Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux, said he had finished developing the floppy disk driver. By marking GitHub that it was giving up the floppy disk driver, it announced that continued support for floppy disks by Linux was virtually over.
Torvalds said that few physical floppy disk drives actually work and are virtually dead. He added that external floppy disk drives that connect via USB are still on sale, but these products do not require drivers.
Floppy disks were used for development and distribution in the early days of Linux, but as of 2019, they were rarely used. This kind of floppy disk support has been maintained so far because the virtual machines running on Linux use floppy disks.
Of course, floppy disks have long been unused in the real world due to their low capacity and slow speed. It is used in virtual machines that are not subject to physical restrictions, and support has been continued until now to resolve vulnerabilities in software such as drivers.
Torvalds said the floppy disk drivers are still emulated in various virtual machine environments, so there will be drivers, but no one will continue to be interested in developing these drivers. The reason for the suspension of development is that floppy disks are completing their role in virtual space in the real world.
Of course, as a regret, he knows that there is little need to develop drivers in his posts, or he laments that he is still using floppy disks. Related information can be found here .
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