AMD’s landmark K5 processor family will no longer be supported by Linux when kernel version 7.2 arrives. The Linux-watchers at Phoronix noticed the forced retirement of the venerable K5 in a recent patch designed to “remove support for TSC-less Pentium variants.” The lack of TSC (Time Stamp Counter) in the K5 apparently makes it a burden for developers to support in the kernel. The K5 holds a special place in AMD history as the firm’s first independently designed x86 processor. However, it wasn’t a very popular processor as it arrived late, then offered lackluster performance in the competitive environment it joined. (Image credit: Birdman86 ) AMD’s shiny homegrown 4.3M transistor chip featured a “RISC-based internal architecture that decoded x86 instructions into micro-instructions before executing them,” we noted in a 2008 retrospective. However, launch SKUs in 1996 were limited to clocks from 75 MHz to 133 MHz, and, due to being late, Intel’s Pentium line was already faster.…