2020 Spring Cleaning: HP 100BaseVG AnyLAN Linux Network Driver Finally Getting Dropped

Should you still have an HP 100BaseVG AnyLAN network adapter from the mid-to-late 90's, the mainline Linux kernel is finally preparing to eliminate its driver.

The long-standing HP100 Linux network driver that has been around for nearly two decades is finally set to be retired. The HP100 Linux driver is for supporting the 100BaseVG AnyLAN hardware from Hewlett Packard.

Last year the HP100 driver was demoted to the kernel's staging area with plans of eventually dropping the driver outright. As part of some spring cleaning, Greg Kroah-Hartman sent out a patch to finally kill off that very old network driver.

Greg wrote as the driver's obituary, "It's old, obsolete, and no one wants to take care of it anymore. It's been in staging for 5 months with no one paying attention to it, so let's just delete it for now."

He hasn't yet applied it to staging-next but more than likely that driver elimination will happen for the imminent Linux 5.7 cycle otherwise Linux 5.8 this summer.