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Retrotechtacular: The Floppy Disk Orphaned By Linux
About a week ago, Linus Torvalds made a software commit which has an air about it of the end of an era. The code in question contains a few patches to the driver for native floppy disc controllers. What makes it worthy of note is that he remarks that the floppy driver is now orphaned. Its maintainer no longer has working floppy hardware upon which to test the software, and Linus remarks that "I think the driver can be considered pretty much dead from an actual hardware standpoint", though he does point out that active support remains for USB floppy drives.
It's a very reasonable view to have arrived at because outside the realm of retrocomputing the physical rather than virtual floppy disk has all but disappeared. It's well over a decade since they ceased to be fitted to desktop and laptop computers, and where once they were a staple of any office they now exist only in the "save" icon on your wordprocessor. The floppy is dead, and has been for a long time.
Still, Linus' quiet announcement comes as a minor jolt to anyone of A Certain Age for whom the floppy disk and the computer were once inseparable.
Next thing, someone will be removing punched card and paper tape reader support. Where does it end?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday July 27 2019, @10:14AM
There will be a computer in your head, but the information will not be stored there. It will be stored in the cloud. Better don't ever go to a place without a decent network connection.
There will exist upgrades with local storage. But those upgrades will be very expensive, and normal people won't be able to afford them. People who have to work in places without proper network connection will get them through the company, possibly just borrowed for the time of their job. And of course if you're rich, you'll always be able to afford it.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.