Google Backtracks & Re-Enables EXT3/4 File-System Support In Chrome OS

[Temar]

But it's still a Linux distribution. Just like Android,

Hmm, is this a desperate attempt to increase the Linux distribution market share?

Yes, Android uses a fork of the Linux kernel but meanwhile it's pretty far off from the vanilla kernel. Android kernel has ashmem, pmem, binder IPC, wakelocks, paranoid networking and a lot more. With a vanilla Linux kernel you could not even boot the system.

Calling Android a Linux distribution only sounds extremely desperate, even though in the broadest sense, it technically is correct. I don't think you are doing the Linux community a favor by trying to define Android as a Linux distribution.

[Temar]

So now that Google changed their stance on this, how many of the complainers here will actually use ChromeOS? I guess the number comes down to be zero.
Congratulations, you just forced your opinion how Google's OS should work on that distro without even using it. Something many people on Phoronix usually blame Poettering or Red Hat to do.

Well said.

Ext* is not even a good filesystem for usb sticks and the likes, because you always have the permissions problem. On a different machine you often have a different uid and might not be able to access the data you copied before on your home machine. You always have to watch out for the correct umask or you will get problems.

[DrYak]

Ext* is not even a good filesystem for usb sticks and the likes, because you always have the permissions problem. On a different machine you often have a different uid and might not be able to access the data you copied before on your home machine.

UDF is clearly a better solution for removable media.
It's supported by the big OS, including Windows (even older versions like XP).
It supports modern features (big files, etc.)
It's more widely supported than NTFS (Mac OS X doesn't have it out of the box, in my limited experience. Linux requires external drivers like ntfs-3g)
It's much better supported exFAT without the pattent problems.

we should encourage Google in supporting UDF.
that would actually be a big advantage for end-users:
If ChromeOS has UDF as a default format for USB sticks, that means that a stick formated there can work everywhere (Windows from XP up, Mac OS X, any Linux) including with bigfiles.

[Luke_Wolf]

So now that Google changed their stance on this, how many of the complainers here will actually use ChromeOS? I guess the number comes down to be zero.
Congratulations, you just forced your opinion how Google's OS should work on that distro without even using it. Something many people on Phoronix usually blame Poettering or Red Hat to do.

So much this... Additionally if the number of people here using ChromeOS is non-Zero how many of said people are actually using ext4 on a flashdrive? Because I'm sorry to break it to you folks but ext only really works in Linux, and really if you're in any sort of mixed environment at all, your flash drive is going to be formatted in one of the following three formats: FAT, NTFS, or UDF, and really you should be using UDF.

That said I knew this was going to happen when they declared this because a certain Free Software camp is really all about politics as opposed to pragmatically looking at the situation. This isn't even like yelling at GNOME or Xorg because of their politics or development decisions, or at Mozilla for hiring someone as CEO who a group thought didn't represent the culture of Mozilla, or even at Ubuntu over Mir, or Debian over the init system debate.... no this is like yelling at Fedora for not including Chrome in the repos while using Ubuntu.

[DrYak]

[QUOTE=Luke_Wolf;447202]So much this... Additionally if the number of people here using ChromeOS is non-Zero how many of said people are actually using ext4 on a flashdrive?[/url]

People who:
- push around big file more than 2GiB in size (so basically anyone whatching movies on the go, which is a very typical use for a low-power device like a chromebook while comuting in a train)
- and whose main computers are Linux box (research scientist are an example where Linux is popular).

For them, formatting their stick as EXTn is the easy/lazy thing to do: they get their bigfile capacity, they get out-of-the-box support on their Linux machines, and on most set-top-boxes (which very often happen to be running some embed form of Linux and have NOT their EXTn support ripped out and thus support it, even if not advertised).
They'll do it, out of convenience, even if it's a bit stupid idea (ext only works out of the box on Linux. Windows and Mac OS X requires additionnal 3rd party IFS and FUSE respectively) and cumbersome in some corner case (UID/GID/UMASK problems).

Similarily:
- Mac OS X users are likely to use HFS, because it's the easiest for them (even though they will at best only be able to exchange data with Linux user with a few extra drivers)
- Windows are likely to use whatever is their machine's default (either NTFS or exFAT depending on Windows' version) either if they can't easily exchange with other (again FUSE 3rd party drivers are required, and patent minefield is around).

The people will just use what their system proposes as a default. They won't spent a few minute thinking that a "3rd option" exists (well actually it's 5th one).

[QUOTE=Luke_Wolf;447202]Because I'm sorry to break it to you folks but ext only really works in Linux, and really if you're in any sort of mixed environment at all, your flash drive is going to be formatted in one of the following three formats: FAT, NTFS, or UDF, and really you should be using UDF.[/url]

NTFS require 3rd party FUSE drivers on anything but Windows. And again, recent version of Windows will automatically default to exFAT unless specified otherwise, thus further alienating everybody else.

UDF is actually indeed the best solution that works out-of-the-box on all other major OSes and probably anything else that can play DVDs (UDF for harddisk is a much simpler version. supporting UDF for optical media requires much more stuff, and flashmedia thus comes for free).
- That includes lots of set-top drive-less media player, which support iso9660 and udf anyway, to be able to mount drive images
- I've seen USB-2-Go optical drive advertising Blueray play on smart TVs and Android tablets. So perhaps even they would be able to use it?!
- As far as I know, the only device still left out would be photo cameras, because they only support FAT32, and perhaps exFAT for recent enough camera (it's part of the latest SDXC standard for >32GiB cards)


We should definitely push in favour of UDF support as widespread as possible.


