Qualcomm Atheros AR816x/AR817x and Killer E2200/E2400/E2500 PCIe Ethernet
Gigabit PCIe Ethernet controllers that Qualcomm Atheros (and the Killer Networking brand under Rivet/Bigfoot) shipped widely in consumer desktops and laptops from roughly 2011 through 2017. Dell, HP, ASUS, MSI and others built them into XPS, gaming laptops and motherboards of that era as the onboard wired NIC.
recommendation
Worth keeping but flagging as legacy: the hardware stopped showing up in new systems after about 2017, yet plenty of mid-2010s desktops and gaming laptops with these chips are still in service. The code is not abandoned — upstream networking maintainers still touched it in 2024 for routine PCI and IRQ cleanups — so removing it would needlessly break working machines. An annotation noting its low-deployment, older-OEM status would help future triage.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
alx was still touched by upstream networking work in 2024, indicating the driver is not abandoned.
- lore.kernel.org
alx received a direct code update in 2024 (PCI IRQ handling), showing ongoing maintenance rather than removal.
- cateee.net
CONFIG_ALX supports AR8161/AR8162/QCA8171/QCA8172 and Killer E220x/E2400/E2500 PCI IDs, and remains present in current kernel series.
- dell.com
Dell shipped Qualcomm Atheros AR8171/8175 Ethernet in XPS 8920 systems with a 2017 driver release, suggesting mainstream OEM presence was mid-2010s rather than current.
- dell.com
Dell published an AR8161 controller driver for a 2013 notebook platform, anchoring the family as an early-2010s OEM NIC line.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Not a removal candidate: lore_activity on drivers/net/ethernet/atheros/alx/main.c showed real 2024 upstream touches (not just ancient history), and I found no positive evidence of an active removal series. Local rg of Kconfig/main.c identified the exact supported chips as AR816x/AR817x. Web search found LKDDb confirming current kernel coverage and Dell OEM driver pages from 2013 and 2017, which bound the family to older PC generations. Conclusion: hardware is legacy and likely only in older desktops/laptops or long-lived installs today, so keep the driver but annotate it as low-deployment legacy hardware.