New "FUSE2" Kernel Driver Being Experimented With For File-Systems In User-Space

[cybertraveler]

It needs to be a filesystem that's easily implementable in firmware, journaled filesystems heavily complicate that, same with CoW.

It doesn't need to be easily implementable in firmware for the purpose that polarathene raised: IE moving / sharing a drive between different desktop operating systems and different users of those systems.

[starshipeleven]

It needs to be a filesystem that's easily implementable in firmware, journaled filesystems heavily complicate that, same with CoW.

Log-structured filesystems as I said.

UDF is a log-structured filesystem originally designed for CD and DVD drives.

EDIT:wrong filesystem name

[ermo]

Log-structured filesystems as I said.

UFS is a log-structured filesystem originally designed for CD and DVD drives.

Did you mean UDF as in Universal Disk Format?

UFS is slightly confusing in that it can refer to both the Unix File System used by e.g. FreeBSD and Universal Flash Storage?

[polarathene]

exFAT is garbage, even more than FAT32 is because it does not use two tables to kinda have some form of journaling.

Fair point, I have had an exFAT USB stick recently become inaccessible on Linux, Windows couldn't repair it and could barely keep it mounted to retrieve data :/

FAT32 is useless for larger external storage though as well as large files. exFAT has the best cross-platform support across the main operating systems in that case. I'm doubtful UDF is going to improve much, but if they could be less inconsistent between OSs that'd be nice.

You mention UFS and log-structured, what filesystem is that? I thought UFS was this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Flash_Storage

Which Samsung had some nice cards for but seems to no longer produce, only the eUFS embedded versions now :/

[starshipeleven]

Did you mean UDF as in Universal Disk Format?

when I write UFS I ALWAYS mean UDF. Obviously.

(yes I wrote it wrong)

[starshipeleven]

Fair point, I have had an exFAT USB stick recently become inaccessible on Linux, Windows couldn't repair it and could barely keep it mounted to retrieve data :/

Yeah I experienced full data loss with exFAT usb drives in situations where a FAT32 would have just corrupted the file it was writing. 100% Windows environments too, so no blaming Linux. That's why I'm complaining.

FAT32 is useless for larger external storage though as well as large files. exFAT has the best cross-platform support across the main operating systems in that case. I'm doubtful UDF is going to improve much, but if they could be less inconsistent between OSs that'd be nice.

Yeah, UDF is dead I know.

You mention UFS and log-structured, what filesystem is that?

I meant UDF, of course. (yeah I know)

UDF is log-structured https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log-st...ed_file_system and is simple enough that even cheap ancient embedded systems from a decade ago can use it fine (CD/DVD players, you know). log-structured is a poor man's CoW, but it is still true CoW.

It was just an example. UDF is dead, but you don't need to throw around heavy weights like btrfs and ZFS to have a simple filesystem that is designed for external drives and does not suck as hard as exFAT (that is basically worse than FAT32.

[polarathene]

It was just an example. UDF is dead, but you don't need to throw around heavy weights like btrfs and ZFS to have a simple filesystem that is designed for external drives and does not suck as hard as exFAT (that is basically worse than FAT32.

Getting Windows and macOS to agree supporting another filesystem though is unlikely. Even more so that they implement it in a cross-platform way like UDF was meant to be :\

FAT32 I'd use on smaller external storage, but it's not something you'd really format an external drive like Samsung T5 with(exFAT by default). There is a version which addresses the journaling issue iirc, something like TexFAT I think? Support for that is probably worse though.

If existing filesystems on Linux get kernel updates to support case insensitiveness, is that farfetched to drum up demand for a way to get permission/ownership free support in one or more? Ideally the partition would store some metadata about that rather than require a mount flag, not sure how that'd work with older kernels, but must have been a similar consideration with the case insensitive patches?

[starshipeleven]

Getting Windows and macOS to agree supporting another filesystem though is unlikely. Even more so that they implement it in a cross-platform way like UDF was meant to be :\

Yep, that ship has long since sailed, I was just stating loud and clear that this is not a technical issue. FAT/exFAT aren't "the only option" because of technical reasons barring better and safer filesystems, but because someone at MS decided so.
For the same reasons that UDF, which is a technically superior filesystem was dropped and abandoned. Someone at MS decided that they could make more money by not using it and instead using their own filesystem, with patents and all

FAT32 I'd use on smaller external storage, but it's not something you'd really format an external drive like Samsung T5 with(exFAT by default). There is a version which addresses the journaling issue iirc, something like TexFAT I think? Support for that is probably worse though.

TexFAT re-implements the same double-table trick that FAT32 is using by default (the kinda "metadata CoW" in modern terms), and it is supported only on Windows Embedded. Afaik Windows 10 (or any normal Windows version) does not do that.

I just format external drives as NTFS, as that's the best filesystem I can use (true journaling, and I have experiences with it being able to survive and recover from most issues) that is also inter-operable with most devices (yes most embedded devices can use NTFS too, thanks to blob drivers from Paragon or others).
I can't really fsck it from Linux, but I'm never so far from a Windows system or VM for that to be an issue.

If existing filesystems on Linux get kernel updates to support case insensitiveness, is that farfetched to drum up demand for a way to get permission/ownership free support in one or more? Ideally the partition would store some metadata about that rather than require a mount flag, not sure how that'd work with older kernels, but must have been a similar consideration with the case insensitive patches?

I would support that (in the sense that I would put actual money into the pot, it's not just "thoughts and prayers"), although it would be mostly useless outside of Linux desktop systems anyway, as you also said at the beginning.