritizes portability.
Whether you like it or not, linux is a commercial operating system primarily designed and built by people working for commercial entities, to solve commercial problems.
Nobody in the commercial world is running 486, and supporting old CPUs makes it harder to maintain and build features for modern hardware that commercial entities use.
What does "commercial" have to do with anything? As a personal user, I have absolutely no need for 486, and I doubt anyone outside of extremely narrow group of people digging old hardware does. 486 was a history when I was a kid, and I am not even remotely young anymore.
15 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 37.6 ms ] threadRemoving tech debt is important
(I don’t mean to say 18 years is not brag worthy, but 20 rolls off the tongue better.)
[1] https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20061009060120/http://developer.... as linked in the Ars Technica article
Thanks for the info, btw. (:
Whether you like it or not, linux is a commercial operating system primarily designed and built by people working for commercial entities, to solve commercial problems.
Nobody in the commercial world is running 486, and supporting old CPUs makes it harder to maintain and build features for modern hardware that commercial entities use.