End of i486 support nears in Linux kernel

The Linux kernel has a proposed change in the 7.1 merge queue to remove i486 configuration options and begin phasing out i486 support.

The patch was submitted by Ingo Molnar in late March and would prevent explicitly building new kernels for 486 processors.

Maintainers say the change follows prior removals like 80386 support in 2012 and reflects that recent kernels are effectively unusable on i486 hardware.