Linux Kernel 6.20 Drops Legacy Hardware Support
In a move that has been heavily telegraphed over the last three development cycles, Linus Torvalds officially announced the rc1 release of Linux kernel 6.20 on Sunday, triggering a massive code purge of legacy hardware drivers that have sat largely dormant for over a decade.
The highly anticipated "spring cleaning" update strips out thousands of lines of unmaintained code dedicated to obsolete hardware, most notably pulling the plug on native support for legacy floppy disk controllers, early 90s ISA audio cards, and a swath of proprietary network interfaces from companies that no longer exist.
For modern desktop and server users, the changes will be entirely invisible. However, for maintainers, the reduction in technical debt is a welcome relief. Keeping these ancient drivers functioning across modern architectural shifts in the kernel has increasingly been viewed as an unnecessary security risk and a massive drain on developer resources.
"We kept this code around for as long as reasonably possible, but there is a limit to how much life support we are willing to provide for hardware that belongs in a museum," Torvalds noted in his pull request summary on the Linux Kernel Mailing List. "If you are still running a 5.25-inch floppy drive in a production environment in 2026, you have vastly bigger problems than figuring out how to downgrade your kernel."
The removal has sparked minor, predictable frustration among a subset of retro-computing hobbyists who utilize modern Linux builds to bridge vintage hardware. However, the wider community response has been overwhelmingly positive. The removal of the legacy subsystems actively paves the way for deeper integration of Rust-based modules and streamlines the ongoing restructuring of the kernel's memory management.
Users running specialized industrial equipment that genuinely relies on legacy controllers are not entirely abandoned. Enterprise-grade long-term support (LTS) releases, such as the 6.12 kernel, will continue to support the old hardware natively until their respective end-of-life dates in late 2028.
Kernel 6.20 is expected to reach its final stable release by mid-April following the standard testing period.