Paragon Software has opened the code of the driver with the implementation of the exFAT file system

Paragon Software, which supplies Microsoft licensed proprietary drivers NTFS and exFAT for Linux, опубликовала on the Linux kernel developer mailing list
initial implementation of the new open source exFAT driver. The driver code is open sourced under the GPLv2 license and is temporarily restricted to run in read-only mode. A variant of the driver that supports write mode is under development, but it is not yet ready for publication. The patch for inclusion in the Linux kernel was sent personally by Konstantin Komarov, the founder and head of the company Paragon software.

Paragon Software Company welcomed Microsoft's efforts to publish public specifications and enabling royalty-free use of exFAT patents in Linux, and as a contribution prepared an open source exFAT driver for the Linux kernel. It is noted that the driver is designed in accordance with the requirements for preparing code for Linux and does not contain bindings to additional APIs, which allows it to be included in the main composition of the kernel.

Recall that in August, in the experimental "staging" section of the Linux 5.4 kernel ("drivers / staging /"), where components requiring improvement are placed, already added developed by Samsung open exFAT driver. At the same time, the added driver is based on outdated code (1.2.9), which needs to be finalized and adapted to the requirements for the design of the code for the kernel. Later for the kernel was
proposed An updated version of the Samsung driver, 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 address the limitations of FAT32 when used on large flash drives. Support for the exFAT file system was introduced in Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows XP with Service Pack 2. The maximum file size compared to FAT32 has been expanded from 4 GB to 16 exabytes, the maximum partition size limit of 32 GB has been removed to reduce fragmentation and increase speed, a bitmap of free blocks has been introduced, the limit on the number of files in one directory has been raised to 65 thousand, and the ability to store ACLs has been provided.

Source: opennet.ru