Linux has canceled support for IDE drivers in the 5.14 kernel version

For younger computer players, it is estimated that there is not much idea about the IDE interface. Parallel ATA hard drives have also disappeared in the mainstream market for a long time. The PATA standard specification was produced in the mid-1980s, and it was quickly promoted due to its low price and strong compatibility. With the continuous improvement of DMA mode transmission speed standards, especially after the Intel 430TX chipset provides support for Ultra DMA 33, it became the standard interface for hard disks and optical drives on the market at that time.

Recently, Linux founder Linus Torvalds released an update on the Linux kernel mailing list, announcing the arrival of version 5.14 of the Linux kernel. At the same time, it was confirmed that support for IDE drivers will be canceled. In recent years, with the development of computers, the IDE interface has long become irrelevant, and the SATA interface has completely replaced it.

This news is not surprising. At the beginning of the year, upstream developers already had such a proposal. About two years ago, the traditional IDE driver code was essentially obsolete and was marked to be removed around 2021. With the continuous development of the Linux kernel, it is becoming more and more difficult to support the code of legacy devices. In addition to the reduction in demand, it is necessary to partially remove the support for certain devices to reduce the code. Linus Torvalds said that this work should have been done a long time ago, but simply deleting the code related to IDE driver support is not enough to balance the growth of the kernel, but it is still a good thing to see the cleanup of historical legacy code.

But it should be noted that this only involves IDE driver support. The IDE itself will still be provided on the modern Linux kernel version through the libata layer, after all, many old devices are still using IDE devices. The Linux kernel has relied on libata for better support for a long time and will stick to it.