2d ago

bad news ipv4 fans

Source: https://rivals.space/@deuxnise/115032302416832519

233 comments

Followup:
- I'm glad that Linus clarified that it was High Resolution Timers. I was honestly thinking they were arguing about Hormone Replacement Therapy.
  
  Given the demographics of Linux devs, it probably would be the latter.
  
  It ended up that way though
- THE TOASTER WILL BE REPLACED.
  Fucking legendary quote from Linus.
  
  It's a shame it's fake.
- Chat, is this real?
  
  Check the alt text.
  
  I'm sure he emails the kernel he works on regularly
- Thanks for the alt text & transcript in OP. It's missing here, though. ::: spoiler Transcript
  From: Linus Torvalds torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
  To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
  Subject: [RFC] Remove IPv4 support from kernel, effective next merge window
  Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2025 10:42:00 -0700
  Message-ID: 20250815-drop-ipv4@linux-foundation.org>
  Hey folks,
  After yet another deeply technical and entirely calm discussion about HRT (High-Resolution Timers) that somehow devolved into 200+ replies, personal insults, and at least one GIF of a raccoon, I have decided it's time to take drastic measures.
  Effective next merge window, we will be removing IPv4 support from the kernel. This will both (a) resolve the maintainers' scheduling disputes, and (b) force the world into the IPV6 utopia we were promised back in 1998.
  If you need IPv4 after this point, you can either:
  run an ancient kernel from before the change (good luck with the bugs), or
  rewrite your applications to use IPv6 and learn to love colons in your addresses.
  Yes, I realize this will break roughly *everything *.
  No, I don't care. I have already switched all my machines to IPv6-only, except for the toaster, which unfortunately still insists on using a 192. 168. x. x address. The toaster will be replaced.
  If you disagree with this decision, I suggest you take it up with the HRT maintainers. But please keep it civil this time. (Or at least keep the raccoon GIFs under 1MB.)
  Linus :::
  
  What a bunch of babies. They can't work together so they make the world suffer.
  Got it
  Edit. I looked. It's a joke. They got me. I'm leaving this to show my shame
- Is the raccoon gif real?
  
  none of this is.
- Truly a Solomonic decision.
- A highly nuclear option. I hope that those developers get their act together in time.
  
  this is a joke btw.
- Well I'm not going to switch away my perfectly functional mesh routers that uses IPv4 as using IPv6 on a local net that I may sometimes need to type in manually is rather stupid. And that would also bin my routers, so I'm not doing that either.
  Oh well, I guess it's been fun guys, no more Linux for me due to potential future security issues.
  
  Do you even DNS?
  
  You will do as you're told!
- Truly a legend, if true

Maybe this is the push that finally makes IPv6 go mainstream!
- Nah, IPX is gonna take over.
  
  What's IPX?

I need to inflict this reply upon others. It is so gloriously cursed out of context. And in context too.
- (youtube) explainer link for the unfamiliar : https://youtube.com/watch?v=ABpT6e-KlOo

I'm kind of weirdly horny for Torvalds making unilateral decisions about long running controversies? Tell me what standards are best kernel daddy.
Maybe next he can ban tabs and '\t' from Linux? Everyone indents with spaces now, debate over.
- I'm sorry, WHAT? SPACES???
  
  You ever find yourself lost for half a day indenting 1000+ lines of code in a random script you opened because the original developer was lazy?
  
  (As a lover of mixed-style and chaos in general, I picked what seemed like the "normiest" option for maximum impact, haha)
- Seeing as we had a rant only a year or two ago about him (potentially) banning some language (or IDE? I don't remember) from the kernel if it couldn't cleanly handle tabs and spaces, I don't think he's going to ban tabs.
  Wait, as I typed this, I think I remember it better now. He was actually going to start using hidden tabs to fuck with people's IDEs that didn't handle them well.

I think it is more likely that 95% of network equipment supports IPv6
- Except whatever brings internet to my apartment apparently
  
  Your ISP needs to setup IPv6 which isn't trivial to do from scratch.
  What provider is it?

