Linux to end support for 1989’s hottest chip, the 486, with next release

Intel's i486 was the first "computer number" I ever really understood. Sure, my elementary school computer lab had both the Apple IIGS and Apple IIc, and one of them was slightly more useful, for reasons unexplained to me. But soon after my father brought home his office's discarded Gateway desktop with a 486DX 33MHz inside, I was catapulted into my first Intel sorting scheme. I learned there was an x86 before this one (i386), and there were models with different trailing numbers (16-100 MHz) and "DX" levels. This was my first grasp of what hardware I was actually using and what could improve inside it. More than 36 years after the release of the 486 and 18 years after Intel stopped making them, leaders of the Linux kernel believes the project can improve itself by leaving i486 support behind. Ingo Molnar, quoting Linus Torvalds regarding "zero real reason for anybody to waste one second" on 486 support, submitted a patch series to the 6.15 kernel that updates its minimum support feat ... Read full article.