Linux 7.1 Removes Drivers For Long Obsolete Input Hardware: Bye Bus Mouse Support

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Brorim@reddit

i do not support this development. pcmcia and isdn id also going

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mattmattatwork@reddit

I dont think I've used one of these since the 90s. but man, it was a beautiful mouse. So smooth. I still wish for a usb mouse that works as smooth as the ps2 mice use to.

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Dwedit@reddit

Has anyone used a Bus Mouse or Serial Mouse in forever?

Meanwhile, the PS2 keyboard and mouse ports are still around against all odds.

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boar-b-que@reddit

The people I see using bus mice are collectors and people who are using 16- and 32-bit machines for retro-gaming.

By and large, they're not running Linux on those machines, even if they use it elsewhere. A good example is Adrian Black (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE5dIscvDxrb7CD5uiJJOiw) whose YT channel is mostly about restoring old computers and CRTs. He's had a few bus mice. I've also seen them in a few Tech Tangents videos (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCerEIdrEW-IqwvlH8lTQUJQ). His channel is also worth checking out, but I don't enjoy it as much as Adrian's.

Both of them use Linux in various forms, but they're running largely old versions of MSDOS when they use computers old enough for bus mice.

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Dwedit@reddit

Nowadays, if you wanted to run an actual Bus Mouse on a 2014-era PC (Broadwell), you could use something like the "dISAppointment" to convert the TPM port into an ISA slot. I'm not aware of ways of getting ISA slots on anything newer.

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boar-b-que@reddit

A while back, I saw a custom 8/16 bit ISA backplane that fit into a PCIE slot. The backplane had various voltage regulators on it that converted any missing power rails that might be missing from an ATX power supply.

It was in a random imgur post someone was sharing of their recent designs and homebrew PCB testing, so I couldn't even tell you who was making it. I think my comment at the time was, "What the hell motherboard/backplane is that that has both 16-bit ISA slots AND plugs into an ATX power supply?!"

(I'm delighted with services like JPLPCB and PCBWay that put PCB design into the hands of hobbyists! It means we're getting lots of projects dedicated to allowing older stuff to not become ewaste.)

That said, while I don't have any ISA hardware lingering around, I'm glad to know about the dISAppointment.

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WoomyUnitedToday@reddit

Yeah I have one that I occasionally use for the lols on my computers with serial.

So I am kinda sad

Thankfully my Microsoft serial mouse also supports PS/2 with an adapter though, so I can still use

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Dwedit@reddit

Well the serial mouse isn't the one getting removed, it's the bus mouse.

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WoomyUnitedToday@reddit

Oh ok that's better

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PixelmancerGames@reddit

I really like ps2 mouse and keyboard. I wish we still made them.

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ParanoidFactoid@reddit

I still use a PS2 Kinesis keyboard. I'll be pretty unhappy if that has to change.

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JJ3qnkpK@reddit

I used a Filco board over PS2 for awhile, up until I wanted to KVM with my work laptop with USB.

It was kind of fun getting to productively use such an old standard.

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ParanoidFactoid@reddit

This is on a desktop. But I've been using this keyboard for over twenty five years. It's an ergonomic excellent keyboard. One of those separated curved bowl designs. I love it.

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JJ3qnkpK@reddit

Oh dang! I see people with those PS/2 Kinesis boards, but usually it's people who purchased them recently for the purpose of modding. You've got your original from back in the day!

That's some amazing durability.

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ParanoidFactoid@reddit

It gets dirty. Has to be cleaned. But these things are tanks.

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NighthawkFoo@reddit

PS/2 is useful if you don't have a USB stack.

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h0uz3_@reddit

Thats why Bus mouse has to go while PS/2 will stay: Theres a enough recent embedded systems that support PS/2 while also omitting USB alltogether.

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grem75@reddit

A lot of laptops use PS/2 for internal pointing devices, though USB touchpads are common recently.

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Booty_Bumping@reddit

Is there hardware that forces the use of a bus mouse? Before PS/2, serial would have been available, but I guess there might be some hardware with nonstandard serial ports?

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GregTheMadMonk@reddit

Is there a major spring cleaning in the Linux kernel? I see news of stuff being deprecated weekly. Or was this always the case and news outlets just found a good topic for reporting?

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Kevin_Kofler@reddit

Is there a major spring cleaning in the Linux kernel?

Yes. People are submitting hallucinated AI slop "security" reports, and instead of just ignoring them, the kernel developers are responding by removing working code just to not be bothered anymore with the bogus reports.

