The New Microsoft exFAT File-System Driver Has Landed In Linux 5.7

As we have been expecting the new Samsung-developed file-system driver for Microsoft's exFAT has successfully landed into the Linux 5.7 kernel to replace the existing exFAT driver added in Linux 5.4 last year after Microsoft published the file-system specifications and gave their blessing to have the support mainlined in the Linux kernel.

This new exFAT driver from Samsung is a much newer version of the driver compared to the original exFAT driver that for the past several cycles has been part of the staging area. That existing driver is on a much older (years older) implementation compared to the current Samsung driver now part of the proper file-system area. This is the same driver that Samsung is shipping by the millions across their Android product portfolio and Samsung will continue to upstream their improvements to the Linux kernel.

The exFAT file-system is geared for USB flash drives, memory cards, and similar storage devices.

Long story short, with Linux 5.7 is a much better Microsoft exFAT file-system implementation that is more reliable and with more functionality than the older driver while it will continue to receive improvements by Samsung and others. The new driver saw a pull request this morning for adding the 7.2k lines of code driver and just hours later was merged to mainline by Linus Torvalds.

Linux 5.7-rc1 will be out next weekend while the stable Linux 5.7 kernel with this driver and the many other changes will be out in June.