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this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
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Is this the equivalent of a PC maker in 2024 going "yeah, I don't think we are going to put a floppy drive in anymore..."?
No. It is the equivalent of a PC maker going "yeah. I don't think we are going to put in a CD drive anymore because the DVD drive we have been including for years can do CDs as well"
That is a great analogy.
Linux can support ext2 two ways today: explicitly and as a side effect of ext4 support. All this change does is remove the explicit support.
We can remove the explicit CD support provided by a dedicated drive because the DVD drive will provide it as a side-effect.
It's not a new thing.
I don't think that's a similar situation - the Linux kernel lost some functionality there, but in this case Ext2 filesystems are still fully supported by the Ext4 driver, so there's no difference in "hardware" support.
The separate Ext2 driver was being kept for embedded devices with extreme memory or storage limitations where saving some kilobytes by not having all the new Ext3/4 features was useful, but when you can afford the extra memory, there's no reason not to just use the Ext4 driver for all Ext2/3/4 filesystems.