This isn't a 'new' format -- just new to us. It's well established in Russia, where the creator is from (lives?)..

Besides, which of your other e-book readers handles both Cyrillic AND Chinese? FB2 is far more accessible than the other formats around, and FBReader more open in formats it will display natively than any other I can think of off the top of my head.

So ignore it if you want, and just read plucker files, or txt or html files without any conversion necessary.

BTW, what other reader is even available on Linux? Plucker GTK+. Period.