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Sure but the Linux audience is certainly not one that pays for such things. Like the Parent Poster explained, this is a hard and niche technical problem. Someon

by csomar 4y ago

Sure but the Linux audience is certainly not one that pays for such things. Like the Parent Poster explained, this is a hard and niche technical problem. Someone has to foot the bill for this, and apparently there is a "need" for it but no market to sell it.

whitemary 4y ago
The Linux audience is software engineers and the companies they who employ them.
- cpach 4y ago
  So why haven’t such an open source application materialized after all these years?
  - voltagex_ 4y ago
    Well you'd need to fund the cost of a kernel driver signing certificate and get it through WHQL as well. That's just for a start. So this wouldn't be something you could build yourself.
    - circuit10 4y ago
      Surely you’d just need to turn driver signing off
- KyeRussell 4y ago
  Back when I was a desktop Linux user, a very sizeable portion of the other people I knew that used it weren’t “software engineers”. They were ‘power users’. I don’t think that my experience was all that atypical.
- csomar 4y ago
  The need is more personal than corporate.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    There are corporate solutions (like the Paragon drivers), they just suck. Paragon tried merging this code into the Linux kernel, but the code was so bad and unmaintainable that it was rejected. The FOSS solution is using FUSE, but that requires a UNIX-like OS for easy porting. Unless Windows ditches the NT kernel altogether, I don't think you can expect native filesystem extensions beyond NFS support. GNU philosophy is not about moneymaking or footing the bill. Sometimes a problem gets worse when you throw money at it.
apatheticonion 4y ago
If there was a Linux OS focusing on desktop/laptop users that offered a highly polished user experience - comparable to the best of MacOS and Windows - I would be very happy to pay for it. I am probably in the minority of Linux users though.
- alexvoda 4y ago
  I do not find macOS or Windows to be polished. Linux isn't either. They all just have different areas of roughness.
smaudet 4y ago
> "Sure but the Linux audience is certainly not one that pays for such things." Eh? People just pay for their stuff. The problem is there isn't really a market for OSes (as a consumer), period. Unless you build a PC yourself, which is not the norm, you don't usually even buy an OS. This has nothing do with whether the linux audience pays for stuff or not...they pay fine. It is true that it is relatively niche even for linux folk to want to do this sort of thing, but that has more to do with laptop vs desktop form factors than the market. If it were a common need, I think it would be a common thing found on the market. In fact the existing ext4 stuff for Windows indeed used to be paid, but this was primarily for Windows users, Linux users have had no issue accessing ntfs drives for ages, and generally didn't really enjoy giving Windows access to their drives anyways, what with the market for viruses and whatnot...

by csomar 4y ago

whitemary 4y ago

The Linux audience is software engineers and the companies they who employ them.

cpach 4y ago
So why haven’t such an open source application materialized after all these years?
- voltagex_ 4y ago
  Well you'd need to fund the cost of a kernel driver signing certificate and get it through WHQL as well. That's just for a start. So this wouldn't be something you could build yourself.
  - circuit10 4y ago
    Surely you’d just need to turn driver signing off
KyeRussell 4y ago
Back when I was a desktop Linux user, a very sizeable portion of the other people I knew that used it weren’t “software engineers”. They were ‘power users’. I don’t think that my experience was all that atypical.
csomar 4y ago
The need is more personal than corporate.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  There are corporate solutions (like the Paragon drivers), they just suck. Paragon tried merging this code into the Linux kernel, but the code was so bad and unmaintainable that it was rejected. The FOSS solution is using FUSE, but that requires a UNIX-like OS for easy porting. Unless Windows ditches the NT kernel altogether, I don't think you can expect native filesystem extensions beyond NFS support. GNU philosophy is not about moneymaking or footing the bill. Sometimes a problem gets worse when you throw money at it.

apatheticonion 4y ago

If there was a Linux OS focusing on desktop/laptop users that offered a highly polished user experience - comparable to the best of MacOS and Windows - I would be very happy to pay for it. I am probably in the minority of Linux users though.

alexvoda 4y ago
I do not find macOS or Windows to be polished. Linux isn't either. They all just have different areas of roughness.

smaudet 4y ago

> "Sure but the Linux audience is certainly not one that pays for such things." Eh? People just pay for their stuff. The problem is there isn't really a market for OSes (as a consumer), period. Unless you build a PC yourself, which is not the norm, you don't usually even buy an OS. This has nothing do with whether the linux audience pays for stuff or not...they pay fine. It is true that it is relatively niche even for linux folk to want to do this sort of thing, but that has more to do with laptop vs desktop form factors than the market. If it were a common need, I think it would be a common thing found on the market. In fact the existing ext4 stuff for Windows indeed used to be paid, but this was primarily for Windows users, Linux users have had no issue accessing ntfs drives for ages, and generally didn't really enjoy giving Windows access to their drives anyways, what with the market for viruses and whatnot...