[HN Gopher] New NTFS Read-Write Driver from Paragon Merged to Li... ___________________________________________________________________ New NTFS Read-Write Driver from Paragon Merged to Linux Kernel Author : beshrkayali Score : 89 points Date : 2021-09-04 20:15 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (git.kernel.org) (TXT) w3m dump (git.kernel.org) | jumelles wrote: | Is this as big of a deal as it seems? | canadaduane wrote: | Does anyone know what confluence of events or motives made this | land now? I'm grateful for their work--just curious why a | commercial software company decided to make its main capability | available for free. | kasabali wrote: | A bit more context: | https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/paragon-is-working-t... | | So just as a guess, maybe after Samsung's exfat code was merged | into mainline, license and support revenue of their own exfat | driver took a hit. So they decided it's in their interest to | preemptively get their own ntfs driver in mainline thus they | can get more support contracts this way? | ch_123 wrote: | There's an official statement here: | | https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs3-driver-faq/ | | Reading between the lines, I suspect that the effort of | maintaining an out-of-tree file system outweighed any money to | be made from selling NTFS support to Linux users, especially | when ntfs-3g is probably good enough for many use cases. They | have a lot of other products, and it's possible that some of | them leverage this NTFS support as well. | m4rtink wrote: | Anything out of the kernel source tree is pain in the ass for | many reasons, ranging from a nuisance to impossible to use | due to tainted kernel nullifying OS vendor support | guarantees. | azinman2 wrote: | I'd love to know once this is merged and has journaling if there | are advantages to use NTFS instead of ext4 or other file systems | as your main Linux FS, versus interop with windows drives. | Kenji wrote: | NTFS is shit. Ext4 is better in every single way, _especially_ | performance. Ditch the Windows shit if you can. | generalizations wrote: | IIRC, NTFS doesn't support permissions. | Flimm wrote: | NTFS actually does support permissions, it's Windows that | doesn't. NTFS also supports symbolic links and hard links. | tbrownaw wrote: | Um, I've had plenty of times I got a UAC (~windows sudo) | prompt trying to access files I didn't have permissions to. | nolok wrote: | Not contradicting just genuinely wondering, what do you | mean by windows doesn't? I have different permissions setup | for various users on different folders on ntfs volumes in | regular windows 10 installs. Or do you mean another sort of | permissions? | zamadatix wrote: | In this context they are talking about the POSIX | permissions related to running Linux on the drive which | NTFS supports but Windows does not use. Instead Windows | uses another attribute pointing to their security | descriptor model which is also used by other non-file | objects throughout the OS. | zamadatix wrote: | config NTFS3_FS_POSIX_ACL | | bool "NTFS POSIX Access Control Lists" | | depends on NTFS3_FS | | select FS_POSIX_ACL | | help | | POSIX Access Control Lists (ACLs) support additional access | rights for users and groups beyond the standard | owner/group/world scheme, and this option selects support for | ACLs specifically for ntfs filesystems. | | NOTE: this is linux only feature. Windows will ignore these | ACLs. | [deleted] | rubyist5eva wrote: | Looking forward to testing this out with games installed in my | Windows partition. Hopefully won't need to have a dedicated | partition for Linux games anymore. | compsciphd wrote: | why couldn't you have used ntfs3g before then in read-only | mode. or even the only ntfs in kernel code in read only mode. | zamadatix wrote: | Some games flat out won't work with read only and for the | ones that do if they are still receiving regular updates it's | going to be a PITA. Also a PITA when you want to add a new | game. | | Not to mention both ntfs-3g and even the previous kernel | driver weren't exactly performance marvels. | jtvjan wrote: | Now all that's left is for Microsoft to add EXT support to NT. | xook wrote: | There are third party tools to read from Ext partitions, but | unfortunately, writing to the filesystem seems to be a footgun | roulette situation. | zamadatix wrote: | Since they've went the way of having WSL2 physical mounts show | up in \wsl$ this summer I don't think there is much push for | native <pick your FS> support. | | https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/access-linux-file... | | Would definitely be cool but Linux supporting NTFS only makes | it even less necessary on top of that. | Namidairo wrote: | You can only mount entire physical disks under WSL2 though, | as opposed to single partitions, which makes it a showstopper | depending on your layout. (Common single disk configurations | like a laptop/ultrabook come to mind) | ecnahc515 wrote: | I hadn't considered how this being in the upstream kernel | would make it possible to run my WSL2 on NTFS natively. | That's pretty cool. I'm sure there's still some stuff to | figure out, but still pretty awesome. | phkahler wrote: | Doesn't WSL2 already have the ability to read NTFS somehow? | Isnt this just an optimization? | flatiron wrote: | It's a network mount. Hence it's "don't use it cause it's | shitty" reputation. | zamadatix wrote: | Well you could do that too but you'd lose permissions | between the two (NTFS supports POSIX permissions but Linux | doesn't and vice versa with Windows permissions). | | The blog post is really about making any Linux mountable FS | available to the Windows side of WSL2 without NT needing to | support it. E.g. it doesn't matter if the drive is NTFS or | Ext4 or BobYourUncleFS as long as the Linux kernel can | mount the FS you can mount it in WSL2 and access it from | Windows without NT needing to support the OS. It also | already works in reverse, volumes mounted in Windows | (including NTFS) can also be shared with WSL2. | | It's really just their integrated-into-the-OS version of VM | guest filesystem sharing. | dataflow wrote: | Does this mean we can boot from Linux from NTFS from mainline | now?! ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-09-04 23:01 UTC)