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if Mac also supported Linux file formats they would get closer to universal, though? we can't get to that world without these individual steps. creating a new

if Mac also supported Linux file formats they would get closer to universal, though? we can't get to that world without these individual steps. creating a new non universal one is backing away from it

gjsman-1000 1y ago
Even FreeBSD can't be bothered to do a good job supporting Linux file systems. They're basically proprietary siloed file systems like the rest, even if code is available. Linux, meanwhile, can't be bothered to support either of FreeBSD's file systems officially. UFS2 is hardly patented anymore, but Linux doesn't care beyond read-only support. Being open-source, and even being in a popular open-source project, does not make a standard, or even imply inferiority to those who do not implement it. https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
- bombcar 1y ago
  There might be some license issues, but the dirty secret is filesystem portability isn't terribly important, and for the users for whom it is - ExFAT and friends are usually good enough.
  - johnfernow 1y ago
    exFAT is widely used but it not being journaled has led to so many thousands (if not more) people losing tons of data, many of which wouldn't have lost so much data had they used a journaled filesystem (or even one with redundant file tables.) If you need to connect a portable drive to machines of different OS's, there is no safe filesystem that supports read and write on both Windows and MacOS. Alternatively, cloud storage works until the files are larger than the space you have left on Drive/Dropbox/OneDrive/etc., and local network sharing (on certain networks at least) is more complicated than what the average user is willing to put up with. In practice, many use USB flash drives or external HDDs/SSDs with exFAT. Yeah, people should have more than one backup, but we know in the real world that's not what many do. That requires them spending more time (e.g. configuring local network sharing or setting up an old machine lying around to be a NAS) or money (more on cloud storage.) In practice, having a cross-platform, journaled filesystem would lead to a lot less data loss. Aside from exFAT, the only alternative with native cross-platform R/W capability is FAT32, but while it has a redundant file allocation table (unlike exFAT), it has a max file size of 4GB, which limits its usefulness for many workflows.
atonse 1y ago
Does this even matter, if you can copy/mount files over a network? What are potential use cases where you'd want to support those additional file systems? External drives?
- cortesoft 1y ago
  I just ran into a use case yesterday. I wanted to copy some files from either my Mac or my Windows machine onto the MicroSD card for my SteamDeck, which is ext4. I wanted to just plug in the card and copy files, but couldn’t.
  - atonse 1y ago
    Interesting, ok. I don't even want to say "Use NTFS, doesn't everything support it?" because I'm not even sure that's the best solution for an SD card. Maybe with their new FSKit API [1], someone can build a compatibility layer for it. 1: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/fskit?language=objc https://developer.apple.com/documentation/fskit?language=obj...
    - cortesoft 1y ago
      The best solution is to add support for EXT4 to mac and windows.

gjsman-1000 1y ago

Even FreeBSD can't be bothered to do a good job supporting Linux file systems. They're basically proprietary siloed file systems like the rest, even if code is available. Linux, meanwhile, can't be bothered to support either of FreeBSD's file systems officially. UFS2 is hardly patented anymore, but Linux doesn't care beyond read-only support. Being open-source, and even being in a popular open-source project, does not make a standard, or even imply inferiority to those who do not implement it. https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/

bombcar 1y ago
There might be some license issues, but the dirty secret is filesystem portability isn't terribly important, and for the users for whom it is - ExFAT and friends are usually good enough.
- johnfernow 1y ago
  exFAT is widely used but it not being journaled has led to so many thousands (if not more) people losing tons of data, many of which wouldn't have lost so much data had they used a journaled filesystem (or even one with redundant file tables.) If you need to connect a portable drive to machines of different OS's, there is no safe filesystem that supports read and write on both Windows and MacOS. Alternatively, cloud storage works until the files are larger than the space you have left on Drive/Dropbox/OneDrive/etc., and local network sharing (on certain networks at least) is more complicated than what the average user is willing to put up with. In practice, many use USB flash drives or external HDDs/SSDs with exFAT. Yeah, people should have more than one backup, but we know in the real world that's not what many do. That requires them spending more time (e.g. configuring local network sharing or setting up an old machine lying around to be a NAS) or money (more on cloud storage.) In practice, having a cross-platform, journaled filesystem would lead to a lot less data loss. Aside from exFAT, the only alternative with native cross-platform R/W capability is FAT32, but while it has a redundant file allocation table (unlike exFAT), it has a max file size of 4GB, which limits its usefulness for many workflows.

atonse 1y ago

Does this even matter, if you can copy/mount files over a network? What are potential use cases where you'd want to support those additional file systems? External drives?

cortesoft 1y ago
I just ran into a use case yesterday. I wanted to copy some files from either my Mac or my Windows machine onto the MicroSD card for my SteamDeck, which is ext4. I wanted to just plug in the card and copy files, but couldn’t.
- atonse 1y ago
  Interesting, ok. I don't even want to say "Use NTFS, doesn't everything support it?" because I'm not even sure that's the best solution for an SD card. Maybe with their new FSKit API [1], someone can build a compatibility layer for it. 1: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/fskit?language=objc https://developer.apple.com/documentation/fskit?language=obj...
  - cortesoft 1y ago
    The best solution is to add support for EXT4 to mac and windows.