[kde-linux] stop empty floppy drive announcement

[Duncan]

Felix Miata posted on Mon, 11 Nov 2013 23:43:25 -0500 as excerpted:

> How? Every time I login, focus is stolen from Konsole's restoration by
> the inane popup announcing the presence of a floppy drive with no media
> in it.

Well, here on gentoo I have the udisks, etc, USE flags turned off, and 
the related deps not even installed, so I don't get those sorts of 
announcements any longer.  That's /one/ way to stop it! =:^)  
Unfortunately it won't help much for people running binary distros that 
ship with all that stuff turned on at build-configure-time. =:^(

But... while I don't have that stuff turned on to check exactly where to 
look and thus must rely on memory, IIRC, there's two ways to do it via 
run-time configuration.

1) Removing the device-notifier plasmoid from your panel entirely /may/ 
do it (or not, I can't test), but of course then you'll lose 
notifications for cds and USB sticks you plugin as well, tho of course 
you can still deal with them manually, using the same methods used before 
the device-notifier was available.

2) IIRC, there's a device notifier config available either in kde system 
settings or from device-notifier's context menu (right-click), possibly 
both, that contains a list of all previous detections and whether to 
notify about them or not.  You /might/ be able to turn it off there.


Finally, since floppy drives are pretty much obsolete and rarely used 
these days, if you very seldom or never use it, you may wish to consider 
disabling the floppy in your BIOS and/or unplugging/removing it.  
(Probably not the latter on a laptop, where removing it would leave a 
hole, but it's reasonably easy on a standard desktop.)  If you leave it 
plugged in and just disabled in BIOS, you can always reboot and reenable 
it in BIOS if you do need it for something or other.

....

[Wandering OT now.  TL;DR folks can stop reading]

Even optical drives are /heading/ toward obsolescence.  When my 8-year-
old machine died about 15 months ago, I bought mobo/cpu/memory/graphics 
for a new one and hooked up the old drives and PSU to the new one, but 
didn't bother with an internal optical drive.  I did buy a BluRay USB 
drive and CD/DVD burner, the thought being that I could use it with my 
netbook too, but most of my music, all of my software, and some video 
arrives via internet today, instead of the optical CD/DVD I'd have used a 
few years ago, and mostly the thing simply sits there, unplugged.  And 
where people /do/ use removables, it's most commonly USB sticks today, so 
DVDs are only a few years behind CDs, which are only a few years behind 
cassettes and floppies, which were only a few years behind vinyl records 
(yes, I know records have come back in a niche, but none of the others 
have, and it's a niche that already appears to be dying again) and 8-
tracks, which...  They're all either already obsolete or quickly headed 
that way.

...  I remember when one of the last series I watched regularly before 
quitting TV back in the early 90s (wikipedia says 1993-1996), SeaQuest-DSV 
(set in the then "near-future" of 2018), had its characters discussing 
the to-the-characters obsolete CD technology.  In their world these 
little plugin chips had replaced spinning media.  I guess the analogy 
would be if people bought read-only USB drives with their music on them 
now.  I remember trying to imagine what it'd be like ...

But of course it was the Internet, wifi and G3/G4 cellphone tech, that 
ended up replacing CDs with on-demand-from-the-cloud, before the 
predicted chip-based-albums were introduced.  And while video technology 
has advanced and HD-video resolutions (with quad-HD on the horizon) have 
so far kept full-common-resolution video out of reach for many on the 
net, at least to the extent that BluRay video remains quite viable in 
comparison to CDA (CD Audio) music, the old standard-resolution video is, 
like CD-quality audio, often most conveniently delivered via internet, 
and for many, even HD-quality is competitive, BluRay physical optical 
disc vs internet.  In another decade, or even a half-decade, BluRay will 
likely succumb as well, and only a move to quad-HD might possibly keep 
physical video delivery viable.

But even if it does to that point, beyond that, a decade to decade and a 
half out, quad-HD is likely to be the limit where people simply aren't 
going to pay more for better quality video just as CDs were for audio, 
and HD-Audio never took off due to lack of demand.  It'd debatable 
whether quad-HD will take off, in fact, tho I think it still has a better 
chance than HD-Audio did, as with 42-inch or larger screens, quad-HD does 
arguably provide a discernibly better viewing experience, while HD-Audio 
simply isn't better enough for most people to justify paying more for it, 
as people do when a technology is new.

So if not within 5 years if quad-HD doesn't take off, within 10-15, as 
networks speeds get fast enough to competitively deliver quad-HD quality 
and the next level isn't enough better to justify paying, I expect even 
video will succumb to net delivery, and physical media of any sort will 
begin to look like floppies or 8-tracks do to us today -- hopelessly 
obsolete.

But back to topic...

Unless you have some unusual use for them, floppies /are/ obsolete, and 
I'd simply disable it in the BIOS, as in fact I had done for several 
years with the floppy on my old machine before I upgraded.  Then the 
system doesn't see the floppy even if it's still physically installed, 
and you've nicely solved your popup problem at the hardware (well, BIOS, 
so firmware, unplugging it would be the hardware...) root! =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman