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Orphaned Linux drivers for floppy disks gets first patch of any significance in three years - cleanup effort implies floppies spared the axe for a few more years
There have been whispers about dropping floppy disk driver support in Linux, but on Monday, Andy Shevchenko posted some new patches to clean up supporting code for this pocketable magnetic storage medium from the (g)olden days of computing.
This update comes nearly three years after the last floppy update of any substance, according to Phoronix. Yes, it notes that this old code is effectively orphaned and/or unmaintained. However, floppy support persists in Linux, and maintenance like this consolidates previous separate patches, tidies up headers, and generally removes detritus from the kernel.
Shevchenko neatly bullet points the changes, which come under the heading of ‘[PATCH v2 0/3] floppy: A couple of cleanups,’ in the Linux kernel development mailing list. The developer notes that “There are a few places in architecture code for the floppy driver that may be cleaned up.”
Drilling down to specifics, the patch combines previous separate floppy patches into a series, with added tags, and a typo fixed. Furthermore, Shevchenko checks off his cleaning up of the following:
floppy: Remove unused CROSS_64KB() macro from arch/ code
floppy: Replace custom SZ_64K constant
floppy: Sort headers alphabetically
Apparently, the macro code (the first point) hasn’t been used in years, so clearing it will reduce cruft in the kernel. Likewise, the removal of the custom SZ_64K constant neatens things up, reducing redundant redefinitions of constants that are already present in the Linux kernel, which turned 34 on Sunday. Lastly, the alphabetic cleanup should enhance code readability and future maintenance.
In summary, there are no functional changes to floppy disk code in Linux here. It is more of a cleanup, as noted by Shevchenko.
(Image credit: Future)
Why maintain floppy support?
On the wider topic of floppy support in Linux, we understand that while modern kernel developers might not use systems with such archaic hardware, it is still worth supporting in various niches.
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Three such niches are quite obvious: for use by retro computing enthusiasts, applications in virtualization and emulation environments, and to maintain support for some valuable industrial and embedded systems that still use floppies for programs and data.
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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
Now if had a pcie internal controller with support for old floppy / ide hard disks. Yes modern value for it is diminute, but for retro computing would be quite nice.
Support for old hardware should be excluded from core build images, a library of install packages and the source code should be kept, actively being maintained is not required, just it being there for history and as a "you never know" moment in the future.
Support for old hardware should be excluded from core build images, a library of install packages and the source code should be kept, actively being maintained is not required, just it being there for history and as a "you never know" moment in the future.
Not easy doing that with kernel components – if it's not in-tree, it's gonna rot.
Eventually, unused stuff probably has to go. There's more lines of code for this than I expected - the main floppy.c is ~5000 lines, and there's several architecture-specific assembly headers involved as well.
