From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.0 (2014-02-07) on aws-us-west-2-korg-lkml-1.web.codeaurora.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-5.3 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_00, HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS,MAILING_LIST_MULTI,SPF_HELO_NONE,SPF_PASS, USER_AGENT_SANE_1 autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.0 Received: from mail.kernel.org (mail.kernel.org [198.145.29.99]) by smtp.lore.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3B65CC433DB for ; Sun, 10 Jan 2021 06:24:38 +0000 (UTC) Received: from vger.kernel.org (vger.kernel.org [23.128.96.18]) by mail.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F110D233CF for ; Sun, 10 Jan 2021 06:24:37 +0000 (UTC) Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1726036AbhAJGYW (ORCPT ); Sun, 10 Jan 2021 01:24:22 -0500 Received: from wtarreau.pck.nerim.net ([62.212.114.60]:49013 "EHLO 1wt.eu" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1725267AbhAJGYV (ORCPT ); Sun, 10 Jan 2021 01:24:21 -0500 Received: (from willy@localhost) by pcw.home.local (8.15.2/8.15.2/Submit) id 10A6LDVW002917; Sun, 10 Jan 2021 07:21:13 +0100 Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2021 07:21:13 +0100 From: Willy Tarreau To: Arnd Bergmann Cc: Baruch Siach , Geert Uytterhoeven , Neil Armstrong , Viresh Kumar , Linus Walleij , Daniel Tang , Jamie Iles , Krzysztof Adamski , Alexander Shiyan , Michael Ellerman , Yoshinori Sato , Russell King - ARM Linux , Wei Xu , Oleksij Rempel , Alex Elder , Marc Gonzalez , Hans Ulli Kroll , Uwe =?iso-8859-1?Q?Kleine-K=F6nig?= , Steven Rostedt , Vladimir Zapolskiy , Lubomir Rintel , Koen Vandeputte , Linux ARM , Barry Song , Thomas Bogendoerfer , Linux Kernel Mailing List , Jonas Jensen , Hartley Sweeten , Mark Salter , Shawn Guo Subject: Re: Old platforms: bring out your dead Message-ID: <20210110062113.GA2912@1wt.eu> References: <20210109055645.GA2009@1wt.eu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.6.1 (2016-04-27) Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Sat, Jan 09, 2021 at 10:52:53PM +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote: (... i486 ...) > As with the other older platforms, the main question to ask is: > Are there users that are better off running a future LTS kernel on this > hardware than the v5.10.y version or something older? I think this is the most important part of the question. Because the possible use case I've described actually doesn't correspond to a "prod" machine but to a machine that's powered on every 5 years for some old data recovery. In such a case users just start with an old system (possibly the one that's still on them if present), and this doesn't warrant an up-to-date OS. Moreover, just as I experienced when maintaining 2.4, there's a point where support for old stuff starts to break again by lack of testing. And just because of this, users shouldn't always expect to see their old machines boot fine on a recent kernel. Sometimes there may even be difficulties setting up a compatible toolchain. So actually the question shouldn't be "does anyone want such old machines to still be supported" but "does anyone *need* them to be supported". And I suspect that for most of them the response is "no", it's just a convenience. Just my two cents, Willy