Linux 7.1: Kicinski Called It ‘LLM-pocalypse.’ Then Deleted 138,000 Lines.

The Linux networking maintainer wrote about an ‘LLM-pocalypse’ in the same pull request that deleted 138,000 lines from the kernel.

7 min read5 days ago

One hundred thirty-eight thousand lines. One pull request.

“If we want to have a fighting chance of surviving the LLM-pocalypse, this code needs to find a dedicated owner or get deleted.”

Jakub Kicinski, Linux networking maintainer, wrote that in his pull request message. Then he deleted it. All of it. Six entire subsystems. 138,000 lines of networking code that the world switched off years ago but the kernel kept compiling anyway.

On April 26, 2026, Linus Torvalds merged that pull request into Linux 7.1-rc1.

The first time in Linux history that AI-generated bug reports forced the removal of working software. Kicinski made it happen, and Linus approved for rc1 release; it ships to every server, phone, and embedded device running Linux within months. These protocols are permanently removed from the kernel.

What Kicinski Actually Deleted

Over 138,000 lines were erased in a merge window that also brought 12,996 changesets from 2,011…

"And when they do, you will face the same calculation the kernel maintainers faced: maintain dead code to satisfy automated reporters, or cut it."

Or... and hear me out... demand reporters provide fixes and pay for the time needed to review those…

Nice article

Fixing technical debt like this is one of the boring parts of software development. But also critical.

I certainly don’t trust AI to write good code but it’s pretty good at reviewing it. Nice to see another use case

Linux 7.1: Kicinski Called It ‘LLM-pocalypse.’ Then Deleted 138,000 Lines.

The Linux networking maintainer wrote about an ‘LLM-pocalypse’ in the same pull request that deleted 138,000 lines from the kernel.

What Kicinski Actually Deleted

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Written by Can Artuc

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