Linux kernel drops support for 80386 chip

IT news site The Register reports today that Linux kernel overlord Linus Torvalds has announced the Linux kernel no longer supports Intel’s 80386 processors, which were first introduced back in 1985 and pottered along at a top speed of 33 mHZ.

Torvalds announced the demise of Linux on 386 in a post entitled “Merge branch ‘x86-nuke386-for-linus’ of git://git./linux/kernel/git/tip/tip”, stating the following:

This tree removes ancient-386-CPUs support and thus zaps quite a bit of complexity.

Torvalds also added:

Unfortunately there’s a nostalgic cost: your old original 386 DX33 system from early 1991 won’t be able to boot modern Linux kernels anymore. Sniff.

I’m not sentimental. Good riddance.