The exFAT Filesystem Is Coming To Linux -- Paragon Software's Not Happy About It

couchslug shares an excerpt from Ars Technica: When software and operating system giant Microsoft announced its support for inclusion of the exFAT filesystem directly into the Linux kernel back in August, it didn't get a ton of press coverage. But filesystem vendor Paragon Software clearly noticed this month's merge of the Microsoft-approved, largely Samsung-authored version of exFAT into the VFS for-next repository, which will in turn merge into Linux 5.7 -- and Paragon doesn't seem happy about it. Yesterday, Paragon issued a press release about European gateway-modem vendor Sagemcom adopting its version of exFAT into an upcoming series of Linux-based routers. Unfortunately, it chose to preface the announcement with a stream of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) that wouldn't have looked out of place on Steve Ballmer's letterhead in the 1990s.

Context?

[Darkon]

Who is Paragon Software, how are they related to exFAT, and why should I care?

Re:Context?

[caseih]

Paragon Software has been selling support for exFAT and NTFS for Linux, MacOS, and Android for years now. Presumably a license from Paragon includes the cost of licensing the patents that exFAT and NTFS required before MS decided to grant license for free (for exFAT anyway) to the Linux kernel.

Re:Context?

[DigitAl56K]

Can't answer the last two, but Paragon Software have for years provided some of the best tools on Windows for managing partitions, disk/parition-level backup, and images on Windows systems. They've also offered drivers to get read/write NTFS working on Mac, and APFS working on Windows. Their prices are pretty accessible so it's likely lots of Windows users will know them.

So you can think of them as providing lots of tools and drivers for file systems on multiple platforms.

Disclaimer: Am a long-term Paragon customer, but have no other ties to them.

Re:Context?

[stikves]

They had a good run, but they have to move on.

All software becomes obsolete given time. And compatibility software depending on the original not supporting a particular platform will always be a hair's distance from becoming so.

They serve a niche, and are really useful tools. However as soon as either party (here Linux or Microsoft) decided to give full support for the integration, there is no more need for their product.

Take "Mono" for example. They used to provide open source C# / .Net implementation on Linux (and other platforms). As soon as .Net runtime itself became open source, there was no more need for that project. (But it had a happy ending. Their talent and tools were acquired by Microsoft and included in Visual Studio releases).

Re:

[DigitAl56K]

Well, they have a lot of products, and plenty of need for the others. Hopefully any potential loss from this ExFAT situation isn't devastating to their business.

Re:

[DeVilla]

Frankly, if their line of business included being Microsoft's patent tax collector and collecting patent taxes on Open Source, I'm not wasting my hopes on them.

Re:

[codemachine]

Mono isn't quite dead yet. It is still the basis of Xamarin, so existing mobile C# is still running on a mono platform. There are still a few things that run on Mono that don't run on .NET Core, but that list is rapidly shrinking as they work to converge everything for .NET 5. .NET 5 (based on .NET Core) is slated replace both the .NET Framework and Mono. Some of the code for .NET Core was taken directly from Mono, and other bits were ported from the Framework. Since it is almost all open source now, it is

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

> They serve a niche, and are really useful tools. However as soon as either party (here Linux or Microsoft) decided to give full support for the integration, there is no more need for their product.

Is Microsoft really going to support linux vendors with the exFAT driver? Like, if a system integrator is using it and has problems, can they call Microsoft or submit a ticket and get a fix?

I would imagine that Paragon can and does offer such services for their licensees. I don't have any use for it, but, h

Re:

[Kjella]

Is Microsoft really going to support linux vendors with the exFAT driver? Like, if a system integrator is using it and has problems, can they call Microsoft or submit a ticket and get a fix?

Probably not but the standard is 14 years old and a variation of an ancient file system, it's been reverse engineered and open source implementations have been available for many years just not included in the Linux kernel due to patents. With the official specification now released as ground truth, my guess is you're about as likely to need support for this as a JPG library...

Re:

[rkhalloran]

>> They serve a niche, and are really useful tools. However as soon as either party (here Linux or Microsoft) decided to give full support for the integration, there is no more need for their product. I'll go further back and mention all the third-party TCP/IP packages (Chameleon, etc) back in the WFW/early Win95 days before the Browser Wars prompted MSFT to integrate the protocols into the OS. Same arguments.

Re:

[guruevi]

They're expensive though and most of their tools are just rebranded FUSE plugins which they undoubtedly fixed but then refuse to re-release under the open source licenses.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

Back in the Windows 98 and XP eras they offered some useful tools, but these days all the functionality of their flagship products is either built in to Windows (e.g. partition resizing) or available for free with open source tools (e.g. disk cloning/wiping).

They seem to be trying to sell some cloud storage SDK now but their website is mostly free of information so I can't say if it looks interesting or not. I imagine licencing their exFAT software was a major part of their business.

