>say a ubuntu desktop, a macbook air and a windows [...] -- but they all can read exFAT at decent performance. Fyi, it's somewhat common knowledge in tech circ

>say a ubuntu desktop, a macbook air and a windows [...] -- but they all can read exFAT at decent performance. Fyi, it's somewhat common knowledge in tech circles that exFAT is an unreliable way of permanently sharing data between different operating systems: https://www.google.com/search?q=exfat+corruption+macos+windows https://www.google.com/search?q=exfat+corruption+macos+windo... exFAT is ok to use as a secondary file system for transferring/copying data between systems (aka "sneakernet") but not as a critical primary disk drive. EDIT reply to : >the more reliable file system to use if different operating systems need to use it is UDF UDF like exFAT does not have journaling feature in HFS+ and NTFS. Without journaling as a self-check feature, it makes the filesystem very fragile and prone to corruption. Similar to this explanation: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/7609/what-are-the-differences-between-journaling-hfs-and-non-journaling-hfs/7614#7614 https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/7609/what-are-the-... For permanent data sharing between macOS/Windows/Linux, the more reliable setup than exFAT is network shares such as SMB/NFS mounts on a NAS with ZFS/btrfs filesystems. Unfortunately, that costs more money because of the extra hardware. EDIT reply to: >If you just want to share files between 2-3 computers, by far the fastest and cheapest will be to wire the computers together over Thunderbolt. When I researched the idea of daisy-chaining Thunderbolt with mac + Linux + Windows, I ran into stories saying it was not reliable. Example: https://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2023/20230213_1022-Thunderbolt-USBC-kernel-panics.html https://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2023/20230213_1022-Thun... I could see where Thunderbolt daisy-chaining macos+Windows might work 100% perfectly for some but others have flaky issues because of various interactions of Thunderbolt chipsets, TB dock/hub quality, drivers, etc.