Linux 7.1 Kernel Cuts 140,000+ Lines of Deprecated Code — Drops 486 and Baikal CPU Support
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Linux 7.1 Kernel Cuts 140,000+ Lines of Deprecated Code — Drops 486 and Baikal CPU Support
Released on June 14, 2026, Linux 7.1 delivers a new native NTFS driver, further hardware enablement, and a sweeping cleanup that removes legacy networking stacks, obsolete drivers, and hardware that time — and geopolitics — left behind.
- Release date: Linux 7.1 shipped on June 14, 2026, not June 17.
- AMD Zen 6 & NVIDIA Vera: Initial Zen 6 processor support was introduced in Linux 7.0. Linux 7.1 continues preparatory Zen 6 work (KVM exposure of new ISA features, expanded SKU models) but it is not a brand-new 7.1 addition. NVIDIA Vera CPU benchmarks have appeared in the Linux ecosystem, but “support for NVIDIA Vera” is not a confirmed headline feature of 7.1 — the Nouveau and Nova drivers see continued iterative work.
- Line count: The 138,000-line reduction came specifically from the networking cleanup alone (ISDN, ham radio, and other legacy protocols); the total code removed across all subsystems in the 7.1 merge window exceeds 140,000 lines.
- Baikal’s architecture history: Baikal Electronics started with MIPS, then moved to ARM — a switch to RISC-V has been reported as a plan but is not confirmed as a shipped product line.
Overview
Linus Torvalds officially tagged Linux 7.1 on June 14, 2026, wrapping up a merge window that brought nearly 13,000 changesets from over 2,000 developers — more than 300 of them first-time contributors. The release is broadly considered more feature-rich than its predecessor, Linux 7.0, which itself was a version-number milestone that arrived in April 2026 (originally designated Linux 6.19 before Torvalds bumped the major version).
Major New Features
ntfsprogs-plus userspace utility suite. Dual-boot users should see meaningfully faster and more reliable Windows-partition access without FUSE overhead.
The Code Purge: 140,000+ Lines Gone
The most dramatic housekeeping in Linux 7.1 is the mass removal of code that the world had switched off years ago but the kernel kept compiling. The single largest cut came from Linux networking maintainer Jakub Kicinski, who — in a merge request he colorfully labeled the “LLM-pocalypse” — removed six entire legacy networking subsystems in one pull. These included ISDN stacks, ham radio networking protocols, and other link-layer code representing approximately 138,000 lines on their own. The remaining removals — obsolete PCMCIA drivers, PCI drivers for hardware that “never went anywhere,” and the beginning of the Baikal SoC cleanup — push the total well past 140,000 lines.
Despite the deletions, the total Linux kernel source size still grew: the new features added in the same cycle outweighed what was removed, pushing the codebase toward 40 million lines overall.
End of the Road for the Intel 486
Linux 7.1 begins the formal phase-out of Intel 80486 processor support. In this cycle, x86 486-era sub-architecture configs were deleted, though the complete removal of all i486-specific code will continue across future kernel releases. The 486 debuted in 1989 and has not been a realistic deployment target for Linux distributions for many years — most mainstream distros dropped 486 support long before the kernel itself moved to formalize the removal.
Russia’s Baikal CPUs Lose Kernel Support
Also beginning in the Linux 7.1 cycle is the removal of support for Baikal Electronics’ line of SoCs. Baikal Electronics was founded in 2012 as a spinoff of T-Platforms, a Russian supercomputer company. It produced a succession of chips — starting with a MIPS-based design for embedded applications, then pivoting to ARM architecture for its later processors (the Baikal-M line), all manufactured at TSMC. The goal was to supply Russian state enterprises with domestically designed CPUs as alternatives to Western products.
Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine ended that trajectory. International sanctions cut off Baikal’s access to TSMC fabrication, 150,000 already-manufactured Baikal-M chips were seized in Taiwan, and ARM architecture licenses were lost. The company filed for bankruptcy in August 2023. With the primary contributor to Baikal’s kernel support — Serge Semin — among the roughly dozen Russian developers removed from the kernel’s MAINTAINERS file in 2024, the code has sat unmaintained. The ATA maintainer Niklas Cassel noted that upstreaming for the Baikal SoC “is not going to be finalized,” and removal patches began landing in the 7.1-rc1 merge.
Users still running Baikal hardware are not entirely stranded: the older Linux 6.18 LTS kernel continues to support the Baikal platform, and given the chips’ age and limited software ecosystem, lack of mainline kernel upgrades is unlikely to be the primary constraint on their usefulness.
The Geopolitical Backdrop
The removal of Baikal support sits within a broader shift in the Linux community’s relationship with Russian developers. Prior to 2022, the kernel project was notably apolitical about developer nationality. That changed after the invasion: in 2024, the kernel’s MAINTAINERS file was updated to remove a number of Russian developers, a decision that generated significant debate within the open-source community about the intersection of software governance and geopolitics.
Whether the technical reasons for dropping Baikal support — unmaintained code, no path to completing upstreaming — are the whole story, or whether geopolitical factors played a role, is a question the community continues to discuss. The practical effect is the same either way: Baikal CPUs will not be supported by Linux 7.1 or later mainline kernels.
Sources: kernel.org official release announcement (June 14, 2026); Phoronix; 9to5Linux; OSTechNix; LinuxTeck; Neowin; It’s FOSS News; Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML).