Re:

[Freischutz]

Who is Paragon Software, how are they related to exFAT, and why should I care?

It seems they offer a commercial exFAT implementation and they are now pissed that Microsoft has supported integrating exFAT support into the Linux kernel. It's just the usual 'cry me a river' from some company that has gotten used to charging people obscene amounts of money for some piece of gate keeper software like this and now they are watching their little money maker being ruined by what they see as 'open source communism'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

Re:Context?

[caseih]

Paragon Software is not a large company and they don't charge obscene amounts of money for their software and tools. I don't have much sympathy for them, but I'm sure you'd complain too if a big company suddenly pulled the rug out from under one of your revenue streams.

Re:

[DigitalisAkujin]

I don't understand how you can look at the Linux kernel which already has support for FAT, FAT16, and FAT32 and then build your business around exFAT without expecting it to be added to the Linux kernel by someone at some point.

Paragon Software does not own exFAT. They didn't design it so they really have no leg to stand on here. They don't have any ownership of the Linux kernel or of Microsoft either.

This is like someone coming to sell water bottles at a festival without paying the organizer then complaini

Re:

[caseih]

Sure. But exFAT is just a small part of their business. And they did find a niche, since Linux could not not natively support exFAT at the time, yet all digital cameras and phones were using it. And they did essentially have a deal with Microsoft over this (licensed the patents). I can understand their protestations, but like you I don't have any sympathy for them.

Re:

[Bert64]

Well that's why you should never rely on a deal with microsoft...

Re:

[hawk]

"Pray I don't alter it any further."

hawk

Re:

[shutdown -p now]

They never had an exclusive license, so they should have never assumed that there'd be no competition, free or otherwise. It doesn't really have anything to do with Microsoft.

Re:

[khchung]

I'm sure you'd complain too if a big company suddenly pulled the rug out from under one of your revenue streams.

They didn't know that was basically what everyone would expect when working on anything related to Microsoft? Where have they been for the last 30 years? Have you heard of Stacker?

Any company working on anything related to Windows need to have an exit plan for when Microsoft decided to pull the rug under them.

Re:

[Freischutz]

Paragon Software is not a large company and they don't charge obscene amounts of money for their software and tools. I don't have much sympathy for them, but I'm sure you'd complain too if a big company suddenly pulled the rug out from under one of your revenue streams.

Until exFAT support became native on MacOS they charged €39.95 for a package that gave you exFAT and Ext2/3/4. That's pretty much robbery. The Android version costs ~EUR 21, EUR 10 if you buy exFAT, HFS, NTFS and FAT32 as a bundle. Small wonder they are upset at this becoming native to the Linux kernel and think we should not integrate filesystem support into the Linux kernel to save their bottom line.

Re:

[thegarbz]

That's pretty much robbery.

That would make it one of the cheapest commercial file system utility packages that didn't come included as part of the core OS on the market. The market for Android vs MacOS for a niche cross platform development package is incredibly small and priced accordingly.

Re:

[Randj Herdle]

I certainly never lost any sleep over such fears. I chose to work for government on publicly useful systems, not working to get rich by gouging customers. Not that I'm implying Paragon is an example of such, but live by the market, die by the market.

Re:

[loonycyborg]

They should have submitted their kernel module upstream right away, their main business is tools, they gain nothing by keeping module outside of kernel tree.

Re:

[Megane]

I think the problem was that exFAT couldn't be in the kernel because was patent encumbered, or someone else would have written a kernel module for it. Also I understand from reading the replies here that they had a FUSE module, not a kernel module. Microsoft's sudden blessing of a patch from someone else sort of does an end-run around the whole thing.

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

They're the paragon of vice, apparently.

Re:

[hawk]

FPI. Dateline April 4, 1978.

Gus Parog, CEO of Parog terminals, issued a press release warning of the reckless behavior of Apple, Radio Shack, and Commodore. "In permanently attaching a keyboard, and even a screen, these manufacturers endanger users. Now, users are forced to use the poorly designed interfaces, and cannot have properly supported escape strings and line graphics."

Not happy about Paragon software

[saccade.com]

Hmm. Speaking of "not happy", I'm not happy about how Paragon's APFS for Windows slowly but fatally trashed my hard drive. First time in a decade I've had to completely restore a drive from backups. To their credit, Paragon refunded my money for the flawed software.

Press Release?

[yakatz]

Has anyone seen this press release? I don't see a link to it in the original article and it isn't in the press section on Paragon's website. The last press release there is from 2018.

Re:

[Kernel Kurtz]

The last press release there is from 2018.

That says a lot in itself.

