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This is a shame. I still use floppy disk with Linux as I can write force the drive to write in 720k mode which is necessary for older computers such as Amigas a

by davesmith1983 7y ago

This is a shame. I still use floppy disk with Linux as I can write force the drive to write in 720k mode which is necessary for older computers such as Amigas and Atari STs. USB floppy drivers can't write to 720k for reasons that I will admit I don't fully understand. This is going to cause me a major headache as Linux was my last choice really when it came to floppy drives. I am already keeping an old desktop Core 2 Quad around just because it as a proper floppy controller. Why couldn't the driver be left in the kernel I have no idea.

heinrich5991 7y ago
>Why couldn't the driver be left in the kernel I have no idea. As far as I can tell, the driver is not going away. It's just no longer being maintained.
- rocky1138 7y ago
  Yeah and after so many years of polish, it'll probably still work for decades without a maintainer. Also don't forget that it's not required for people to update to a new version of Linux the way it is for Mac or Windows. If you want, just never update. Or, worst case, keep an old machine around at a working version of you don't want your main computer to go out of date.
  - davesmith1983 7y ago
    While the machine is old relatively it is quite happy running discord, vscode and a web browser and I use it in my office as my main dev machine. I don't want to have to go through the hassle of running two operating systems or compiling a custom kernel. Well we will see what happens I suppose.
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      It sounds like you're entering the realm of sufficiently niche to the point that you might need two computers (or at least dual boot). I've been there for decades, though not for the exact same reason.
      - davesmith1983 7y ago
        Yeah you are probably right. I think the last version of Windows that runs well and has a proper floppy driver is XP-64 bit (basically Windows Server 2003 64bit). OpenBSD will probably work well if I swap out the Geforce 8800 GPU with an AMD GPU of some sort, I am sure I could get a relatively decent one second hand.
JonathonW 7y ago
The driver isn't being removed, at least not for the foreseeable future. This patch set just fixes a few bugs, and marks the driver as 'orphaned' since it no longer has a maintainer that's capable of testing it on real hardware.

heinrich5991 7y ago

>Why couldn't the driver be left in the kernel I have no idea. As far as I can tell, the driver is not going away. It's just no longer being maintained.

rocky1138 7y ago
Yeah and after so many years of polish, it'll probably still work for decades without a maintainer. Also don't forget that it's not required for people to update to a new version of Linux the way it is for Mac or Windows. If you want, just never update. Or, worst case, keep an old machine around at a working version of you don't want your main computer to go out of date.
- davesmith1983 7y ago
  While the machine is old relatively it is quite happy running discord, vscode and a web browser and I use it in my office as my main dev machine. I don't want to have to go through the hassle of running two operating systems or compiling a custom kernel. Well we will see what happens I suppose.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    It sounds like you're entering the realm of sufficiently niche to the point that you might need two computers (or at least dual boot). I've been there for decades, though not for the exact same reason.
    - davesmith1983 7y ago
      Yeah you are probably right. I think the last version of Windows that runs well and has a proper floppy driver is XP-64 bit (basically Windows Server 2003 64bit). OpenBSD will probably work well if I swap out the Geforce 8800 GPU with an AMD GPU of some sort, I am sure I could get a relatively decent one second hand.

JonathonW 7y ago

The driver isn't being removed, at least not for the foreseeable future. This patch set just fixes a few bugs, and marks the driver as 'orphaned' since it no longer has a maintainer that's capable of testing it on real hardware.