Slashdot: Linus Torvalds Prepares To Wave Goodbye To Linux Floppy Drives

Linus Torvalds Prepares To Wave Goodbye To Linux Floppy Drives
Published on July 31, 2019 at 07:31PM
Freshly Exhumed writes: When Linus Torvalds first created Linux in 1991, he built it on a 386-powered PC with a floppy drive. Things change. In 2012, Torvalds bid the i386 processor adieu saying, "I'm not sentimental. Good riddance." Now, it's the floppy drive's turn to bid Linux adieu. Torvalds has declared the floppy drive project "orphaned." Why? Because floppy drives have become historical relics. No one's using them. Indeed, Jiri Kosina, the Czech Linux kernel developer in charge of the floppy drive driver, said he "no longer has working hardware." Torvalds continued, "Actual working physical floppy hardware is getting hard to find, and while Willy was able to test this, I think the driver can be considered pretty much dead from an actual hardware standpoint. The hardware that is still sold seems to be mainly USB-based, which doesn't use this legacy driver at all."

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