this post was submitted on 15 May 2024
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Linux

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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).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (2 children)

It’s a shame these never took off. I’d love for my various USB drives to have displays that show their labels and maybe even contents.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I used to have some with e-ink displays that showed how full they were, but I always wished I could use them to show a label instead.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

That'd make it highly file system dependent with no way of updating the firmware. All these drives stopped working after the FAT32->ExFAT switch.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What makes you think there's no way of updating the firmware? Also, they could be made so that there's a simple API (like a serial device exposed via USB) and apps for Win/macOS/Linux to update the label. But I guess the demand was never there.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

What makes you think there’s no way of updating the firmware?

I don't know, but the amount of USB drives I've seen with a readily identifiable serial or jtag port and API documentation is exactly zero. 😉

I think most of them were one-and-done, as in, code/hardware was designed once, and never iterated on again, at least not for devices already in the field.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

those were so long ago they're small enough that windows would still be able to format them fat32 even with its built-in limitations on formatting that filesystem.

what would be completely useless is scrolling through a larger flash drive' or card's files, one or two at a time.