A patch proposed by linux Kernel developer Ingo Molnar aims to remove support for 80486 generation processors from the Linux kernel during the 7.1 merge window. If accepted, the patch will remove the M486, M486SX and MELAN Kconfig configuration options, which means that new upstream kernels will no longer be configurable for 486 class systems.
This would be the first processor architecture to be removed from the Linux kernel since support for 80386 was removed in 2012. Linux 7.0 is expected to be released in the coming months, and version 7.1 could arrive in mid-2026. It has not yet been confirmed whether the patch will pass through the merge window.
Why Linux kernel maintainers want to remove i486 support
Molnar initially proposed stopping support for the 486 processor in April 2025, citing ongoing maintenance costs for hardware emulation code for chips no longer used with modern cores. “We have several complex hardware emulation features in x86-32 to support very old 32-bit CPUs that only a small number of users still run with current kernels,” Molnar explained in the patch notes.
“This compatibility layer sometimes causes problems that require effort to resolve, which could be better spent on other developments.” Linus Torvalds shared a similar opinion in 2022, when the idea of removing support was first discussed.
“I really don’t think i486-class hardware is relevant anymore,” Torvalds said at the time. “Most of them are preserved as museum pieces and could well be museum cores.”
What are the changes in the Linux 7.1 patch for i486 CPUs?
The current proposal removes Kconfig options that allow the kernel to be built specifically for 486-class systems. Previous versions of Molnar’s proposal would have forced support for 486 to be removed by requiring support for the timestamp counter and the CMPXCHG8B instruction, neither of which are present on 80486 family chips or some 586 derivatives. The approach has been revised through multiple rounds of changes over the past year.
Impact on users still running i486 hardware
Molnar notes that no recent Linux kernel package supports 486 chips in practice, so active users are unlikely to be affected by the upshift.
Those running 486-era hardware will need to stick with older versions of the kernel. “Old users can continue using older kernels,” Molnar said in the merge request. The patch has been queued but has not yet been confirmed for inclusion in Linux 7.1.
