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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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How Long Should Hardware/Software Support Last? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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A while back there was some debate about the Linux kernel dropping support for some very old GPUs. (I can't remember the exact models, but they were roughly from the late 90's)

It spurred a lot of discussion on how many years of hardware support is reasonable to expect.

I would like to hear y'alls views on this. What do you think is reasonable?

The fact that some people were mad that their 25 year old GPU wouldn't be officially supported by the latest Linux kernel seemed pretty silly to me. At that point, the machine is a vintage piece of tech history. Valuable in its own right, and very cool to keep alive, but I don't think it's unreasonable for the devs to drop it after two and a half decades.

I think for me, a 10 year minimum seems reasonable.

And obviously, much of this work is for little to no pay, so love and gratitude to all the devs that help keep this incredible community and ecosystem alive!

And don't forget to Pay for your free software!!!

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I would say for as long as the hardware remains useful. A high end laptop may still be perfectly usable in 15 years if the hardware doesn't fail by then.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Still using a 5 year old laptop with no degradation in performance and expecting at least another 5. All I had to do was uninstall some malware that was eating up all the system resources and popping up a bunch of ads. It was called Windows. :-D