118
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
118 points (95.4% liked)
Linux
48317 readers
665 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Linux kernel is really good at backwards compatibility, better than any other OS.
Software can be bad at being backwards compatible with older kernels, but you should be able to run newer ones.
I'm sorry, but what exactly do you mean by backwards compatibility? Like if I installed the latest version of say Ubuntu, it will automatically scale back the kernel to one that fits the specs of my computer?
The kernel has drivers for very old hardware. It was news last year when support was dropped for i486. That is a 25 year old CPU.
i486 is still supported by the recent Linux kernel: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/arch/x86/Makefile_32.cpu, and it is a 34 years old architecture. Everything else you wrote is correct.