On 19/08/12 23:04, Theodore Ts'o wrote: >> There is a small niche which LanyFS tries to fit in. It is for those who >> > do not want to bother about how to use a fs when they are in a hurry or >> > when they just want to listen to music in the car. It is for the >> > it-must-be-easy-enough-for-my-gradma fraction. > Music doesn't require > 4GB files, and there are plenty of very easy > to use solutions that utilize streaming over the network. That is > *always* going to be easier than figuring out ahead of time which > files you want, and then manually copying them onto a thumb drive, and > then taking the thumb drive to the car.... Somehow I can't quite > imagine your grandma manually copying files over using LanyFS. :-) > Microsoft is pushing exFAT [1] as the successor of FAT32 for this kind of use cases. The problem is that exFAT is full of patents and they require you to purchase a license for use. I think that this LanyFS could be a great free alternative to exFAT when the time of 4+GB-for-a-movie will became the norm. The problem will be that IMHO Microsoft won't be interested in implementing this FS on their OS despite of the license since their interest is to push exFAT. > I also seriously question the niche of people who want to use a thumb > drive to transfer > 4GB files. Try it sometime and see what a painful > user experience it is.... Think for example on consumer devices, for example on most moderns TV you can plug a USB memory disk with videos and play them. And videos are getting bigger and bigger. Many FullHD movies that you can download or record are bigger than 4GB, and in a few years this will be the norm. And I doubt that the majority of this consumer devices are able to read nothing more than FAT32 file-systems, so the 4GB limit is a big problem. And here is where Microsoft is pushing their exFAT FS since it allows working with 4GB+ files without the NTFS overhead. As a side note, it would be possible to write a driver for exFAT and get it merged upstream on the Linux Kernel without "breaking any law"? Goggling I found an attempt to write such driver but seems that never got merged: https://lkml.org/lkml/2009/2/8/24 Regards! -------- [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT
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