Linux enhances support for… floppy disks
© iStock.
No, it’s not April 1st yet! Last year, we were getting ready to say good-bye to floppy disk drives on Linux. Linus Torvalds had called the project “orphaned”; Jiří Kosina, the Czech developer of the Linux kernel who was in charge of the floppy disk pilot, was no longer able to test the code due to a scarcity of functional drives. The drives that are still being commercialized are USB-based and do not use the good old pilot. But things have changed and, as it turns out, the pilot wasn’t quite ready to go. Michael Larabel found a commit in version 5.7 of the kernel (under development) that adds 586 new lines and deletes 613 lines of the floppy code. 99.99% of Linux users will probably never have an opportunity to use a floppy disk drive (or ever see one), but even so, we feel oddly comforted by the knowledge. And let’s close with a classic that never gets old:
⇨ YouTube, “Star Wars - Imperial March on Eight Floppy Drives.”
⇨ Phoronix, Michael Larabel, “Linux kernel’s floppy disk code is seeing improvements in 2020.”
