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exFAT in the Linux kernel

cloudblogs.microsoft.com

171–180 of 280 posts

Re: exFAT in the Linux kernel

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most of the performance issues are not NTFS so much as the prevalence of file-system filter drivers. This is why WSL had so many file-system performance issues despite the fact that it was using a custom FS. IIRC this also motivated the move to WSL2 from what I read, since a virtual machine can use a small set of files to store a whole FS.

EDIT: See here - https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/873#issuecomment-425...

Re: exFAT in the Linux kernel

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more likely that Microsoft Office will become 100% "cloud" based software.

That's never going to happen. The US government is a huge Microsoft Office customer, and national security-sensitive documents cannot be placed in a cloud that's not completely controlled by the government.

Have you heard of AWG Gov tier?

Re: exFAT in the Linux kernel

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Office 365 allows you to install the latest version of word excel ... too in addition to their web versions. It’s actually the superior part of the offering, even though Hm tends to focus on the web part (why superior ? Automatic upgrade to latest so no mismatch of versions inside your company, no expensive acquisition cost merely add less than ten euro a month to add a new user, disable the next month if it didn't work out).

The installer fails on wine last time I checked, but porting an installation from windows works fine, and the account and license connection is fine too.

Re: exFAT in the Linux kernel

#174
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's never going to happen. The US government is a huge Microsoft Office customer, and national security-sensitive documents cannot be placed in a cloud that's not completely controlled by the government.

Sounds like they'd build a Gov-Office365 cloud if there's a deal just like AWS Govcloud.

They already do that - https://www.itnews.com.au/news/dta-becomes-microsofts-first-...

Re: exFAT in the Linux kernel

#175
post #99
post #4

The big deal here is the patent grant. FAT related patents were held over linux like a gun in the Ballmer years. Its a reason Linux was stuck with 8.3 length filenames for so long.

Agreed! I made reference to the patent in the exFAT Wikipedia page for years ago and it was reverted within hours. When Apple was at death's door (around the arrival of OS X) they were very open about protocols and formats (e.g. JPG, mp3, ssh, whatever) and happily paid the Danegeld so their customers could encode mp3s and RTF files etc. They proclaimed how important open formats were and managed somehow to get unpro…

While an interesting thought I believe this isn’t it because whatever new fs would need to work on windows and be standardized.

Re: exFAT in the Linux kernel

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Outlook webmail works fine offline. You need to enable some setting though.

Re: exFAT in the Linux kernel

#177
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>instead of requiring people to jump through many many hoops to actually install it Yeah the hoops of going to the Store, searching for "ubuntu" and clicking Install

Are they not still requiring this? Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux I admit I haven't used WSL in a while.

Programs and features control panel, then add/remove windows features, or through command line.

The exact same thing they require to enable or disable any optional windows feature like ie 11, windows media player, I is, ...

Re: exFAT in the Linux kernel

#178
post #166
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.

They don't have a mobile OS anymore. Apple is hardware-limited; there's a much larger buy-in required if you wanted to switch from Windows to MacOS than to Linux. And companies could save a LOT of money on computers if all they needed for software was Office and that were available on Linux.

Re: exFAT in the Linux kernel

#179
When will we have a modern file system that “just works” for read and write on Windows, Linux and Mac without the need to buy some proprietary product or depend on some open source option that may not be maintained or 100% reliable?

Seems like going over the network is the easiest option for people who use multiple OSes, though it comes with incompatibilities in permissions, ownership and also comes with a speed hit.

I doubt if Apple would provide implementations of APFS for non-Apple operating systems. So that probably leaves Microsoft to push NTFS (since ReFS isn’t a common option anymore as per Wikipedia) if it desires. But Microsoft seems to be on a cost cutting mode (cf the adoption of Chromium in Edge).

Are there viable and good options suitable for these three operating systems?

Re: exFAT in the Linux kernel

#180

When will we have a modern file system that “just works” for read and write on Windows, Linux and Mac without the need to buy some proprietary product or depend on some open source option that may not be maintained or 100% reliable? Seems like going over the network is the easiest option for people who use multiple OSes, though it comes with incompatibilities in permissions, ownership and also comes with a speed hit.…

exFAT works on MacOS >= 10.6.5, Windows and with this announcement hopefully shortly on Linux. I'd say it counts as a modern file system too - only released in 2006.
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