Paragon Software, a provider of Microsoft-licensed for NTFS and exFAT on Linux, in the Linux kernel developers mailing list
initial implementation of the new open exFAT driver. The driver code is released under the GPLv2 license and is temporarily limited to read-only mode. A version of the driver supporting write mode is in development but is not yet ready for release. The patch for inclusion in the Linux kernel was sent personally by Konstantin Komarov, the founder and director of the company. .
Paragon Software Microsoft's actions in publishing public and providing the opportunity for the free use of patents on exFAT in Linux, and as its contribution, has prepared an open exFAT driver for the Linux kernel. It is noted that the driver is formatted according to the requirements for preparing code for Linux and does not contain bindings to additional APIs, allowing it to be included in the main kernel.
Recall that in August, an experimental section 'staging' of the Linux kernel 5.4 ('drivers/staging/') was already populated with the open exFAT driver developed by Samsung. At the same time, the added driver is based on outdated code (1.2.9), which requires refinement and adaptation to the requirements for formatting code for the kernel. Later, an updated version of the Samsung driver was issued for the kernel, translated to the 'sdFAT' branch (2.2.0) and demonstrating a significant performance increase, but this driver has not yet been accepted into the Linux kernel.
The exFAT file system was created by Microsoft to eliminate the limitations of FAT32 when used on large flash drives. Support for the exFAT file system appeared in Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows XP with Service Pack 2. The maximum file size compared to FAT32 was expanded from 4 GB to 16 exabytes, the limit on the maximum partition size of 32 GB was removed, a bitmap of free blocks was introduced to reduce fragmentation and increase speed, the limit on the number of files in a directory was raised to 65,000, and the possibility of storing ACLs was provided.
Alpine 3.10.3
Source: opennet.ru
