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!!!
I feel like with libre/open source software, this is a lot less of a problem – So long as it is still possible to add it back by messing around under the hood, we are pretty much fine with the “Main” branch of some software dropping legacy support?
It’d be unreasonable to expect the devs of anything to keep supporting things that are over 20 years old.
And like, if you’re using 25 year old kit at this point you’re either a hobbyist collector of vintage stuff, OR an enterprise with mission-critical assets on old legacy hardware/software – In either of those scenarios, “figure out how to go under the hood and fix stuff” (or in the enterprise’s case, “hire someone who does that for you”) is not an unreasonable expectation to have.
The smelly part is of course proprietary software and hardware, where “dropped official support” might as well be the signing of a death order. We desperately need a “right to repair and maintenance” regulation on every country in the world.
I’ll add that at this point, if you’re a hobbyist collector of vintage computer hardware, and you find satisfaction at making that old Compy 386 run like it’s modern hardware, you should know how to compile your own kernel.
Like, it just seems prudent, given the fact that it’s unreasonable to expect a “universal” kernel to simply grow and never prune anything (which I think avoiding having a giant kernel was part of the rationale, iirc), and there’s plenty of documentation out there on how to do it. If you aren’t going to run the same hardware as 95% of your peers, it’s your responsibility to make sure your hardware works.
Yeah I mean
Hobbyist collectors of typewriters (I know because my father is one) and cars (one of my friends is one) all have to learn how to maintain and service their own stuff because businesses that did that for them have all but disappeared. It’s considered part and parcel of the hobby.
It’d be nuts to expect it to be any different for computer collectors. Compile your own kernels, diagnose your own problems, fix your own shit. That’s what you do for a hobby. :P
If you’re running something that old, then it is by choice anyway, hardware gets more expensive after a certain age, and you definitely won’t be getting a (functional) 90s computer for cheap.