Developers are stripping legacy networking code from the Linux kernel after a surge of security reports generated by large‑language models. The cleanup targets ISA and PCMCIA Ethernet drivers, a pair of PCI modules, the AX.25 amateur‑radio stack, ATM protocols and the ISDN subsystem. Maintainers say the AI‑driven bug flood made reviewing stale code untenable.

Community members argue the affected drivers are largely unmaintained, having lingered in‑tree for decades without active support. Because they process external data—especially radio packets—any vulnerability can be weaponized through module autoloading. Some contributors suggest moving these components to user‑space projects or rewriting them in safe Rust to mitigate memory‑corruption risks.

The kernel maintainers plan to drop the amateur‑radio stack entirely, citing sanity and security as primary drivers. While hardware enthusiasts worry about legacy devices losing kernel support, the decision reflects a broader shift toward pruning code that cannot be reliably audited. Removing these drivers reduces the surface area that AI‑generated scanners must triage.

Patch submissions accompanying the removals already landed, cleaning up build scripts and documentation. Distributors will ship kernels without the deprecated modules starting in the upcoming 7.1 release, giving users a clear upgrade path while freeing developers to focus on modern subsystems.