Comments on Floppy Disks vs 21st Century Linux

Recent headlines proclaim the imminent demise of support for the venerable floppy disk drive in the Linux kernel. My stomach churned and my heart gave a flutter or two. I have been in this business quite a few years and my collection of floppy disks goes back to 8-inchers. “Not again!” I thought.

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By: hakko504

Technically it's only the support for onboard floppy disk controllers that have been discontinued. If you have a USB connected floppy drive that support will continue for the forseeable future (aka as long as USB is still a thing)

By: rknichols

Newer versions of the dd command support the "status=progress" option, eliminating the need for the pv command.

By: Philip Gilmer

That's good to know. Thanks.

By: Philip Gilmer

By the way, this works on my systems (Linux Mint 19.2) only if the block size bs parameter is set to less than 4096. The pv solution works in any case.