There continues to be a lout of cleaning up of the kernel source tree to deal with noise generated by AI / LLM coding agents sending in reports and patches for old drivers that are likely not actively used by anyone on modern upstream kernel builds. Rather than continuing to carry these old drivers around with the uptick in AI/LLM-generated noise, kernel maintainers are finding it better to just retire the old drivers.
In recent months we have seen
Dropping old hardware drivers under these conditions in an AI-obsessed world has become a new fact of life with new Linux kernel cycles. The latest example is now the Moxa Intellio driver set for removal.
Greg Kroah-Hartman sent out the patch removing the Moxa driver that was used for the Moxa Intellio series hardware of multi-port serial cards. Greg remarked with the
The Moxa Linux driver dates back to 1999 and removing it gets rid of nearly 2.2k lines from the Linux kernel source tree as less old C code for AI/LLM agents to critique.
In addition,
In recent months we have seen
a lot of old kernel code removedstemming from that AI/LLM noise. For functionality likebus mouse support, it's very unlikely anyone running a 2026+ mainline Linux kernel build is actually using said hardware.Dropping old hardware drivers under these conditions in an AI-obsessed world has become a new fact of life with new Linux kernel cycles. The latest example is now the Moxa Intellio driver set for removal.
Greg Kroah-Hartman sent out the patch removing the Moxa driver that was used for the Moxa Intellio series hardware of multi-port serial cards. Greg remarked with the
removal patch:"This is a very old driver, and no known hardware is still around for it, and the company says they do not need it anymore, so let's remove it as the LLMs are starting to poke at it and find "interesting" things which will just waste everyone's time given it's not actually used.
So let's drop it. If someone really needs it, it can come back in the future, in a more "modern" way, as the style here is very old..."
The Moxa Linux driver dates back to 1999 and removing it gets rid of nearly 2.2k lines from the Linux kernel source tree as less old C code for AI/LLM agents to critique.
In addition,