[Python-Dev] Drop support for old unsupported FreeBSD and Linux kernels?

[Terry Reedy]

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