As long as IPv2 support remains intact, I'm good.
/s
- hopefully they also keep IPv1 and IPv3 support too
  
  Not today!
  
  Thanks, Voyager

Is this real? I thought that Linus has improved his demeanor a bit in the recent years?
- You can easily tell it's fake. Linus would never censor "fuck".
  
  He did here:
  
  Thank you for the clarification, I'm stupid and could not tell
  
  and it would be Linus telling þe committer þeir patch sucks ass.
- Linus have stated multiple times that he does not break user space, thus this quiet clearly cannot be real.
  
  The kernel has never committed to a guarantee that userspace have IPv4 available. Hell, I'm sure that you don't even need to compile it into the kernel.
  goes and runs make menuconfig
  Yeah, CONFIG_INET=n and you'll have no TCP/IP in your kernel.
  
  IT'S ON THE INTERNET! IT MUST BE TRUE!
- No it's not real, even the follow up has the date of Sat, Aug 15th, 2025.
  Saturday is the 16th.
  There is a lot of other issues people have pointed out but right out of the gate that one is clear sign of it being fake.
  
  Only if you still use the obsolete Gregorian calendar. Linux support for this was dropped as well
- Is this real?
  I mean, it's a joke in any case, but you mean is it a joke on the linux-kernel mailing list or someone making a joke elsewhere?
  goes to check
  https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/?q=torvalds
  I don't know the purported source of the original text, but the "follow-up" is supposed to be on the 15th to the linux-kernel mailing list. I don't believe that that is an actual email from Torvalds. The most-recent email Linus has sent to the linux-kernel mailing list that shows up here is on the 13th, "Re: [PATCH] cleanup: Fix unused guard error function with DEFINE_CLASS_IS_COND_GUARD".
  EDIT: Also, looking at the list archives, while he does appear to use an indented "Linus" as his signature file, unlike the "follow-up" image, it does not have a leading hyphen.
  EDIT2: Also, looks like Torvalds is in the "surround a word with underscores" school of emphasis, rather than "surround a word with asterisks", a la the "follow-up email".
  
  Since we are not making jokes on feddit (they might upset the mods) it must be LKML. They're known to spend their days fooling around.
- This is not real.
- No but it sounds like something that needs to be made real.
  
  Seem to be a lot of IPV4 fans out there
  
  I tried IPv6-only a few days ago, aside from Google and Cloudflare proxied websites, I couldn't load anything.
  
  Let us lead the world towards the true belief. By sword and wirecutter. Let the heathens be converted to the true protocol or disconnected. Progress! Renewal! Electrification!
  
  Nah that would be stupid.
- Nah, eggs don't simmer down until they crack. I'm thinking a name like Sun-il would be cute. Might dictate North Korea later.

A major ISP in the UK still doesn’t have any IPv6 support :( https://www.havevirginmediaenabledipv6yet.co.uk/
- I still don't have an IPv6 address over 4G with Vodafone. I want to run a web server on my phone, isn't this a normal use case? Nat444 makes that pretty difficult, just let me use IPv6!
  
  That's impressive
  Scaling NAT is complex and expensive. They are literally making it harder
  
  Cabled from Vodafone is not much better, ip6 does auto configure from the router with a local address, so it at least supports it. but no routable ips yet.
- I wonder if that site pings an IPv6 address on the virgin network and updates the output automatically based on the ping result.
- They give 2 options: "Sign the petition" and "Tweet them!", but you could also just en-masse "Switch providers" and make them rethink their strategy.
- I'm on Spectrum in the US and their "support" is somehow worse than just not having IPv6. Tons of dropped packets, shifting IP address ranges, and overall a lot of headaches. Tried everything I could to sidestep the issues but there was nothing doing. Eventually I just disabled IPv6 and the issues went away. Maddening.

As a modest proposal, let's just kill anyone who disagrees. These troglodytes had long enough time to get on speed with the world and human progress cannot further afford individuals unwilling to adapt.
Renewal! Progress! Electrification!
- Moderates nowadays be like:

IPv4 killed my parents.
- Can confirm, I was IPv4
- I believe it

Please, at least 85% of that network equipment hasn't been updated in 30 years and they're not about to start now.
- screams in salt typhoon

My dream. IPv6 adoption would skyrocket to a degree unimaginable and those who don’t want to, will fall behind unless they move their asses and learn.

