Linux Dropping Old Drivers, AI Detected Vulnerabilities & Other Kernel Highlights Of Q2

The Linux kernel in Q2 2026 removed old hardware drivers including i486 CPU support and eliminated the strncpy API after six years of work, while AI/LLM-detected security vulnerabilities drove some changes. Performance optimizations improved gaming on old hardware, and PostgreSQL performance halved on Linux 7.0 due to a known issue.

Linux Dropping Old Drivers, AI Detected Vulnerabilities & Other Kernel Highlights Of Q2 With Q2'2026 quickly coming to an end, here's a recap of the most popular Linux kernel news over the past three months on Phoronix. A lot happened in Q2'2026 with many AI/LLM-detected security vulnerabilities coming to light, the Linux kernel moving forward in removing a number of old hardware drivers and platform support most notably, i486 CPU support in part due to AI/LLM noise, some exciting kernel performance optimizations, and the continued flow of other open-source kernel innovations. For a look back at the most popular Linux kernel happenings of Q2, take a look at the list below. The Linux 7.2 merge window is wrapping up today while it will be interesting to see what is in store for Linux 7.3 in Q3. As usual, if you enjoy all the daily content on Phoronix you can show your support by A lot happened in Q2'2026 with many AI/LLM-detected security vulnerabilities coming to light, the Linux kernel moving forward in removing a number of old hardware drivers and platform support most notably, i486 CPU support in part due to AI/LLM noise, some exciting kernel performance optimizations, and the continued flow of other open-source kernel innovations. For a look back at the most popular Linux kernel happenings of Q2, take a look at the list below. The Linux 7.2 merge window is wrapping up today while it will be interesting to see what is in store for Linux 7.3 in Q3. As usual, if you enjoy all the daily content on Phoronix you can show your support by joining Phoronix Premium https://www.phoronix.com/phoronix-premium . AWS Engineer Reports PostgreSQL Performance Halved By Linux 7.0, But A Fix May Not Be Easy https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.0-AWS-PostgreSQL-Drop An Amazon/AWS engineer raised the alarms on Friday over the current Linux 7.0 development kernel leading to the throughput for the PostgreSQL database server being around half that of prior kernel versions. The culprit halving the PostgreSQL performance is known but a revert looks like it may not happen and currently suggesting that PostgreSQL may need to be adapted. Linux Finally Eliminates The strncpy API After Six Years Of Work, 360+ Patches https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.2-Drops-strncpy Linux 7.2 has finally eliminated the strncpy API from the Linux kernel. The strncpy function for copying up to a specified number of bytes has long been deprecated and after six years of work and hundreds of patches, no more users of the strncpy interface within the Linux kernel remained that it has now been eliminated. Linux 7.1 Expected To Begin Removing i486 CPU Support https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.1-Phasing-Out-i486 It's finally time: a patch queued into one of the development branches ahead of the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window is set to finally begin the process of phasing out and ultimately removing Intel 486 CPU support from the Linux kernel. Anyone still using an i486 CPU with an upstream Linux kernel would be incredibly rare and no known Linux distribution vendors are still shipping with i486 CPU support, but in case you are, you can continue to be running one of the existing Linux LTS kernel versions. Linux Scheduler Work Helping Boost Gaming Performance On Old "Potato" Hardware https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Flatten-The-Pick Prominent Linux kernel engineer Peter Zijlstra of Intel has been working on a set of scheduler patches to help with enhancing the behavior and delivering better results, especially for aging hardware he described as a "potato" -- an Intel Sandy Bridge desktop CPU with AMD Radeon RX 580 Polaris graphics. Benchmark results are promising from this work for gaming on old hardware while other workloads may ultimately stand to benefit too. Linux 7.0 Ready For Release With Many Exciting Changes https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.0-Changes The Linux 7.0 kernel is gearing up for its stable release and should be out this coming Sunday, 12 April, barring any major last minute issues. Linux 7.0 Released With New Hardware Support, Optimizations & Self-Healing XFS https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.0-Released As expected the stable Linux 7.0 kernel was just released today in marking this next kernel release. The Linux 7.0 milestone comes due to Linus Torvalds' preference of bumping the major version number after hitting X.19 as opposed to any single major change, but in any event there are a lot of great improvements and changes to find with this new kernel version. Linux 7.0 is also what's powering the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release. Linux's Latest Vulnerability Allows Reading Root-Owned Files By Unprivileged Users https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-ssh-keysign-pwn Following Dirty Frag, Fragnesia, and other