The Existing Linux exFAT Code Is "Horrible" But Could Soon Be In Staging

[loganj]

did M$ share anything about ntfs?

[Britoid]

In fact one of exFAT's problems is supposedly being TOO self-contained.

That's not surprising given its been out of the kernel tree so long.

[Danielsan]

You read these comments directly from the Linux men and eventually you you have to agree with Dr Roy Schestowitz...

http://techrights.org/2019/08/29/the-exfat-googlebomb/

[Guest]

I don't think this driver should be merged into upstream. If it's crap, then it ought to be booted with the expectation that someone will try writing one that's decent.

I've rushed enough things in my career, and I'd rather see someone avoid adding more work for themselves with crappy code. For me, exFAT is irrelevant, and if I really needed support for it, I could always take this code and compile it at my own risk. Considering that support for this file system isn't an urgent issue, adding more technical debt is not a good idea.

[oiaohm]

You read these comments directly from the Linux men and eventually you you have to agree with Dr Roy Schestowitz...

http://techrights.org/2019/08/29/the-exfat-googlebomb/

No the problem is a lot worse.

https://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2520/~/sd%2Fsdhc%2Fsdxc-specifications-and-compatibility

sdxc specifications say the media has to be formatted exfat.

Yes the wear leveling of a sdxc is allowed to read exfat to work out its wear logic. So formatting sdxc as fat32 or anything else is playing with fire.

Microsoft already has exfat written into a standard so won that round on sdxc.

Problem for Microsoft at the moment samsung is pushing for f2fs as next default because they don't want to have to pay patents. Since samsung in fact makes silicon this is fairly much a hard line negotiation.

Notice something here its the samsung exfat driver being talked about being merged mainline with Microsoft blessing.

Its going to be interesting what happens once Microsoft has stepped back on this patents. Does sansung keep on pushing for f2fs to be the default format of new user provided media forcing Microsoft to write a file system driver or give WSL2 direct drive access to use the Linux kernel to access f2fs media???

Yes we need exfat support for sdxc media due to MS winning that standard round.

Texfat would be another question. Will Microsoft grants to allow exfat into Linux allow Linux kernel to use Texfat that is more dependable or will we have to wait until 2030 for that because Microsoft has not implemented TexFat support in Windows desktops.

This is basically Samsung and Microsoft going punch for punch over standards and patents.

[calc]

You read these comments directly from the Linux men and eventually you you have to agree with Dr Roy Schestowitz...

http://techrights.org/2019/08/29/the-exfat-googlebomb/

Seems a bit delusional. 🤦

Summary: Contrary to what Microsoft-dominated media is trying to tell us, Linux does not need exFAT and by adopting exFAT Linux would become more closely connected to and tightly controlled by Microsoft.

...

So what? Linux already has replacements for it that are equally good. Technically speaking, Samsung already has the substitute. Maybe this is what Microsoft is scared of? Microsoft always strives to be ‘the’ standard.

Microsoft isn't striving to be the standard, exFAT is the standard, and has been for 13 years. Its also part of the SDXC/SDUC card standard, all sdcards larger than 32GB use it and its supported by both Windows (XP+) and macOS (10.6+) natively. Also, the Linux exfat-fuse driver started development in 2009 and was in distributions by the beginning of 2012.

Most device manufacturers of consumer devices aren't going to default to some other filesystem that neither of the primary OS (Windows/macOS) support, unless the end user is expected to never access the filesystem at all.

[timofonic]

did M$ share anything about ntfs?

I agree. exFAT is irrelevant compared to NTFS and ReFS.

Any words about NTFS and ReFS from Microsoft? Or do they only open zombie file filesystems? What about fat32? What about Microsoft developers working for this in the Linux kernel itself?

[Britoid]

I agree. exFAT is irrelevant compared to NTFS and ReFS.

Any words about NTFS and ReFS from Microsoft? Or do they only open zombie file filesystems? What about fat32? What about Microsoft developers working for this in the Linux kernel itself?

There's no known NTFS patents, thus the kernel has RO support for NTFS.

[timofonic]

There's no known NTFS patents, thus the kernel has RO support for NTFS.

Current RO support is crap, RW is extremely awful. FUSE's NTFS-3G is slow.

[QwertyChouskie]

I think this whole thing is kinda making a mountain out of a molehill. exFAT has been supported by Linux for a very long time via an out-of-tree driver or a FUSE driver. This opening of exFAT just means that the LInux exFAT support is less legally sketchy, and thus can be put into mainline, so that you no longer need the FUSE package, not that big of a deal. As far as exFAT vs. f2fs goes, f2fs on SD would require a new SD standard, as exFAT is already tied to SDXC and has been for a very long time. And f2fs can already be used in your phone's internal storage just fine, and as far as I know, already is for many devices. The format of the internal storage can be anything the LInux kernel supports, since access from a computer is over MTP or PTP anyways, so compatibility with user's computers is only dependent on their computers implementing MTP and/or PTP anyways.

All in all, IMO not a huge deal, especially as that one linked article above makes it out to be (no, the opening of exFAT won't be the end of software freedom, lol). F2FS will continue to be developed and used for phones' internal storage, and exFAT may mostly die soon-ish anyways, as many modern phones don't even have microSD support anymore.