Ipv4 is simpler and therefore easier for my brain to comprehend.
I deliberately disable IPv6 on all the devices on my home network because it's really f**n annoying when some service tries to bind to localhost but picks up the IPv6 localhost instead of the IPv4 one
- I've encountered way too many administrators and network admins who swear that "IPv6 does nothing but cause trouble" but the truth is, the trouble it's causing is because you can't half-implement IPv6. You either roll it out to the whole network or you don't, and the longer you kick that can down the road the harder it's going to be.
  Basically too many professionals who haven't learned a new technology since 2005 and refuse to try new things keep holding the world back
  
  I will happily enable and use it once doing so doesn't break any of my connectivity.
  I'm not managing an enterprise network, it's just my home, but my ISP doesn't support IPv6 so that's one extra layer of complexity right off the hop. On top of that internal services switch which previously required no manual configuration just seem to randomly not work.
  IPv6 is not going to see widespread adoption unless it can be implemented completely transparently for the end user, full stop.
  
  I don't even have an ipv6 address, my ISP doesn't provide them yet. Not much to do about it then lol.
  
  I think what those admins really mean to say is "We don't need any of the benefits of IPv6, so IPv4 works just fine and making the large scale change is trouble.", when you already got your DHCP, NAT, Firewall and stuff up and things do work as expected then you don't really need NDP or SLAAC.
  
  The issue for me is when I have it enabled and try to connect to a site that doesn't support it fully (same thing / half assed) and the site doesn't work properly. For home its my wife and kids that complain, when its the office then everyone complains. I get the blame for failed connections or things not working right when a fully compliant IPv6 site works just fine.
  Now I am not perfect so It could be me but I have read up and learned as much as possible. No expert but I did deploy DHCPv6 in a test environment. However there is no reason as of yet to deploy DHCPv6 locally since the address space is so wide. Just saying Its possible that the issue is me but from my understanding its like the U.S.A. switching to metric. Parts of us tried it but others didn't and thus we failed as a giant group.
  I think there needs to be a big ass push and force everyone to switch as the same time. I know some of the old devices may not work however those devices have to be 20+ years by now.
  
  Can't even attempt to learn it if my ISP won't provide addresses though.
  Not been able to use it to even try, but doesn't IPv6 not have subnets at all? No 192.168.1.1 on your local network with a different public facing 85.136.52.142 (and with NAT444 you also have ISP facing 10.183.23.6). So does your ISP provide you a range of IPv6 addresses?
  
  Basically too many professionals who haven’t learned a new technology since 2005 and refuse to try new things keep holding the world back
  If it ain't broke...
  
  "IPv4 is running out of IP addresses so therefore every local network needs to move to IPv6" is a full clown move.
- IPv4 is very much not simpler. You just as used to it.
  
  Just remembering an address alone is much simpler.
  4 numbers > a combination of numbers and letters in 8 groups
- In a local network there is no point in using ipv6.
  It is interesting when you run out of ip addresses for the amount of devices you have.
  So in the open Internet.
  Unless I am missing something.
  
  A couple of things that IPv6 does better for local networks is link local addressing (fe80::). and multicasting.
  In IPv4, they kind of hacked something out of 169.254, but if you have more than one NIC, it pretty much becomes useless.
  If you have a service designed explicitly never to be accessed over a router, then you can live in fe80:: a lot more easily than trying to do the same thing with 169.254.
  
  Why not? It's as easy as ipv4

You got me in the first half 😁

I'm ignorant enough that I didn't realize this wasn't actually happening until I read the comments. My networking knowledge is piss poor haha.
- Don't worry about the network side of things. It's open source. Before they turn everything on its head would be forked and it would be replaced.

Do you want to play a game?

