Linux's exFAT Driver Looking To Still Be Replaced By A Newer Driver From Samsung

Introduced with Linux 5.4 was a long-awaited Microsoft exFAT file-system driver albeit within the kernel's staging area and based upon some dated Samsung file-system driver code. That exFAT staging driver was improved upon more with Linux 5.5 but ultimately there is a concurrent effort for replacing it with a driver derived from newer Samsung open-source code and to be merged outside of staging.

Last week the latest patches for adding the updated exFAT driver to the kernel were sent out by Namjae Jeon of Samsung. This exFAT driver is based upon Samsung's latest exFAT driver code rather than the dated bits found currently within mainline staging. This exFAT driver is already in use with "millions of Android phones" and much newer compared to what is found in staging with the mainline kernels.

The patches are now up to their eighth revision and hopefully -- given that it appears to be significantly more mature than the current staging driver -- will be ready for merging come the Linux 5.6 cycle in another month. This newer exFAT file-system Linux driver weighs in at just over seven thousand four hundred lines of code.