FAT32 is immortal

[kurkosdr]

So, does this mean we will finally stop seeing FAT32 (and it's awesome 4GB filesize limit) as the default filesystem in all thumbdrives? On one hand, I want the 4GB limit gone, and I am also glad that external Western Digital harddrives will probably stop shipping with NTFS (yes, NTFS, which means you have to "safely remove" them every time or risk losing data due to NTFS's caching). On the other hand I enjoy how a single thumbdrive can be moved across Android TV devices (Nexus Players for example), "dumb" TVs with USB media player functionality, DVB-T receivers, DVD/Blu-Ray players, old Linux LTS releases etc etc without any compatibility hurdles.

Re:

[itsme1234]

So, does this mean we will finally stop seeing FAT32 (and it's awesome 4GB filesize limit) as the default filesystem in all thumbdrives?

Probably not, at least for some more years, especially as many mobile devices don't include support and probably would never bother to. For your normal Linux distro yes, but that worked before too but for the mobile phones, tablets, video players, etc. it sucks big time; many phones (including the Pixels) can't do exFAT and even LineageOS has some policy of not providing ex

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

Probably not for many years to come. There are many millions of devices out there that only support FAT and it will take a long time for them to get replaced to the point where defaulting to exFAT makes sense. Consumers will just return drives if they plug them in and they don't instantly start working.

Re:

[infolation]

I actually find the 4GB limit quite refreshing at times. It makes you think 'do I really need to save this?'. Data storage in my industry (film) is out of control. It's nice to have something that puts a lid on things.

Re:

[OrangeTide]

there are a several file formats that split into multiple chunks, including a few video formats. Even a virtual machine disk image can be split into 2GB chunks.

Re:

[thegarbz]

I actually find the 4GB limit quite refreshing at times.

Sorry but that ship has sailed. 4GB stopped being a niche when software on DVD (and thus ISOs) stopped being a thing. 4GB is now an active limitation that affects everything from software recovery to simply copying some GoPro footage or a video from my phone.

Re:

[Randj Herdle]

There are distros larger than 4GB. Pentesters come immediately to mind.

Re:

[groobly]

Good quality thumb drives can be formatted for, for example, NTFS or ExFAT using windows. NTFS apparently wears them out faster, but I have yet to wear one out.

I believe that for a long time already, external USB drives under windows are not write-cached by default, which means that theoretically, you do not have to "safely remove" them. Also, it's a user-settable option.

Re:

[kurkosdr]

NTFS is cached even in external USB drives in Windows.

Re:

[tannhaus]

At least with SD cards, if you get one 64GB or above, they're already moving to exfat.

Re:

[shutdown -p now]

That's because SDXC spec mandates it. But you can still format them to whatever you want, and it's still common to reformat as FAT32 to allow access from Linux and cheap Android devices.

Am I missing something?

[Zaraday]

$ grep EXFAT /usr/src/linux/.config
CONFIG_EXFAT_FS=y
CONFIG_EXFAT_DONT_MOUNT_VFAT=y
CONFIG_EXFAT_DISCARD=y
# CONFIG_EXFAT_DELAYED_SYNC is not set
# CONFIG_EXFAT_KERNEL_DEBUG is not set
# CONFIG_EXFAT_DEBUG_MSG is not set
CONFIG_EXFAT_DEFAULT_CODEPAGE=437
CONFIG_EXFAT_DEFAULT_IOCHARSET="utf8"

Running 5.4.24-ck at the moment, but I seem to remember enabling it a few years ago to transfer files with my wife's MacBook.

Re: Am I missing something?

[ScepticOne]

Until relatively recently the exFAT driver was running under FUSE, in userspace. I think the in-kernel driver has been available out of tree for a while, but wasn't pulled by Linus due to the potential legal risks.

exFAT support already exists in distros

[weeboo0104]

I'm running Debian and Ubuntu at the moment and I first loaded the exFAT utils a year ago. It was only a matter of time until the filesystem was available in the kernel as well.
Why is Paragon so bent out of shape about the kernel support when loading exFAT was as easy as "apt install exfat-fuse exfat-utils"?

Re:

[sonofusion82]

Available does not mean "legal" to use, like many of the video/audio codecs. We can probably use it for personal use but it is still patented and the patent owner may come after you if you are a big enough fish.

Re:

[thegarbz]

Why is Paragon so bent out of shape about the kernel support when loading exFAT was as easy as "apt install exfat-fuse exfat-utils"?

Imagine how out of shape Microsoft would be if all computer vendors started shipping Linux by default. The ability for a user to do something has never been relevant when your business is based around helping a consumer do something. If the consumer gets given that something by default all of a sudden you'd be upset as well.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Crappy exFAT on Linux???

[flajann]

ExFAT FS has been on Linux for how long now? And why is Microsoft pushing their crappy FS? I am looking forward to doing a new installation, eventually, using ZFS as the root partition. Something ultra-mega-cool. Can you even picture exFAT for your root partition? Not sure what the big whoop is, unless this is some more of Microsoft's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish tactics. Windows should embrace ZFS instead. Seriously.