this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2024
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] lemmyreader@lemmy.ml 20 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's not a new thing.

Linux Kernel Drops Support For Old Intel 386 CPUs Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 12 December 2012 at 10:33 AM EST. 31 Comments https://www.phoronix.com/news/MTI0OTg

[–] Markaos@lemmy.one 22 points 7 months ago

I don't think that's a similar situation - the Linux kernel lost some functionality there, but in this case Ext2 filesystems are still fully supported by the Ext4 driver, so there's no difference in "hardware" support.

The separate Ext2 driver was being kept for embedded devices with extreme memory or storage limitations where saving some kilobytes by not having all the new Ext3/4 features was useful, but when you can afford the extra memory, there's no reason not to just use the Ext4 driver for all Ext2/3/4 filesystems.