4 ms·

I'm not sure what you mean by "refused to allow". It's not like Apple has prevented third-parties from adding support: https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ex

by js2 5y ago

I'm not sure what you mean by "refused to allow". It's not like Apple has prevented third-parties from adding support: https://www.paragon-software.com/home/extfs-mac/ https://www.paragon-software.com/home/extfs-mac/ It also doesn't seem surprising to me that Apple itself wouldn't support ext2/3/4. It's something very few Mac users are going to care about. Why would Apple dedicate any resources to it? FWIW, I've been using Linux and Macs for over two decades and I can only recall maybe a single time I even wanted to mount an ext formatted drive onto a Mac, and vice-versa (HFS onto Linux). For exchanging files via floppy disks or thumb drives, various flavors of FAT have been near universal for ages. CDs/DVDs/BluRay use their own filesystem. And FTP/NFS/SMB/AFP/HTTP/SCP/RCP have been around forever for exchanging over a network. (Before ssh/scp, there was unencrypted rlogin/rsh/rcp... I'm dating myself.)

lupire 5y ago
Why does Windows userbase care more about Linux drive interop than Mac userbase does?
- mschuster91 5y ago
  The problem is, there is still no somewhat decent way to have a USB drive that's readable and writable by all three major OS families (Windows, Linux and macOS) and keep UNIX permissions working on it: - FAT32 can't go above 4GB files, can't do sparse files and can't store UNIX permissions at all - NTFS can do large and sparse files, but can't deal with UNIX permissions, instead bringing NT ACLs (which no one else understands). exFAT used to be patent encumbered and has the same limitations that NTFS has, plus its support is nowhere near as battle-tested as NTFS is - HFS/APFS are not supported at all under Windows and support in Linux is spotty at best - ext4 has third-party read (and if you're risk-tolerant, write) support on Windows and Linux, but it's hacky or expensive The situation, as it is, is an utter shame.
  - derefr 5y ago
    Have you considered https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format ? You can use it on things that aren’t optical media.
  - js2 5y ago
    Why? Who needs this? I don't even understand the use case for file permissions on an external drive. Who owns the files across operating systems? FWIW, the company I linked elsewhere provides full ext4 support products for both macOS and Windows.
    - mschuster91 5y ago
      > Why? Who needs this? I don't even understand the use case for file permissions on an external drive. Shoving data across operating systems using USB sticks or drives is a pretty standard thing to do, at least in the corporate world which is filled with slow internet connections (in related words, never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck filled with SD cards), and particularly when having to send data to clients or vendors. The fact that there is no standard that works on all three major OS families and in the best case also supports encryption is maddening - macOS has Filevault, Windows has Bitlocker and Linux has LUKS, and neither of the three can understand any other. Just ask an IT helpdesk in any major company how many questions they get a day by people who have to transfer files to a vendor or client, with encryption. Extra fun in anything involving creative work because most of that happens on Macs whereas most big-corp customers use Windows because of Active Directory and GPO. (And no, ZIP isn't an answer because Apple's built-in unarchiver routinely gobbles up when encountering password protected ZIPs) > I don't even understand the use case for file permissions on an external drive. Unlike Windows which conveys the fact that an executable is an executable by the file suffix .exe (or .cmd/.bat, and I think *.js was at least until Windows 7 associated with the JScript interpreter), Linux and macOS do so by using the execute permission on the file. The use case would be to copy a Java application, let's use jadx, downloaded and extracted on a Mac, then copy it via an USB stick or a Windows CIFS file share on another Mac or a Linux machine, and have the command bin/jadx-gui still start up the UI when clicked upon. As soon as any non-Unix filesystem is in the copy path, it gets inevitably nasty.
      - _carbyau_ 5y ago
        I mean, it doesn't solve the filesystem bit but instead of zip, what about 7zip? There's a version of 7zip for windows, linux and Mac. It's supposedly safe for now. Until the next vulnerability is found I guess but that is the same for every option. Bit of a downside that it is a third party option that would then have to be installed everywhere you want it rather than a native option though.
  - happymellon 5y ago
    What about UDF? That's what I use on my USB drives that are going to be shared amoungst all 3 OS', and support is excellent with many decades of testing. Files up to 16 EiB, supported from Windows XP and up, Mac's with OSX and up, Linux had some bugs back in 2010 which prevented you from dealing with very large devices that were over 80% full. Been doing it for over 10 years now, and it is still one of the best formats for universal access.
  - Melatonic 5y ago
    Dont forget that exFAT is not journaled which is the biggest issue by far. Really it would be nice if everyone could just natively read EXT3/4 out of the box - theres no reason NOT to add it. And even though Microsofts new file system still doesn't seem to have taken off (ReFS) it is quite good.
- js2 5y ago
  > Why does Windows userbase care more about Linux drive interop than Mac userbase does? Mostly it doesn't. And in any case, Windows doesn't ship with native support for mounting ext either. Only recently by installing WSL can it do so. So a very tiny minority of Windows users care about it. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/access-linux-filesystems-in-windows-and-wsl-2/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/access-linux-file...

