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exFAT in the Linux kernel

cloudblogs.microsoft.com

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Re: exFAT in the Linux kernel

#161

Post by userbinator »

dkh wrote: post #158

Big deal! This is right up there with Adobe Premiere on Windows finally getting a ProRes encoder at the top of my list of "Things That Would've Helped My FilmTech Career Around 6 years ago". 1) We finally have a file system that works across operating systems, which is a big deal if you ever do anything in a multi-OS environment. 2) exFAT is heavily used in the film production world, and the convenience of knowing it…

fact that Microsoft is implementing it in the kernel should still be a huge help

If you're trying to recover video (which is one of the easiest types of data to recover, due to it being large, sequentially written, and bitstreams containing easily recognisable sync markers), and especially from a storage device that's being exclusively used for video, the actual filesystem doesn't really matter because practically all of the sane ones will store the file data in a contiguous range of blocks. Depending on the exact codec, you may even be able to dd the raw device into a decoder and it'll simply find the first valid sync marker and start decoding from there.

Re: exFAT in the Linux kernel

#162

Post by loeg »

jaboutboul wrote: post #71
mda wrote: post #64

So after abusing this bullshit for more than a decade to bully companies. How gracious and generous of them. Oh btw, Satya is the CEO for 5 years.

Stop shitting on them. We won the war. They’re mending their ways. It takes a long time to right such a large ship with levels upon levels of bureaucratic bullshit that’s been caked on for decades. It’s a WIP and they just granted a patent license to the OIN for fuck’s sake. Even 10 years ago this would have sounded like science fiction.

So if you're not party to the OIN, are you allowed to use / implement exFAT? Or are you still blocked by the patent?

Re: exFAT in the Linux kernel

#163

Post by loeg »

viraptor wrote: post #123
WorldMaker wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the earliest ones, surely, but presumably Microsoft also continued to patent later innovations: all of the "extended" in ExFAT.

This seems to be one of the patents involved: https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC... I'm not sure what's the expiry on 2008 submission.

20 years from invention? Which looks like ~2004 skimming the 2008 filing.

Re: exFAT in the Linux kernel

#164

Post by School-Cotton »

chme wrote: post #114
ses1984 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a significant number of Linux users don't care about this.

That depends. If they are a Linux user because Linux runs on their server, router, mobile phone or what not. Then you are probably right. People that go through the trouble of installing Linux on a Desktop Machine, where Windows or MacOS was probably pre-installed, will either dual boot or use Linux exclusively. If they dual-boot, they will probably just use Office on the non-Linux System and not care. But if they us…

There are a gigantic number of people whose university or corporate IT department installs Linux for them on standard issue hardware which they use every day for their job. E.g. big companies whose programmers all develop on Linux machines, or most academics in programming-adjacent fields like statistics or machine learning.

Another category is people who installed it themselves because they like it better, but for non-ideological reasons. Like, a large chunk of programmers feel much more comfortable on Linux than Windows.

(I’m not sure what to make of your point about dual booting — it’s hard to believe anyone would “not care” about having to do a full reboot every time they wanted to do something as common as view an office document. Now “let me finish reading that interview candidate’s resume” goes from something I can alt-tab to while compiling into an ordeal of saving all my open work, rebooting, downloading and opening and reading it, rebooting again, reopening all my work...)

Re: exFAT in the Linux kernel

#165

Post by loeg »

Conan_Kudo wrote: post #47
rhn_mk1 wrote: post #35

Does this affect anything outside the Linux kernel? Will *BSDs be able to use the specs without patent fears? What about microcontrollers, and the Arduino community?

No. The OIN promise only applies to Linux-based systems.

Well that's kind of shitty for the BSDs. :-/

If we took the GPL2 linux driver and imported it using our linuxkpi emulation layer, is that a "linux-derived system" enough? :)

Re: exFAT in the Linux kernel

#166

Post by tw04 »

pedrocr wrote: post #33

I'll believe Microsoft loves Linux when I can install Microsoft Office in my desktop Linux machine. Everything else is marketing. Edit: to expand, the corporate world runs on Excel/PowerPoint/Outlook. Microsoft milks them on Windows/Office licensing and is very aggressive against organizations that try to do Linux deployments. They're a convicted monopolist that got away easily when at some point the option on the ta…

Given that Microsoft is a for-profit company, what's the financial justification for writing office for Linux on desktop? The market share isn't even a rounding error and you're talking about them investing tens of millions minimum into the development.

The fact they have office on Android, iOS, and osx proves it's about market share and common sense, not some fabricated hatred or fear of Linux on the desktop.

Re: exFAT in the Linux kernel

#167

Post by MuffinFlavored »

userbinator wrote: post #152
jaclaz wrote: post #8

The IMHO extremely relevant point is in the very end of the actual specifications: https://docs.microsoft.com/it-it/windows/win32/fileio/exfat-... >26-Aug-2019 Seventh release of the Basic Specification, which includes the following changes: Updated legal terms pertaining to the specification, including: Removal of Microsoft Confidential notice Removal of Microsoft Corporation Technical Documentation License Agreemen…

Skimming through the doc, it looks like a modification of FAT32 with some (noticeably more complex) extensions, and not anything resembling what you might envision a "FAT64" to be; a FAT is still a linked list of 32-bit entries, there can still be two of them, and directory entries are still 32 bytes each (although defined in a rather complex way.) There's a separate allocation bitmap, which seems redundant and a was…

With how slow modern day NTFS is for things like node_modules (lots of nested directories), I can't help but hope some better file system will become widespread on the next major Windows release.

Re: exFAT in the Linux kernel

#168

Post by School-Cotton »

philwelch wrote: post #159
rewgs wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being pedantic. "Linux users" in a post like this clearly means a specific thing. Context matters.

It means a specific thing, but the specific thing that it means is insignificant. The basic argument that “if Microsoft really cared about Linux they’d write native Office apps for Linux desktops” is myopic and, in itself, ignores the broader context of what makes Linux relevant in the first place. As you say, context matters—and context is exactly what I was providing.

Agree with you 100%. On a related note, it strikes me as wrong that so much of the discourse about Linux revolves around its suitability for general consumer desktop use.

People always talk about “the year of the Linux desktop” (and not always ironically!) but honestly, whether a random person can play 4k Netflix on their Linux laptop is like 0.1% of why Linux matters in the world.

Re: exFAT in the Linux kernel

#169

Post by skinnymuch »

cbcoutinho wrote: post #118
akeck wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been 100% Office 365 web apps on Linux Chromium since around February. So far, I haven't hit a situation that has required spinning up my Windows 10 VM.

What do you do when you want to edit a document or compose an email offline?

I am guessing Office 365 has some sort of offline capabilities. Maybe not?

For the email, can’t you write it anywhere? Difference is it’s not officially a draft in an email client.

Re: exFAT in the Linux kernel

#170

Post by skinnymuch »

chme wrote: post #107
mips_avatar wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could use office 365 on your linux machine.

Offering a cloud service to a linux user is like tempting a vegetarian with meat. Linux users often choose Linux because they want to be in control of their data and devices, cloud services are about giving control of that away to companies.

The whole point of being vegetarian is to not eat meat. That in no way is analogous to Linux and cloud stuff.

You seem to be talking about a subset of Linux users. And then a subset of that subset who find cloud apps as bad as vegetarians may find meat.

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