3 ms·

Just curious if Linux includes drivers for 20 year old hardware and if there is some guarantee somewhere that old drivers will be available forever.

by DougN7 1y ago

jpgvm 1y ago
Yes and no. There is plenty of 20 year old HW that has drivers in Linux but their continued existence in the tree is predicated on them being maintained.
alyandon 1y ago
Unfortunately, there is no guarantee. If the maintainer for a driver stops maintaining it and no one else steps in to pick up the work then eventually it'll get removed if it isn't widely used.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  The source will always be available, though, so a motivated person could bring it back to life. Not so in the Windows world. Or the Mac[1] world either, to be fair. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44353595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44353595
  - alyandon 1y ago
    Oh sure - you could also just run an older kernel that still supports it and take precautions. Linux being open source completely enables that possibility where otherwise you'd be screwed.
    - perching_aix 1y ago
      What exactly prevents someone from installing an old version of Windows and then the necessary legacy drivers, taking those same precautions? Nothing. Nothing does.
      - alyandon 1y ago
        Installing old versions of Windows doesn't mean you can still access the drivers that were available when the OS was still supported. If you still have the drivers handy - sure. I personally would trust older versions of Linux more than older versions of Windows though. And I say that as someone that is also typing this comment from a Windows desktop.
      - rkagerer 1y ago
        Really old versions, sure. Newer old versions rely on Microsoft to activate them. Given the trajectory the indistry is moving toward, I don't have a lot of confidence that will last indefinitely. More and more features these days are getting inextricably tied to the cloud, and it's becoming trickier to create offline installation media even for the ones that aren't.
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    >so a motivated person could bring it back to life. The word "could" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. If my 20+ year old HW doesn't work on my latest Ubuntu, then the word "could" offers me no comfort. >Not so in the Windows world. I can install 20+ year old drivers on Windows 11 no problem without the original author needing to change anything or any motivated individual picking up the slack.
    - BenjiWiebe 1y ago
      Not if they were only distributed through Windows update, or if it was that and the vendors long-gone website with custom flash for downloading the drivers, which archive.org didn't understand at the time...
zokier 1y ago
GPL guarantees you rights to make the old drivers available forever. Of course it is the nature of FOSS that ultimately you are responsible for your own systems and their maintenance.
ehutch79 1y ago
No, in fact Linux recently decided to screw over the two hobbyists running itanium systems by not maintaining full feature compatibility in new kernels, for that architecture.
- sidewndr46 1y ago
  I can't tell if this is a joke or satire. Itanium is a microarchitecture which was dead before it was ever implemented in silicon. It only existed because HP was paying Intel to create it, HP doesn't exactly have the reputation of a company with good decision making.
neilv 1y ago
Debian is very good about preserving old distributions and packages. But realistically, unless you're doing serious retrocomputing, it might never come up. I think most 20yo laptops, for example, will simply work with the latest Debian. (I'm typing this on a 13yo laptop, because real keyboard, and everything works perfectly.)
ryao 1y ago
Just recently, bugs in drivers for 30 year old Soundblaster ISA cards received fixes: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.16-SoundBlaster-AWE32 https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.16-SoundBlaster-AWE32 There is no strict guarantee of indefinite support, but that is often what happens.
Twirrim 1y ago
Yes, but there are no guarantees. In fact, they do quite routinely remove drivers for old hardware, if there is no one willing to maintain them. They removed support for several pieces of hardware in the last release, in fact, including some particular drivers for an IBM Cell system, and for IBM CAPI flash drives (https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=772ba9b5bd2701a9967c084b66ff1daaee0367eb https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...) and so on

Just curious if Linux includes drivers for 20 year old hardware and if there is some guarantee somewhere that old drivers will be available forever.

by DougN7 1y ago

Just curious if Linux includes drivers for 20 year old hardware and if there is some guarantee somewhere that old drivers will be available forever.

jpgvm 1y ago

Yes and no. There is plenty of 20 year old HW that has drivers in Linux but their continued existence in the tree is predicated on them being maintained.

alyandon 1y ago

Unfortunately, there is no guarantee. If the maintainer for a driver stops maintaining it and no one else steps in to pick up the work then eventually it'll get removed if it isn't widely used.

ryandrake 1y ago
The source will always be available, though, so a motivated person could bring it back to life. Not so in the Windows world. Or the Mac[1] world either, to be fair. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44353595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44353595
- alyandon 1y ago
  Oh sure - you could also just run an older kernel that still supports it and take precautions. Linux being open source completely enables that possibility where otherwise you'd be screwed.
  - perching_aix 1y ago
    What exactly prevents someone from installing an old version of Windows and then the necessary legacy drivers, taking those same precautions? Nothing. Nothing does.
    - alyandon 1y ago
      Installing old versions of Windows doesn't mean you can still access the drivers that were available when the OS was still supported. If you still have the drivers handy - sure. I personally would trust older versions of Linux more than older versions of Windows though. And I say that as someone that is also typing this comment from a Windows desktop.
    - rkagerer 1y ago
      Really old versions, sure. Newer old versions rely on Microsoft to activate them. Given the trajectory the indistry is moving toward, I don't have a lot of confidence that will last indefinitely. More and more features these days are getting inextricably tied to the cloud, and it's becoming trickier to create offline installation media even for the ones that aren't.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  >so a motivated person could bring it back to life. The word "could" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. If my 20+ year old HW doesn't work on my latest Ubuntu, then the word "could" offers me no comfort. >Not so in the Windows world. I can install 20+ year old drivers on Windows 11 no problem without the original author needing to change anything or any motivated individual picking up the slack.
  - BenjiWiebe 1y ago
    Not if they were only distributed through Windows update, or if it was that and the vendors long-gone website with custom flash for downloading the drivers, which archive.org didn't understand at the time...

zokier 1y ago

GPL guarantees you rights to make the old drivers available forever. Of course it is the nature of FOSS that ultimately you are responsible for your own systems and their maintenance.

ehutch79 1y ago

No, in fact Linux recently decided to screw over the two hobbyists running itanium systems by not maintaining full feature compatibility in new kernels, for that architecture.

sidewndr46 1y ago
I can't tell if this is a joke or satire. Itanium is a microarchitecture which was dead before it was ever implemented in silicon. It only existed because HP was paying Intel to create it, HP doesn't exactly have the reputation of a company with good decision making.

neilv 1y ago

Debian is very good about preserving old distributions and packages. But realistically, unless you're doing serious retrocomputing, it might never come up. I think most 20yo laptops, for example, will simply work with the latest Debian. (I'm typing this on a 13yo laptop, because real keyboard, and everything works perfectly.)

ryao 1y ago

Just recently, bugs in drivers for 30 year old Soundblaster ISA cards received fixes: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.16-SoundBlaster-AWE32 https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.16-SoundBlaster-AWE32 There is no strict guarantee of indefinite support, but that is often what happens.

Twirrim 1y ago

Yes, but there are no guarantees. In fact, they do quite routinely remove drivers for old hardware, if there is no one willing to maintain them. They removed support for several pieces of hardware in the last release, in fact, including some particular drivers for an IBM Cell system, and for IBM CAPI flash drives (https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=772ba9b5bd2701a9967c084b66ff1daaee0367eb https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...) and so on