--- title: The Linux Kernel is Finally Letting Go of i486 CPU Support description: The Linux kernel is finally dropping support for i486-class CPUs, a change long overdue given that every major platform abandoned the architecture decades ago.... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-linux-kernel-is-finally-letting-go-of-i486-cpu-support-w9x7rf2il twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The Linux Kernel is Finally Letting Go of i486 CPU Support | daily.dev og:description: The Linux kernel is finally dropping support for i486-class CPUs, a change long overdue given that every major platform abandoned the architecture decades ago.... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-linux-kernel-is-finally-letting-go-of-i486-cpu-support-w9x7rf2il og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/w9X7Rf2IL.png og:image:alt: The Linux Kernel is Finally Letting Go of i486 CPU Support og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The Linux Kernel is Finally Letting Go of i486 CPU Support **[It's Foss](https://daily.dev/sources/itsfoss)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary The Linux kernel is finally dropping support for i486-class CPUs, a change long overdue given that every major platform abandoned the architecture decades ago. Kernel maintainer Ingo Molnár submitted an RFC patch series in April 2025 proposing to raise the minimum supported x86-32 CPU to chips with TSC and CMPXCHG8B instruction support. The first patch removes the CONFIG_M486, CONFIG_M486SX, and CONFIG_MELAN Kconfig build options and is queued for Linux 7.1. The cleanup touches 80 files and removes over 14,000 lines of legacy code, including the entire math-emu software floating-point emulation library. Linus Torvalds had already publicly backed the removal. Existing i486 hardware can still run older kernel releases, though without security patches. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: --- Tags: [#linux](https://daily.dev/tags/linux), [#hardware](https://daily.dev/tags/hardware) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-linux-kernel-is-finally-letting-go-of-i486-cpu-support-w9x7rf2il) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"The Linux Kernel is Finally Letting Go of i486 CPU Support","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-linux-kernel-is-finally-letting-go-of-i486-cpu-support-w9x7rf2il","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-linux-kernel-is-finally-letting-go-of-i486-cpu-support-w9x7rf2il"},"datePublished":"2026-04-08T05:59:59.008Z","dateModified":"2026-04-08T06:03:08.643Z","description":"The Linux kernel is finally dropping support for i486-class CPUs, a change long overdue given that every major platform abandoned the architecture decades ago....","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/11fe0311e65ef1dc953400288eb60e47?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/11fe0311e65ef1dc953400288eb60e47?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"It's Foss","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"It's Foss","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/582e3faed71842bfb9d3840a787d6700","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/itsfoss"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-linux-kernel-is-finally-letting-go-of-i486-cpu-support-w9x7rf2il","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"linux,hardware","timeRequired":"PT3M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"It's Foss","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/itsfoss"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"The Linux Kernel is Finally Letting Go of i486 CPU Support"}]} ```