I believed it for a moment

ipv6 is great for public networks/ wan or extreme large nets. but for a small local net, ipv4 is so much easier if you need to access a single device. if ipv6 is parallell too, great but I hope ipv4 wont be disabled/ non existens in the future bc of this
- I need to make sure you know this is a joke
  
  I need to be told as well.
  Tell me. Tell me now, or I torch my fiber modem!
- IPv4 isn't compatible with IPv6
  I actually would argue that IPv6 is better even for small networks since it has SLAAC
- There's almost certainly no future where IPv4 goes away. Not unless people abandon the Internet entirely and look for some alternative built on IPv6 from the start.

Maybe this will move my ISP to provide IPv6.

Something needed to happen here, we’ll see if even Torvalds has the power to kick massive telecom and consumer electronics conglomerates in the butt. It’s been too long.
My fiber provider started an early rollout of IPv6 like a decade abgo, and it’s been stalled out ever since.
I’m still seeing new consumer electronics being sold even though they’re IPv4 only.
- Screams in Ubiquiti

Well, if the Injection isn't the best option, you can always resort to patches.

Linus did a follow-up: https://xn--c8h.fm/notes/abh00crrs1gcja8q
- This is the first time I've seen a punycode domain name in the wild.
  
  Not a very inviting domain is it? Or am I punycodephobic?
  
  I've seen https://xn--gckvb8fzb.com/ before
- Basically told them to shove it up their colon

I still miss IPv5
- For real, what the hell happened to IPv5?
  
  We don't talk about IPv5.
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Stream_Protocol
  
  The same as winamp 4.
  
  It was a little experiment in streaming that never went anywhere. It can be safely forgotten.
- I still think about her

What's a Gigahon?
- transphobic slur used on 4chan to refer to trans women who do not pass as cis women
  also, injections are the best route of administration for estrogen
  
  also, injections are the best route of administration for estrogen
  people like you are the reason we're losing IPv4 support on linux! (/s of course)
  
  Oof that's way worse than I thought
  
  I didn't notice that when I posted this :/.
- https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Gigahon

I wish.

If you don't use IPv6, you are behind. For me the transition was so hard, it's a big step behind me, wouldn't want to do it again.
- I still remember my network lecturer telling us how IPv6 was the future and how we were running out of IPs back in... 1997.
  That same year, during my work placement, I was introduced to Squid and all sorts of network fuckery to compensate for those supposedly disappearing IPs.

Take your pills, Alice.

I had a bad start with ipv6. I moved to a new home and ISP switched my new network to ipv6 only (there is a strange ip4 backdoor in case its needed, but shared with others). And this destroyed my wireguard VPN. I called them and was so happy, that they gave everyone who explicit wants ipv4 got it.
Nowadays wireguard support ipv6. Too bad, I never switched back to ipv6 only. But I setup all my DNS records with ip4 and ip6, if they kill ip4. I'm okay with it.
- You could've had it all...

It's what the open source community voted for

Honestly I need an AI to protect my data.
It’s too much atp

I tried IPv6 only (with NAT64) and Steam didn't work because it had IPv4 addresses hardcoded :(

So which is the best?
- IPv6 is 50% higher than 4, so obviously it's better.
  
  No, IPv6 is in 6th place. We need to find IPv1st.
- Injections. Not even close. They bypass the liver, so less stress on that. You get more steady levels, especially if you use an ester like estradiol enanthate. Only have to take medicine once every 1-2 weeks. No awkwardly applying a cream and waiting a long time for it to slowly dry out/absorb. None of the swings in blood levels through the day. No having to remember to take a pill multiple times per day. Injections are clearly the superior choice. About the only thing superior are implants, which last 3-4 months. But those are expensive, difficult to find, and have to be done in a doctor's office. Injections can be done at home or even DIY.
  
  IPvHRT

About time too.

Real

Can we just treat this as real? Post it everywhere. You know in a sort of "alternative facts" / flat earth sort of way. So maybe the planet finally moves on from ipv4.
- Good news is that Google is reporting that >40% of their traffic is IPv6:
  https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html
  Should crack 50% soon. It's been a long time coming.
- I have a feeling, a lot of people willing to move to Linux are already open to trying out IPv6 when they get the time.
  Pity my old router only bridges IPv4 and only does IPv6 with NAT (or maybe I just couldn't understand the interface).