Teddy Rogers Posted August 29, 2019 Share Posted August 29, 2019 Some of you may be aware Microsoft recently announced they will be helping to officially bring exFAT in to the Linux kernel. Coinciding with this announcement they recently published the exFAT technical specifications... Ted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atom0s Posted August 30, 2019 Share Posted August 30, 2019 Their reasoning behind open sourcing it if anyone is wondering: Quote “It’s important to us that the Linux community can make use of exFAT included in the Linux kernel with confidence. To this end, we will be making Microsoft’s technical specification for exFAT publicly available to facilitate development of conformant, interoperable implementations.” Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Python Posted August 30, 2019 Share Posted August 30, 2019 Linux has better file systems. Why would they need to learn about exFAT from Microsoft of all 😀 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teddy Rogers Posted August 30, 2019 Author Share Posted August 30, 2019 Being Microsoft I am sure there is more to the story as to why they are choosing to do this now. Conspiracy theories aside I think it is more likely this is related to integration of the Linux kernel in Windows 10... Ted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loki Posted August 30, 2019 Share Posted August 30, 2019 3 hours ago, Python said: Linux has better file systems. Why would they need to learn about exFAT from Microsoft of all 😀 ext has plenty of limitations too depending on use case.... saying linux has better filesystems is a little subjective. FAT (in it's various forms) works as a fairly universal, simple solution in some cases. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atom0s Posted August 30, 2019 Share Posted August 30, 2019 While their focus was due to Linux, the bigger picture is all operating systems being able to universally support the same file system for extended storage devices. The intent of exFAT was for use with external things like USB storage, flash memory, etc. so this move opens the door to a much better universally supported standard on all systems. (Windows, Linux, Mac, along with mini-systems like phone operating systems (iOS, Android, etc.)) In general, the move to open source the standard has a bigger impact on the general public than just their own agenda focusing on Linux. Personally, my mindset towards all of Microsofts changes to open sourcing things lately is that I feel they are moving Windows in a different direction and are possibly working on their own mixture of a full-on Linux flavor of Windows. (They already have Linux working inside of Win10 as a sub-system.) But with all their different endeavor into Linux and the open source community in the last few years, it looks more like they are working on a new OS to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Python Posted September 1, 2019 Share Posted September 1, 2019 On 8/30/2019 at 9:00 AM, Teddy Rogers said: Being Microsoft I am sure there is more to the story as to why they are choosing to do this now. Conspiracy theories aside I think it is more likely this is related to integration of the Linux kernel in Windows 10 Fully agree with this point. They are unlikely to give anything away for free. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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