(Also UDF has another advantage over exFAT: there is no FAT, UDF is log structured. - it has to cope with optical media's much worse wear cycle, so it's definitely much better on Flash).

That said I knew this was going to happen when they declared this because a certain Free Software camp is really all about politics as opposed to pragmatically looking at the situation.

Well, pragmatically, ext drivers have been part of the vanilla kernel for ages. The current driver, ext4, is backward compatible with ext2/3/4 drives and widely supported.
Keeping it inside Chrome comes at very few cost (slightly less easy to rename volume labels)

no this is like yelling at Fedora for not including Chrome in the repos while using Ubuntu.

Except that chrome would require packager spending time to package it.
Ext4 driver comes literally for "free out-of-the-box, no efforts required!".

[brosis]

So now that Google changed their stance on this, how many of the complainers here will actually use ChromeOS? I guess the number comes down to be zero.
Congratulations, you just forced your opinion how Google's OS should work on that distro without even using it. Something many people on Phoronix usually blame Poettering or Red Hat to do.

I suspect this was coordinated project of NSA. Oh, wait, its just people caring about OS they will use or cross with in the future.

[brosis]

So much this... Additionally if the number of people here using ChromeOS is non-Zero how many of said people are actually using ext4 on a flashdrive? Because I'm sorry to break it to you folks but ext only really works in Linux, and really if you're in any sort of mixed environment at all, your flash drive is going to be formatted in one of the following three formats: FAT, NTFS, or UDF, and really you should be using UDF.

That said I knew this was going to happen when they declared this because a certain Free Software camp is really all about politics as opposed to pragmatically looking at the situation. This isn't even like yelling at GNOME or Xorg because of their politics or development decisions, or at Mozilla for hiring someone as CEO who a group thought didn't represent the culture of Mozilla, or even at Ubuntu over Mir, or Debian over the init system debate.... no this is like yelling at Fedora for not including Chrome in the repos while using Ubuntu.

Ext works pretty good in windows with rw. Even if I dont use it. Unlike UDF which is only good for optic media. I am also using all my usb sticks with ext4 -j. There is also difference between "another DE" and base filesystem becoming just MS FAT/NTFS(wtf?!!!!!!). They could go with F2FS, but dropping support of native Linux FS for a Linux distribution is a major headache for its users. Everything from shortage of the FS marketshare to problems mounting the said FS. Just a small time back we had an patent Exfat case.

By droping comments like this, you are essentially marking yourself as an ignorrant trasher that should go back to his windows cave, because we do care hence we complain. Even when we are on windows, reading bsd-hosted phoronix about linux, we care about the family!

Now go suggest microsoft to remove ntfs and fat from windows 11 completely and replace it with ext and udf!

[Luke_Wolf]

*snip*

Here's the thing though... How many people using ChromeOS are doing that? If someone is exclusively running linux elsewhere they're probably not going to be running ChromeOS on a ChromeBook, instead they'd have ripped it off and put $Distro_of_Choice on there in which case guess what? What ChromeOS does doesn't matter.

Sure they might get ext support at no cost but the same could be said for a dozen other filesystems. Why doesn't ChromeOS support XFS? It's linux native and they can have it at no cost. It's simple... nobody is using it for this purpose.

[gilboa]

So much this... Additionally if the number of people here using ChromeOS is non-Zero how many of said people are actually using ext4 on a flashdrive? Because I'm sorry to break it to you folks but ext only really works in Linux, and really if you're in any sort of mixed environment at all, your flash drive is going to be formatted in one of the following three formats: FAT, NTFS, or UDF, and really you should be using UDF.

That said I knew this was going to happen when they declared this because a certain Free Software camp is really all about politics as opposed to pragmatically looking at the situation. This isn't even like yelling at GNOME or Xorg because of their politics or development decisions, or at Mozilla for hiring someone as CEO who a group thought didn't represent the culture of Mozilla, or even at Ubuntu over Mir, or Debian over the init system debate.... no this is like yelling at Fedora for not including Chrome in the repos while using Ubuntu.

I use a Chromebook and use ext4 on USB devices. We also have a number of of Chromebooks at work, again with ext4 USB devices.
A couple of things:
A. I think Google's decisions was wrong but not political.
B. I do agree that the OSS community - or at least a minor but very vocal part of it, tends to be overly abusive. But you simply cannot write off the ideological reason for creating the OSS world - which was polotical.
E.g. For instance, Fedora's decision not yo include Chrome or any closed source or patent encumbered piece of software is at the heart of the Fedora mission statement.
C. Proprietary software companies make billion dollar decisions based on dumb political arguments (I've witnessed some). We are all political beings...

[Luke_Wolf]

I use a Chromebook and use ext4 on USB devices. We also have a number of of Chromebooks at work, again with ext4 USB devices.
A couple of things:
A. I think Google's decisions was wrong but not political.
B. I do agree that the OSS community - or at least a minor but very vocal part of it, tends to be overly abusive. But you simply cannot write off the ideological reason for creating the OSS world - which was polotical.
E.g. For instance, Fedora's decision not yo include Chrome or any closed source or patent encumbered piece of software is at the heart of the Fedora mission statement.
C. Proprietary software companies make billion dollar decisions based on dumb political arguments (I've witnessed some). We are all political beings...

You say you have ChromeBooks, but are they running ChromeOS? That is the critical question here, If so you're one of the few people justified in complaining about this if you choose to do so.

And yes I know that Fedora intentionally doesn't include Chrome which is why I chose it as an example. It would be just as stupid in my opinion for someone using Ubuntu, or openSUSE or whatever to yell at Fedora for not choosing to include it, as people are being about mobbing Google over ChromeOS when it doesn't effect them at all.