Transcript
False meme image that says “bad news ipv4 fans. linus torvalds has announced removing ipv4 support from the linux kernel after the maintainers of the network stack got into a fight over WHAT KIND OF HRT gives the best results. this incident will impact 5 billion people and will make 95% of all network equipment on Earth binnable.” with fake screenshots of the linux kernel mailing list a girl calling another one a slur from 4chan over HRT choices and Linus Torvalds saying he will drop IPv4 support and asking the maintainers to learn to shut the fuck up.
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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.
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.
Honestly I need an AI to protect my data.
It’s too much atp
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.
Actually on someone else’s network right now and think it’s cabled Vodafone and I do have IPv6. Only got android to play with right now though, apparently Vodafone are tight bastards for the range of addresses you can get.
Edit: version of Android I am on only let’s you set a static IPv4 address, what a shit operating system
I believed it for a moment
You got me in the first half 😁
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
IPv4 is very much not simpler. You just as used to it.
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
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?
Correct, the ISP would assign you a /56 of public IPs that all share a prefix which you can slice and dice into however you see fit. All devices receive a publicly routable IP which your router/firewall would limit access to. So no running out of IPs ever, no network/IP collisions if you have to connect to another private network, etc.
A single IPv6 prefix has 2^64 addresses
Yes, your ISP provides you a large quantity of adresses. Not really, the adresses has several parts. Your ISP provides you with the prefix. Your devices complete the rest of the address automatically. You can also use a DHCPv6 server, but I don’t and some devices don’t support it anyway. Yes, all those adresses are globally routable, they are “Internet” adresses. You can still use locally routable adresses too if you want, called Unique local address (look it up on Wikipedia), but that requires manual configuration.
I don’t think unique local addresses require manual configuration. On linux at least, I get an
fe80::address derived from the interface’s MAC address even if there it can’t find any router. If the host receives a router advertisement, it will add a local address (the same suffix as the fe80 but with afd8b:something::/64)and the “internet”2003::.I’m not an expert and this may be just the configuration of my router, but all my linux installs automatically got these three addresses without manual configuration or issues.
That’s SLAAC not a ULA
Why can’t you just use it on your local network? Don’t need ISP for that.
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.
IPv6 is widely adopted
I don’t even have an ipv6 address, my ISP doesn’t provide them yet. Not much to do about it then lol.
You can maybe change ISP
I wish I could but I’m afraid it’s not possible at this address and it’s not something I’m going to move for
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.
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…
^ the admin holding the entire world back
Imagine arguing that ‘solutions’ like NAT444 isn’t broke as fuck
Imagine arguing that ‘solutions’ like NAT444 isn’t broke as fuck
Well… yeah, why wouldn’t that be “broke as fuck”?
I always bring it up when the network is experiencing problems that they wouldn’t have with IPv6. Running out of IPs in a given scope, increasing costs of public IPs, etc.
“IPv4 is running out of IP addresses so therefore every local network needs to move to IPv6” is a full clown move.
IPv6 is literally designed to solve the scalability issues with IPv6
First of all, enterprises usually have at least one public IP (the one I work at right now has more public IPs than they have server VMs)
Secondly enterprises have big enough and complex enough networks to see other benefits of IPv6. For example IPv4 has some problems when broadcast domains are too large, so your internal network sizes are artificially limited when following best practices. Without private networks you don’t have to worry about IP collisions between different private networks that you have to route between (comes up more than you’d think!) etc etc.
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
If this was true then we would have swapped over by now.
Most people still see NAT as a security system.
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
IPv4 killed my parents.
Can confirm, I was IPv4
I believe it
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Maybe this will move my ISP to provide IPv6.
Do you want to play a game?
Followup:
Truly a legend, if true
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.
I know! It seemed totally plausible! There is a very odd discrepancy between that and the general population.
Trans people are either writing kernel code or playing hearts of iron 4. Nothing else is allowed.
It ended up that way though
THE TOASTER WILL BE REPLACED.
Fucking legendary quote from Linus.
It’s a shame it’s fake.
do you have proof that it’s fake though
There is the rule number one of the linux kernel: “We don’t break userspace.” Linux has refused fixes for buggy behavior in the past because of this rule. This would most certainly break userspace.
Also the alt text of the original image states this is fake.
Chat, is this real?
Check the alt text.
Aw, dang it. I don’t know shit about IPv6 vs IPv4 other than how it be written, but I wanted some chaos
I’m sure he emails the kernel he works on regularly
Thanks for the alt text & transcript in OP. It’s missing here, though.
Transcript
From: Linus Torvalds <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: [RFC] Remove IPv4 support from kernel, effective next merge window
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2025 10:42:00 -0700
Message-ID: <[email protected]>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.
I noticed. But sometimes, LT can be a bit explosive, and we all know that devs can be bitches about their code. I would not put it past Linus that he actally threatens some fully nuclear option to bring some boneheads to reason.
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?
No. But if this is true (which I do doubt completely, Linus can’t be this dumb to singlehandedly cripple his OS), this should also affect every intranet address.
The current description of IPv6 intranet is just ridiculously dumb anyway. Should I want to ssh into a local device, I’ll have to type in for example
fd9e:9aa0:c00f:1::a, with only thefdpart being the same for all intranets rather than192.168.1.10with192.168generally always being the same.Edit: wait… Are you telling me to set DNS redirects on all my local devices? Yeah, that’ll work, but why the even…
I don’t think I’ve entered an IP address for a local device in years. Everything is accessible using
<hostname>.localthanks to mDNS. Avahi has been doing this for… 20 years I think?Cool. My mesh doesn’t have that though (I think?). But admittedly that’s a tangent. If IPv4 ever depreciates, I’ll have to toss my mesh anyway.
Pihole automatically adds clients that get an IP from its DHCP component. All my clients are server.local, client1.local, tv1.local, etc. So I can use their DNS name everywhere.
Even if it don’t want to use pihole(why?), you can edit the SSH config and add addresses for each host so you can just type
ssh serverwait… Are you telling me to set DNS redirects on all my local devices? Yeah, that’ll work, but why the even…
What do you mean by that? I’m pretty sure people are telling you to run a DNS server and set up entries for any clients you want to regularly connect to.
with only the fd part being the same for all intranets
Why?
I think ipv4 for internal networks is fine.
if this is true (which I do doubt completely
I really want to believe that you doubt it completely.
Yeah, I really have put too much time into replying to all these based solely on a hypothetical. But I did learn something from all these comments (technical something, not me being an idiot), so it’s all good.
You will do as you’re told!
Yes daddy!
Take your pills, Alice.
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?
Mine is Quantum Fiber, a sister of CenturyLink. CL has it, apparently QF doesn’t. Or at least not natively, rather 6rd. And then possibly not on the modem they installed? At any rate, I haven’t been able to find anything online.
It should have IPv6
Odd
🤷🏼♂️ When I had CL I could turn it on by enabling 6rd and it worked as expected. When I moved across town and got QF, their instructions didn’t account for it and following the same online instructions for CL don’t work. Others online seem to not have had any luck either, but some people’s comments make it sound like it’s the modem.
I’m on one of the regions of fiber that CenturyLink spun off to a private equity firm a few years ago. Zero IPv6 support here
