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Linux maintainers removed many legacy Ethernet, Bluetooth and mice input drivers…

2026-08-06 · 18:02 UTC ·@Zenul_Abidin ·1 min read

Brief

Linux kernel maintainers are removing many legacy device drivers (Ethernet, Bluetooth, mice) dating from ~2000 and have deleted the entire AX.25 hamradio subsystem, which the author says will break "a few dozen" devices on Linux 7.x. The post accuses noisy AIs/LLMs of prompting deletions, while Lunduke Journal warns kernel dev is also dropping old CPU architectures (e.g., 486).

Why it matters

Linux maintainers removed many legacy Ethernet, Bluetooth and mice input drivers dating from circa 2000 from the kernel.

Key details

  • The entire AX.25 amateur radio (hamradio) subsystem was deleted from the kernel.
  • The author says these removals will break "a few dozen" devices on Linux 7.x and blames "noisy AIs and LLMs" for driving deletions; Lunduke Journal adds kernel dev is also dropping old CPU architectures (example: 486).
Source evidence

Linux maintainers are removing a lot of legacy Ethernet, Bluethooth and mice input drivers circa 2000 from the kernel.

The entire AX.25 + amateur radio (hamradio) subsystem was also deleted. You can apparently just delete stuff like that nowadays.

Linux was supposed to work on all types of hardware, and there are now around a few dozen devices that will no longer work with the latest Linux kernels (7.x).

And remember, we have noisy AIs and LLMs pointed at the kernel code to blame for most of these drivers going out.

The Lunduke Journal (@LundukeJournal)

Remember when one of the big selling points of Linux was that it breathes new life into aging (more than a few years old) hardware?

Modern Linux kernel development takes a very different approach:

Rapidly dropping hardware support for CPU architectures and hardware platforms (see: 486), while removing “old” (after the year 2000) device drivers because… “AI”.

In other words:

Want to run modern Linux on older hardware? Too bad. But, look at the bright side, at least AI bots were being used to make Linux!

— https://nitter.net/LundukeJournal/status/2085406932370698662#m