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posted by takyon on Thursday August 29 2019, @03:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the ten-years-too-late dept.

Microsoft today announced that it:

is supporting the addition of Microsoft's exFAT technology to the Linux kernel.

Microsoft has published the exFAT file system specification on its Windows Dev Center site.

While the code remains under copyright, Microsoft also stated that the exFAT code incorporated into the Linux kernel will be available under GPLv2.

We also support the eventual inclusion of a Linux kernel with exFAT support in a future revision of the Open Invention Network's Linux System Definition, where, once accepted, the code will benefit from the defensive patent commitments of OIN's 3040+ members and licensees.

It is noteworthy that there is already a free and open source exFAT driver available for FreeBSD and multiple Linux distributions, but it is not an official part of the Linux kernel due to the patent encumbrance of exFAT.

Also at TechCrunch and VentureBeat.


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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @06:04AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @06:04AM (#887184)

    This is the right answer. ExFAT is terrible. If MS actually wants interoperability it should go both ways, and EXT4 should be treated as a first class citizen in Windows.

    I'm not holding my breath.

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday August 29 2019, @06:13AM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday August 29 2019, @06:13AM (#887188) Journal

    2-128 TB SDUC and microSDUC use exFAT by default. So it's probably a good thing to have that support ready.

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    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @06:57AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @06:57AM (#887196)

      In order to certify that your product is SDXC (finalized circa 2009) compatible you have to support exFAT in a default configuration. That is why many SBCs, especially the bigger targets, don't advertise their support for that format, despite being electrically compatible. They have to reformat the card with another file system, and thus violate the specification.

      Note also that vanilla/HC/XC/UC capacity distinction is different than having the UHS bus available because cards are supposed to be backwards compatible to the old bus at slower speeds.