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DeepSea_Dreamer@reddit

It's strange that kernel developers can't tell the difference between a real security bug and a hallucinated one.

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Kevin_Kofler@reddit

The thing is, these drivers have no maintainer, so there is nobody bothering to check whether the report is real.

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EdgiiLord@reddit

Preach, OpenAI and Anthropic shill be mad in the comments

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Mr_s3rius@reddit

Several prominent open source project people have said that these reports have started to become very good.

https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2026/04/22/high-quality-chaos/

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VexingRaven@reddit

It's true. As much as the anti-AI crowd are screeching about it and claiming it's nothing, there's enough people in a position to know saying that Mythos is finding genuine hidden vulnerabilities that have been there for years that we have to believe it.

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CardOk755@reddit

the kernel developers are responding by removing ~~working code~~ unsupported drivers for obsolete hardware.

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Kevin_Kofler@reddit

Working drivers for hardware whose users are now unable to use a current Linux kernel on their computers.

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Martin8412@reddit

Sounds like you’re volunteering to maintain those drivers

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zedkyuu@reddit

Yeah, nothing stops anyone from forking their own tree and reverting all the removals. It’s not even difficult. Heck, it’s even automatable. I’m sure that someone of enough drive and ambition (and resources) could set up a perpetual old-hardware fork of the kernel and keep it up to date with new kernel releases. Just a matter of having enough AI tokens and maybe all the hardware for testing.

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jimicus@reddit

Find me one person using a bus mouse and a modern Linux kernel.

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ranixon@reddit

You can't force people to do something that they don't want. Luckily for you, this is free software, so if anybody uses it or you can maintain them.

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snail1132@reddit

Name even one person who will be affected by this change

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Kurgan_IT@reddit

Bus mouse is really really really old and mostly useless, of all of the mouse connection standards (serial, ps2,usb, and bus) it has always been the least used. Even in its times.

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GregTheMadMonk@reddit

I know, it's just that there's been _a lot_ of news lately about code being removed as if it is unusual and means a lot.

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shadowolf64@reddit

Here is a good reason as mentioned by Andrew Lunn on the kernel mailing list:

These old drivers have not been much of a Maintenance burden until
recently. Now there are more newbies using AI and fuzzers finding
issues, resulting in more work for Maintainers. Fixing these old
drivers make little sense, if it is not clear they have users.These old drivers have not been much of a Maintenance burden until
recently. Now there are more newbies using AI and fuzzers finding
issues, resulting in more work for Maintainers. Fixing these old
drivers make little sense, if it is not clear they have users.

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martyn_hare@reddit

They are still technically in the linux-cip tree for 6.12 which is an SLTS branch designed to keep a subset of 6.12 working for a decade from release. Red Hat is helping with that effort due to RHEL 10 being based on that version too.

Meaning folks have until November 2034 for general kernel bug fixes which (hopefully) shouldn't break compatibility with their ancient, unmaintained, insecure drivers. Hardware that old likely won't be used on an Internet-connected machine anyway, so it's no biggie.

It's kinda insane just how long everything is still maintainable for.

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grem75@reddit

On early x86 *NIX systems the Logitech bus mouse was a decent choice because they had 3 buttons and were generally less trouble than 3 button serial mice.

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Kurgan_IT@reddit

I used serial or ps/2 in 1990 - 2000 on Linux workstations. I have no experience of GUI in unix before Linux. I used Unix before Linux but always in terminal only. I probably missed that part.

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grem75@reddit

The serial ones were hit or miss, there was a whole TLDP section dedicated to their quirks.

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phylter99@reddit

They've always done some spring cleaning. I think it hit the headlines because of the 486 support removal. They may be doing more of it now though.

I think it's good, and it is important. It's a lot of extra code to maintain and if they just keep adding things without removing some then the Linux kernel will become the bloat that has always been avoided.

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GregTheMadMonk@reddit

It's kind of sad to see support dropped, especially since Linux had a reputation of running on anything that has a CPU, but yeah, I guess we're far enough into computing as a civilization when it just isn't viable to support that much

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maokaby@reddit

They remove support for old hardware only if there are no maintainers for years. They might resume the support if someone would do the job, but that's unlikely.

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TheCh0rt@reddit

Yep they can make their own forks of what they need

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Zzyzx2021@reddit

NetBSD is the real choice for esoteric retro hardware

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schwimmcoder@reddit

Yeah, but who uses Bus Mouses on a modern PC. Either, it‘s an old PC, who does not need updates and can run with Linux <=6.18 for a long while or it‘s a modern PC and does not have a connector for bus mouses. Soo, who needs the support anymore?

