A proposal posted to the Linux kernel mailing list would remove 18 legacy Ethernet drivers from the tree and open a fresh debate over how long old but still functional hardware support should remain in the kernel.
The patch series was sent by Andrew Lunn and targets a broad set of ISA- and PCMCIA-era drivers. These include old 3Com drivers like 3c509, 3c515, 3c574, 3c589, and 3c59x, along with drivers from AMD, SMSC, Cirrus, Fujitsu, Xircom, and the 8390 family. In total, the series removes about 27,600 lines of code across 40 files.
To give you a better idea of just how old they are, I’ll say that the drivers targeted by the proposal are tied to Ethernet hardware from roughly the early 1990s to the early 2000s, making them about 25 to 35 years old today. In other words, this is support for hardware from the dial-up and early broadband era, long before modern onboard gigabit networking became standard.
Lunn said those drivers had not created much maintenance work until recently, but more bugs are now reported through AI-assisted analysis and fuzzing. He argued that fixing issues in very old drivers with unclear real-world use no longer makes sense. He also noted the removals were split into separate patches so individual drivers could be restored later if someone still relied on the hardware and wanted to maintain the code.
That, however, was immediately challenged in the thread. One reply said the 3c59x driver is still used on several hundred industrial PCs with 3Com 3C905-B and CX cards, with those systems updated to current kernels about once a year. Expectably, that response alone changed the discussion from a simple cleanup proposal to a question of where to draw the line between obsolete and merely old.
So, at this stage, nothing has been removed. Of course, for regular Linux users on modern desktops, laptops, and servers, this does not change anything today. But for some industrial deployments, niche systems, and older hardware that still depend on these drivers, obviously, the discussion is more than a routine cleanup.
I’ll keep an eye on the situation and, as always, let you know if there are any updates.
