Linus Torvalds has accepted a set of patches with changes for the networking subsystem into the Linux 7.2 kernel, which is expected to be released in mid-August. This continues the kernel cleanup from outdated drivers and subsystems. The most significant change was the removal of the AppleTalk protocol stack implementation from the kernel. AppleTalk was used in Apple computers since 1985 and was replaced by TCP/IP in the 1990s. Support for AppleTalk was discontinued by Apple in the release of Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard," which was developed in 2009.
The reason for the removal cited is the presence of unpatched bugs in the AppleTalk implementation. Developers received a series of patches prepared with the help of AI assistants, but there is no one to review them as the subsystem has been left without maintainers. For those who may need the code for modules removed from the kernel, the implementations of AppleTalk, ATM, AX.25, ISDN, and hamradio have been moved to a separate repository on GitHub.
In addition to AppleTalk, components of the ATM data transmission technology that are not related to PPPoATM have also been removed from the 7.2 kernel codebase, along with code for TLS integration with sockmap and support for 5/10 MHz frequency ranges in the wireless cfg80211/mac80211 stack. Due to unresolved issues with locks and the absence of maintainers, a specific implementation of TLS processing acceleration based on TCP Offload Engine has been removed (a more common implementation of TLS offload has been preserved). Code compatibility with 32-bit x_tables on 64-bit systems has been disabled and is planned for removal.
Source: opennet.ru
