July 1985

The wild, woke saga of NixOS continues.

Back in June — during “Pride Month” — the NixOS Linux project changed their logo to “stand with [their] LGBTQ+ friends”.

 

One developer inquired about this, by asking “Is NixOS now taking a stance on social political issues? If so, perhaps a written statement should accompany such changes.”

 

It was then made clear, by NixOS leadership, that this new “Pride” version of their logo was intended to be a semi-permanent thing.

“This isn’t just a June statement,” said the representative of NixOS in a post reinforcing their focus on LGBTQ+ pride. “It’s something we live year round.”

 

Immediately following this statement, NixOS leadership declared that they plan to “keep the pride-themed logo up longer”. Stating that, for NixOS, “the ongoing fight for equality and celebrating LGBTQ+ friends does not stop on June 30th.”

 

After which, that developer who inquired if NixOS was taking a political stance… was banned.

 

And he wasn’t simply banned from one platform. That developer was “permanently suspended on all platforms for trolling.” Forums, chat, bug tracking, code repositories… the works.

 

Of course, this sort of political extremism is nothing new for NixOS.

The NixOS Purge

Back in April of 2024, NixOS began mass suspending users and contributors under suspicion of having Conservative politics.

 

Quickly, many of those temporary suspensions turned into permanent bans from the entire NixOS project. An event which the NixOS moderation team affectionately called a “purge” of those who they called “Nazis” (but were, in fact, not actually Nazis).

They did so while waving the Antifa flag.

 

All of which culminated in the NixOS moderation team forcing the founder of NixOS to abdicate his role in the project.

This crew of political extremists even went so far as to draft an abdication letter on behalf of the NixOS founder… and they, somehow, convinced him to sign it.

One of the notes from the extremists — within the draft — noted that the NixOS founder must be forced to add himself as a signatory of the letter "for it to appear amicable".

It sounds wild, but it truly happened. Here’s a screenshot of a draft of the abdication letter — written, in Google Docs, by the extremists.

 

As we can see, banning — or, in NixOS parlance, “purging” — of those with “wrong” political opinions is nothing new.

And it appears that, even after the mass bannings of 2024, the NixOS extremists are not yet done with their “purge”.

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Over the last few days, a number of Linux Kernel modules have officially become “Orphaned” — meaning they no longer have a maintainer to look after them in any way.

 

This most recent surge in “Orphan” Linux Kernel modules is due to a round of fairly massive layoffs happening at Intel, with the company reducing total staff by tens of thousands before the end of this year.

And, of course, among those being laid off are multiple programmers who were paid maintainers of Linux Kernel modules. Things like the Intel CPU temperature drivers, Slim Bootloader, and the Time of Day clock. All are now “Orphan” modules, with more expected over the coming months.

This isn’t the first event which has caused a surge in Orphan modules.

In October of 2024, a wave of Russian programmers (and programmers suspected of working with Russian companies) were banned from contributing to the Linux kernel. This was in response to President Biden’s Executive Order 14071, which forbade Russians from working with or using GPL'd software made in the USA.

Which, naturally, included the Linux Kernel.

How Many Orphans Are There?

All of which begs the question… exactly how many Linux Kernel Modules now have no maintainer at all?

Figuring that out is a pretty trivial task. Linux Kernel Modules with maintainers (or which had maintainers) are listed in the Linux “MAINTAINERS” file.

And, as of August 8th, 2025, there were 138 Kernel Modules specifically listed as having a Status of “Orphan”.

But that only tells us part of the story. What we really need to know is how fast the number of Orphan Modules is growing… and what percentage, of all modules, are not maintained.

Turns out, both numbers are… not great.

 

Over the last 2 years — between August of 2023 and August of 2025 — the number of “Orphan” modules in the Linux kernel grew from 75 to 138.

They nearly doubled.

Now let’s look at the percentage of Orphaned Modules.

Since we know that there are roughly 2,496 Modules which have an active maintainer (give or take, based on a quick look at the MAINTAINERS file) that means that a little over 5% of all Linux Kernel modules… are orphans.

 

Though that doesn’t tell the whole story.

There is also another category of Kernel Module where the status is listed as “Odd Fixes”. Meaning “It has a maintainer but they don’t have time to do much.”

If we consider those modules as also “Not Maintained” (along with the “Orphan” Modules), the total percentage of un-maintained Kernel Modules grows to 8.6%.

 

The Future of Linux is Unmaintained

Considering the upcoming layoffs at Intel — whose employees are the current maintainers of well over 200 different modules — the possibility of “Not Maintained” Linux Kernel Modules hitting over 10% isn’t a far fetched idea.

And we’re not talking about seldom used hardware drivers here. We’re talking about things like “temperature sensors” and “time of day” (and all manner of critical hardware support like ACPI and Ethernet drivers).

While it’s reasonable to assume that some of the most critical Kernel Modules will get new (often volunteer) maintainers — thus saving them from becoming true “Orphans” — many will fall into an abandoned state. As has been the case over the last few years.

What result that will have on the Linux kernel — and the broader Linux ecosystem — remains to be seen. But we’ll find out soon enough.