SPARC & Alpha CPU Ports Still Seeing Activity In 2026 With Linux 7.0
In addition to all of the exciting Intel and AMD x86_64 enhancements that have been landing this week so far for the Linux 7.0 kernel, the aging SPARC, Alpha, and Motorola 680x0 "m68k" CPU ports have also seen some patches for this new kernel.
New Linux kernel patches for Sun/Oracle SPARC and DEC Alpha are increasingly rare but for the most part still being maintained by the upstream Linux kernel. Merged this week already for Linux 7.0 are some maintenance work on those architectures plus the Motorola m68k that continues to routinely see new kernel activity too.
The Alpha pull for Linux 7.0 addresses user-space corruption during memory compaction.
The SPARC pull has more patches for this Linux 7.0 cycle. SPARC with Linux 7.0 has some header changes, fixing a bug for fork/clone, support for clone3, ARCH_HAS_CC_CAN_LINK, and some API choice improvements.
The m68k updates for Linux 7.0 include replacing vsprintf() with vsnprintf() on Sun-3 and a NuBus driver fix.
New Linux kernel patches for Sun/Oracle SPARC and DEC Alpha are increasingly rare but for the most part still being maintained by the upstream Linux kernel. Merged this week already for Linux 7.0 are some maintenance work on those architectures plus the Motorola m68k that continues to routinely see new kernel activity too.
The Alpha pull for Linux 7.0 addresses user-space corruption during memory compaction.
The SPARC pull has more patches for this Linux 7.0 cycle. SPARC with Linux 7.0 has some header changes, fixing a bug for fork/clone, support for clone3, ARCH_HAS_CC_CAN_LINK, and some API choice improvements.
The m68k updates for Linux 7.0 include replacing vsprintf() with vsnprintf() on Sun-3 and a NuBus driver fix.