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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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How Long Should Hardware/Software Support Last? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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A while back there was some debate about the Linux kernel dropping support for some very old GPUs. (I can't remember the exact models, but they were roughly from the late 90's)

It spurred a lot of discussion on how many years of hardware support is reasonable to expect.

I would like to hear y'alls views on this. What do you think is reasonable?

The fact that some people were mad that their 25 year old GPU wouldn't be officially supported by the latest Linux kernel seemed pretty silly to me. At that point, the machine is a vintage piece of tech history. Valuable in its own right, and very cool to keep alive, but I don't think it's unreasonable for the devs to drop it after two and a half decades.

I think for me, a 10 year minimum seems reasonable.

And obviously, much of this work is for little to no pay, so love and gratitude to all the devs that help keep this incredible community and ecosystem alive!

And don't forget to Pay for your free software!!!

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

What do you think is reasonable?

As long as possible unless nobody uses it for cases that need any security (daily driver, server, enterprise etc). If you drop support, you are lazy and support ewaste creation. In some cases it can be too difficult to support it but "too difficult" has a lot of meanings most of which are wrong.

I think for me, a 10 year minimum seems reasonable.

That's really not enough. GTX 1080 is an almost 10 years old card but it's still very competitive. Most of my friends even use 750s or similar age hardware. And for software, any major updates just make it more enshittificated now lol.

[–] breadsmasher 14 points 4 months ago (2 children)

In principal I don’t disagree.

Problem is supporting everything requires work and effort which isn’t funded by a corporation or anything

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

perhaps we should start building things with long term support in mind, and not just churn out the cheapest shit we can manage.

Like just look at modern laptops, most of them are absolute dogshit in terms of repairability and then you have the framework which you can straight up buy as a kit to assemble yourself.
Making things easy to maintain is clearly doable, not even that hard.

[–] breadsmasher 1 points 4 months ago

I am literally talking about software support for legacy hardware. Not the hardware itself

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Hardware support is usually funded enough or has enough human resources for it not to be a big problem imo. It's ok to drop 30 years old stuff that nobody uses but dropping something just because rich people have a few years newer hardware is bad.

[–] breadsmasher 5 points 4 months ago

Yeah entirely missing my point.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

I think it should be supported for a decade and the open sourced so that it can be archived and maintained by those who care.