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Max-P@reddit

Sad indeed, but at the same time I doubt anyone still running a 486 and ISDN have any needs for anything in newer kernels anyway. Linux has long been feature complete for that old stuff. Odds are you already disable most of the kernel's newer feature on that old hardware anyway just to get it to fit.

Those can stay on kernel 6.18 or a fork of 6.18 for old hardware. You probably settled on a solid kernel where everything works perfectly years ago.

The rest like AX25 have pure userspace equivalents already, as even the world of ham radio has moved on. Last time I saw it used must have been NCommander's stream, and it was already barely usable anymore due to lack of maintenance.

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phylter99@reddit

It also matters how many people were using that feature of the software. I think they noted that they had very few if any people using those features, which contributed to them dropping support. The size of the current kernel when running doesn't lend itself well to running on very old machines like that anyway.

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shinzon76@reddit

I heard they've been letting AI look for exploits and bugs in the codebase and deprecating old drivers as a result since no one is willing to maintain them and fix the issues found.

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Infiniti_151@reddit

Mythos

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algaefied_creek@reddit

if Mythos were so mythic, it would fix the vulnerabilities found.

Though yeah the bus mouse not really gonna do any bussin’ henceforth

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robstoon@reddit

I'm sure it could. The issue is not fixing the bug, it's being able to test that the driver still works afterwards.

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coquec@reddit

Don’t trust the hype.

https://www.artificialintelligencemadesimple.com/p/anthropics-claude-mythos-launch-is

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_x_oOo_x_@reddit

I thought we were told AI could code (which includes fixing bugs)?

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robstoon@reddit

Even if you can allegedly fix the bugs, if nobody has the old hardware, how are you going to test to make sure that the driver still works properly?

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Business_Reindeer910@reddit

it sure can't prove that the actual physical hardware still works!

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Kurgan_IT@reddit

It can, and it ususally produces more bugs, not less.

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Martin8412@reddit

It can - But someone(human) needs to take responsibility for what the AI does, which means taking on the responsibility of maintainer for said driver.

How are people going to do that if they don’t even have access to the hardware?

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MaybeTheDoctor@reddit

Never before in history have 30-40y old technology existed in Linux.

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I_AM_GODDAMN_BATMAN@reddit

Bet it's AI security tools keep bugging people with vulnerability reports for ancient drivers.

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amarao_san@reddit

As far as I understand, they let LLMs to run wild and to write exploits for everything exploitable. What it found and confirmed, is either fixed or removed.

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DrinkMoreGlorp@reddit

Where did you come to this understanding? I keep seeing it in these comments but I haven't (myself) seen anything come across LKML or any real channels beyond potentially-astroturfed internet comments.

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amarao_san@reddit

That's interesting topic. I don't remember. It's somehow co-incise with Firefox reports on mythos use for pile of zero-days. I think, it was in some tech discussion...

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grathontolarsdatarod@reddit

Gotta get folks up to speed with all the kernel changes that are going to be necessary with all these laws coming up!

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killersteak@reddit

bus mouse was a studio ghibli character iirc.

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pezezin@reddit

No, that was a cat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catbus

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ChocolateSpecific263@reddit

and how does this even affect kernel development? it doesnt its old code which was replaced by usb/uefi

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Azsde@reddit

Forgive my ignorance, what is the benefit of dropping support of such devices ? Lighter kernel ? Gain of performance ? Cleaner codebase ?

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redundant78@reddit

mostly cleaner codebase and reduced maintenance burden. every driver that exists has to be considered when making changes to internal APIs, and someone has to review and update code that literally nobody is testing anymore. it's not really about performance since unused drivers don't get loaded, but it does slightly reduce compile times and binary sizes for distros that build everything into the kernel.

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Qazerowl@reddit

And to add on to OP's response, it's not like removing this code from the kernel makes it impossible to use a bus mouse: if anybody cared enough they could make a kernel module with that code and use it on the specific machines that they needed it for. For something that like 3 people in the world need, it makes more sense for them to be in charge of making it work than something the official Linux project promises to keep working.

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anh0516@reddit (OP)

It stops people and LLMs/fuzzers (these 7.1 removals were initially motivated by the latter) from wasting their time on something that almost no one uses.
Removing code opens up room to modernize parts of the kernel that otherwise couldn't be without spending time also modernizing the code that almost no one uses.

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