New Patches Allow Building Linux IPv6-Only, Option to Deprecate "Legacy" IPv4
by Bender on 4/1/2026, 1:15:33 PM
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-IPv6-IPv4-Legacy-Knobs
Comments
by: iamnothere
This may be a “joke”, but it’s disturbing to see people clamoring to deny others their freedom in a FOSS context.<p>Want to use IPv6? Fine. But don’t try to remove v4 support from people who have built stable networks around it.<p>You won’t be able to force the world to switch to IPv6 with tricks like this, any more than you can force old industrial machines to stop using ancient 486es as controllers. There is a lot of old equipment in the world.<p>IPv6 was built to work alongside v4, and there is no reason to change that.
4/1/2026, 3:51:19 PM
by: rafaelcosta
As it should. Date notwithstanding, I would actually enjoy if there was a manually induced latency penalty for "legacy IP" that needs to be manually turned off on Linux. I know some people don't care at all, but the internet was made to be addressable. IPv6 is the only shot we have to go back to that.
4/1/2026, 2:10:04 PM
by: petcat
It will be a neat experiment, but I think most software will break and will remain broken indefinitely and then people will turn to LLMs to try to automate fixing all of it and that will turn into a mess just due to the sheer amount of changes required with little scrutiny.
4/1/2026, 2:22:24 PM
by: ThrowawayTestr
When I was in grade school I did a presentation on ipv6 and how it was the future of the Internet. That was like 20 years ago.
4/1/2026, 3:50:48 PM
by: zamadatix
Good stuff (both the joke and the genuine proposal of splitting the config options for IPv4 and IPv6).
4/1/2026, 2:49:52 PM
by: bornfreddy
IPv6 vs. 4 is like Python 3 vs. 2, just worse.
4/1/2026, 3:13:38 PM
by: 1970-01-01
The best pranks are the ones that succeed to rattle an individual. Build it!
4/1/2026, 3:22:33 PM
by: porridgeraisin
I suppose this will lead to a classic torvalds rant. I will be watching r/linusrants
4/1/2026, 2:42:56 PM
by: CookieCrisp
We’re so close guys! Another 25 years and we might almost be there!
4/1/2026, 2:33:55 PM
by: Daegalus
great, now can we convince the rest of the internet to start adding AAAA records and ipv6 endpoints for things. Github is still a nightmare to use DNS64 and NAT64 to access those from IPv6 only machines.<p>Or all the Container based stuff that still falls flat with ipv6 only modes. Docker still shits the bed if you dont give it ipv4 unless you do a lot of manual overrides to things. A bunch of Envoy based gateway proxies fail on internal ipv6 resources in a k8s cluster that runs on ARM64.<p>There is just a bunch of nonsense you have to deal with if you choose the ipv6-only route<p>Dont get me started on CDNs like Bunny or Load Balancers as a service like those from Hetzner, UpCloud, etc that don't work with ipv6 origins.<p>Source: Trying to run a ipv6 only self-hosted box on hetzner.
4/1/2026, 2:22:58 PM
by: VoodooJuJu
[dead]
4/1/2026, 2:08:44 PM
by: calvinmorrison
[flagged]
4/1/2026, 2:49:11 PM