Ask HN: Why did tech news sites report that Linux dropped Intel 486 support?

1 josephcsible 2 8/11/2025, 11:51:09 PM

Back in April, while kernel 6.15 was in development, https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250425084216.3913608-1-mingo@kernel.org/ was posted to LKML, which drops support for Intel 486. Today, kernel 6.17 is in development, so both the 6.16 and 6.17 merge windows have come and gone since then, with that patch not having been merged. Given that, why did so many tech news sites, e.g., Ars Technica (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43946562), The Register (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43977283), and ZDNet (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43928570), post articles implying that it had been merged?

Comments (2)

TimedToasts · 1h ago

I hate to break it to you OP, but tech news sites are not reliable. This is prima-facie evidence that you yourself can see. Please understand that you need to lower your trust levels of these sources as a result.

They don't care that they're wrong and no one will hold them to account.

mouse_ · 5h ago

Because there's no checks and balances on journalism, and those articles made a lot of money.

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Ask HN: Why did tech news sites report that Linux dropped Intel 486 support?

Comments (2)