[Python-Dev] Drop support for old unsupported FreeBSD and Linux kernels? (original) (raw)

Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Fri Jan 19 04:10:51 EST 2018

On 1/19/2018 1:04 AM, Nathaniel Smith wrote:

On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 12:27 PM, Victor Stinner <victor.stinner at gmail.com> wrote:

CPython still has compatibility code for Linux 2.6, whereas the support of Linux 2.6.x ended in August 2011, longer than 6 years ago. Should we also drop support for old Linux kernels? If yes, which ones? The Linux kernel has LTS version, the oldest is Linux 3.2 (support will end in May, 2018).

Linux kernel support: https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html RHEL 5 uses 2.6.28, and still has "extended life cycle support" until 2020, but I guess no-one should be running Python 3.7 on that. CentOS 6 and RHEL 6 use 2.6.32, and their EOL is also 2020 (or 2024 for RHEL 6 with extended life cycle support). Redhat does ship and support 3.6 on CentOS/RHEL 6 through their "software collections" product, and presumably is planning to do the same for 3.7. It is a little surprising to see a Redhat employee suggest dropping support for RHEL 6. Hopefully you know what you're doing :-)

Microsoft offers paid private support of some sort to corporations for publicly unsupported versions of Windows, such as xp and, we may expect, Vista. But we dropped support of xp and should, by policy, do so for Vista. I am not familiar with what Redhat does, but if it is similar, I think we should apply the same policy.

-- Terry Jan Reedy

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