by js2 5y ago

lupire 5y ago

Why does Windows userbase care more about Linux drive interop than Mac userbase does?

mschuster91 5y ago
The problem is, there is still no somewhat decent way to have a USB drive that's readable and writable by all three major OS families (Windows, Linux and macOS) and keep UNIX permissions working on it: - FAT32 can't go above 4GB files, can't do sparse files and can't store UNIX permissions at all - NTFS can do large and sparse files, but can't deal with UNIX permissions, instead bringing NT ACLs (which no one else understands). exFAT used to be patent encumbered and has the same limitations that NTFS has, plus its support is nowhere near as battle-tested as NTFS is - HFS/APFS are not supported at all under Windows and support in Linux is spotty at best - ext4 has third-party read (and if you're risk-tolerant, write) support on Windows and Linux, but it's hacky or expensive The situation, as it is, is an utter shame.
- derefr 5y ago
  Have you considered https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format ? You can use it on things that aren’t optical media.
- js2 5y ago
  Why? Who needs this? I don't even understand the use case for file permissions on an external drive. Who owns the files across operating systems? FWIW, the company I linked elsewhere provides full ext4 support products for both macOS and Windows.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    > Why? Who needs this? I don't even understand the use case for file permissions on an external drive. Shoving data across operating systems using USB sticks or drives is a pretty standard thing to do, at least in the corporate world which is filled with slow internet connections (in related words, never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck filled with SD cards), and particularly when having to send data to clients or vendors. The fact that there is no standard that works on all three major OS families and in the best case also supports encryption is maddening - macOS has Filevault, Windows has Bitlocker and Linux has LUKS, and neither of the three can understand any other. Just ask an IT helpdesk in any major company how many questions they get a day by people who have to transfer files to a vendor or client, with encryption. Extra fun in anything involving creative work because most of that happens on Macs whereas most big-corp customers use Windows because of Active Directory and GPO. (And no, ZIP isn't an answer because Apple's built-in unarchiver routinely gobbles up when encountering password protected ZIPs) > I don't even understand the use case for file permissions on an external drive. Unlike Windows which conveys the fact that an executable is an executable by the file suffix .exe (or .cmd/.bat, and I think *.js was at least until Windows 7 associated with the JScript interpreter), Linux and macOS do so by using the execute permission on the file. The use case would be to copy a Java application, let's use jadx, downloaded and extracted on a Mac, then copy it via an USB stick or a Windows CIFS file share on another Mac or a Linux machine, and have the command bin/jadx-gui still start up the UI when clicked upon. As soon as any non-Unix filesystem is in the copy path, it gets inevitably nasty.
    - _carbyau_ 5y ago
      I mean, it doesn't solve the filesystem bit but instead of zip, what about 7zip? There's a version of 7zip for windows, linux and Mac. It's supposedly safe for now. Until the next vulnerability is found I guess but that is the same for every option. Bit of a downside that it is a third party option that would then have to be installed everywhere you want it rather than a native option though.
- happymellon 5y ago
  What about UDF? That's what I use on my USB drives that are going to be shared amoungst all 3 OS', and support is excellent with many decades of testing. Files up to 16 EiB, supported from Windows XP and up, Mac's with OSX and up, Linux had some bugs back in 2010 which prevented you from dealing with very large devices that were over 80% full. Been doing it for over 10 years now, and it is still one of the best formats for universal access.
- Melatonic 5y ago
  Dont forget that exFAT is not journaled which is the biggest issue by far. Really it would be nice if everyone could just natively read EXT3/4 out of the box - theres no reason NOT to add it. And even though Microsofts new file system still doesn't seem to have taken off (ReFS) it is quite good.
js2 5y ago
> Why does Windows userbase care more about Linux drive interop than Mac userbase does? Mostly it doesn't. And in any case, Windows doesn't ship with native support for mounting ext either. Only recently by installing WSL can it do so. So a very tiny minority of Windows users care about it. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/access-linux-filesystems-in-windows-and-wsl-2/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/access-linux-file...