The support remained in the Linux kernel all these years after every other major platform dropped it.

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The Linux kernel is finally dropping support for i486-class CPUs, a change long overdue given that every major platform abandoned the architecture decades ago. Kernel maintainer Ingo Molnár submitted an RFC patch series in April 2025 proposing to raise the minimum supported x86-32 CPU to chips with TSC and CMPXCHG8B instruction support. The first patch removes the CONFIG_M486, CONFIG_M486SX, and CONFIG_MELAN Kconfig build options and is queued for Linux 7.1. The cleanup touches 80 files and removes over 14,000 lines of legacy code, including the entire math-emu software floating-point emulation library. Linus Torvalds had already publicly backed the removal. Existing i486 hardware can still run older kernel releases, though without security patches.

The Linux Kernel is Finally Letting Go of i486 CPU Support