Linux kernel vulnerabilities making themselves known in recent days, the latest now is ssh-keysign-pwn. Fragnesia Made Public As Latest Linux Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Fragnesia Following last week's disclosure of the Dirty Frag vulnerability for the Linux kernel, which only finished being patched up in mainline on Monday, Fragnesia is now public as a similar local privilege escalation LPE vulnerability. The Linux Kernel Tree About To Hit 40 Million Lines, AMD Driver Above 6 Million Lines https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Kernel-Nearly-40M Ahead of the Linux 7.1-rc1 kernel release due out later today for closing the Linux 7.1 merge window, I was curious if all the code removals would lead to a negative change in line count over Linux 7.0. The removals were not enough and Linux 7.1 Git is fast approaching 40 million lines. Linux 7.0-rc7 Released With Improved Docs For AI Agents, WiFi Driver Performance Fix https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.0-rc7-Released Timed for Easter this year is the seventh weekly release candidate for the Linux 7.0 kernel. If all goes well, Linux 7.0 stable will be out next week. Linus Torvalds Rejects Performance Fix "Hack" & Kconfig "Terrible Things" For Linux 7.1 https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linus-Rejects-Linux-7.1 While a lot of interesting new features and changes have been merged already for the Linux 7.1 merge window, two pull requests stand out so far for being rejected by Linus Torvalds and complete with his to-the-point commentary. "Disgusting" Linux sched ext Source Code Restructured Following Complaint By Linus Torvalds https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Sched-Ext-Restructured Last week the main set of sched ext changes were merged for Linux 7.2 that included continued work on sub-scheduler support. While Linus Torvalds didn't object to any of the features being worked on for this extensible scheduler framework that relies on user-space BPF programs, he was frustrated by the layout of the new C source files and remarked, "please don't do this disgusting thing...proper hierarchical filesystems have been available since 1965." Linux 7.0.6 Released To Finish Mitigating the Dirty Frag Vulnerability https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.0.6-Released Linux 7.0.6 is out as stable this morning to finish mitigating the Dirty Frag vulnerability that was made public last week. The Linux Kernel Ready To Make TSC A Hard Requirement For x86 CPUs https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Kernel-TSC-Unconditional Now that the Linux kernel has been removing Intel 486 CPU support and also proceeding to drop other vintage CPUs like the AMD K5 CPU support and AMD Elan, the Linux kernel is ready to make the TSC support unconditional for x86 processors. Linux's Second-In-Command Turns To New Fuzzing Tools For Uncovering Kernel Bugs https://www.phoronix.com/news/Greg-KH-Clanker-Linux-Bugs Greg Kroah-Hartman, the main Linux stable kernel maintainer and typically viewed as the second-in-command to the Linux kernel development, has turned to new "gregkh clanker t1000" fuzzing tooling to help uncover new kernel bugs. Linux Kernel Adds Documentation For What Qualifies As A Security Bug, Responsible AI Use https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.1-Kernel-Docs-AI-Bugs Merged today for the Linux 7.1 kernel is some new documentation surrounding what qualifies as a security bug as well as around responsible use of AI for finding kernel bugs. Many Wonderful Improvements Expected For Linux 7.1, Especially For AMD & Intel https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.1-Features-Early-Look With Linux 7.0 expected for release later today, in turn the Linux 7.1 merge window will kick off for the two week period of landing all sorts of exciting new features, changes, and removal of old features from the kernel. Here is a look at some of what is on the table for the Linux 7.1 merge window. Linux 2026 "Spring Cleaning" To Address Some Code Remnants As Far Back As Linux v0.1 https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-0.1-LATCH-Cleanup-2026 A big kernel patch series was posted today by longtime Linux developer Thomas Gleixner. The set of 38 patches amount to some big time "spring cleaning" with addressing some code remnants still around that originated back in the very early Linux v0.1 kernel while some other code being cleaned up dates back to the Linux 1.3~2.1 kernel series from the 90's. Meta Has A New Linux Optimization To Avoid Throttling TCP Throughput Unnecessarily https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-VM-Pressure-TCP-Through Meta's great Linux engineering team have been working through some fresh performance optimizations recently from optimizing /proc/interrupts outputs to renewing their investment in jemalloc. A new Linux kernel patch this week provides another optimization to avoid a possible situation of throttling the TCP throughput unnecessarily on Linux systems. April 1 Linux Patches: Verified Birth Date For File Creation, Block Emacs From Running https://www.phoronix.com/news/April-1-Linux-Patches-2026 What's more annoying: half-baked AI slop open-source patches or April Fools' Day with programmers trying to have some fun? This year, April 1 is seeming more patches than usual.