Windows XP driver to read ext3 partitions? - Page 2

Are you being sarcastic? Honestly I cannot tell, and not to be insulting if you aren't, but this is probably the largest use of Linux on PCs. LAMP, or Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP is one of the, if not the, most common software solution for web servers. There is constant debate depending on how you measure(Domains, vs IP addresses, vs whatever) LAMP has significant market penetration no matter what method you measure with though, in most cases I believe I see the numbers 60-70 percent tossed around, though as I mentioned above it varies based on measurements used I believe. I believe you did not intend the double negative in the first sentence, at any rate I am going to assume that, feel free to correct me if I am wrong. Support has nothing to do with Linux itself, that has much more to do with the distribution and company backing it. Minix FS I believe, and yes it does still exist. Also I believe ext (Not ext2,3, or 4, but the first one) is also still supported via the ext drivers. ANd of course you still have the various FAT drivers(Not just 16 or 32, but also FAT12 I believe) Fun reading on that topic.... http://www.tldp.org/LDP/tlk/fs/filesystem.html And is only part of the equation. If you were going to mass market something for the linux crowd, you want to make sure you know your market. As mentioned above LAMP is one of the most popular webhosting stacks out there. Two pieces of software are mentioned in its name directly(Apache and MySQL). Cedega has been marketed and survived as a gaming system for linux(Surprised the hell outta me, I didn't think WineX was going to survive myself). Again you make sure you know your market. And the above is in almost every case not true. Even embedded systems, that did use the 2.4 kernel, have now started switching to 2.6. The tiniest embedded systems might still use 2.4, of course by that time you only have a single kernel to write software for anyways. And the vast majority of software does not use the kernel directly anyways. In as far as different xservers or desktop environment, again know your audience. For most people Xorg is the ONLY XServer on the consumer desktop anymore, though some still use XFree. But for most developers, developing using one of the already existing graphic toolkits will take care of ALL of that for you anyways. The XServer abstracts out the hardware drivers so you should never be dealing with that directly. And most window managers can display anything written for another WM, how well it looks compared to itself/other software is a different matter. You should also never be dealing with the direct filesystem calls unless you are dealing on a kernel level, not something your average software has to worry about. This is abstracted out by the kernel, and by various other things on top of it. And again, while this enters the realm of opinion and conjecture on both are points, it is much easier for an open system to have drivers written for it on Windows, than a closed system on Linux. IN as far as the drivers mentioned, there are 3 possibilities I know of that people might use on everyday work. NTFS-3G is a fairly newcomer to the field. There are/is commercial solutions out there, one in particular I believe the company name is Paragon? But it is extremely slow compared to NTFS-3G or ext from what I have been told, and of course I don't believe it is open source. And there are the captive drivers, which might have legality issues for some people, but at the least require closed source binary drivers from windows to work. So really for most people, there might be 2 solutions, many only the NTFS-3G which as I mentioned, is still a relative newcomer to the field. In which case the ONLY solution then would be FAT, which is an awful solution for larger filesystems. Most consumer devices only read and write some form of FAT, either FAT16 or FAT32. I would have to look up the FS used by the cameras you mentioned, I know some of the Sony's are around near me, but I would be interested to see, I am willing to bet it uses FAT. Now in the future that probably WILL change as MS now has a patent on the FAT filesystems used by the vast majority of consumer devices. Many people will start looking elsewhere, not only as storage increases on those devices(Which FAT is poor at large storage as I already mentioned) but also because they don't want to be dealing with licensing issues(Which NTFS will fall under as the alternative from MS). But my problem with your reasoning is you are depending on an open source programmer(s) to develop this driver, but say they will abandon the other, for no other reason than it might be backwards supported in the MS OSes so therefore might be more supported(Despite by that point we are talking entierly about very dedicated situations to use outdated FS's, which I can count on one hand most likely and would have to think for a long time to come up with) Seablade

NP, appology accepted.

You cut it short. I meant for the average desktop user. One of the reasons I still use Windows as my primary OS is preciscely because it is easier to install and configure. I re-install my primary OS about 3 or 4 times a year and with Windows I get it everything working and configured relatively quickly. I keep apps and data on a separate partition, so all I have to worry about is the OS and maybe a few other programs. With Linux I still have trouble with my modem (I can't use it in Linux with my dial-up internet connection), my wifi adaptor, my TV tuner, integrated camera, sometimes my sound card, games, network configuration, xserver config tuning, nntp, ect...; stuff that's fairly simple (or even automatic) in Windows. If I want to keep my kernel uptodate, that also tends to introduce complexities that I don't have with Windows Update.

Well I'm not sure what you are talking about, but maybe that's because it was not my intention to generally criticize Linux or OSS. Again, my intention was simply to point out why I didn't think it was suitable as a commercial competitor to MS (or any closed source 'standard' OS).

Well I do wish the community would gather together behind best of breed techs, but I also realize that that is unrealistic for OSS, which is one reason why I don't think OSS will ever be competitive on the commercial market. So I'm happy with Linux just the way it is, I'm actually very pleased that it's managed to become as popular as it has because it is so much easier to get stuff working on it now compared to just 7 years ago.

Yes, but after I had already made my recommendation, which is what I was called to taks to defend.

You mean for web servers. I thought you were using an internet acronym like LMAO or AFAIK. Web admin is a field I'm not very familiar with, furthermore I use Linux as a hobby as I suspect most Linux users do. I was talking about the average desktop user.

OK, I wouldn't expect that picture to change anytime soon then. Linux's strong point has historically been its database and fileserving capabilities, so I don't doubt your numbers. That, combined with Minix's FS still being supported in 2.6 leads me to believe that chances are that current ext FS's will be supported 20 years from now (or at least are as likely to be supported as NTFS). Actually come to think of it, that means NTFS will probably still be supported in the Linux kernel 20 years from now. I suspect the only reason it's still marked experimental is because it has to be since it is closed source. That only leaves the question of useability.

Well ultimately I think it's the userbase that drives development in either OS. Linux's userbase is I think somewhat amorphous since there is such a large number of applications developed and used, often for doing the same task. That tends to restrict marketshare and product longevity.

Ditto, especially considering that Cedega is a subscription based service, and still not guaranteed to work (or work well at least) for every game; hardly competative in comparison to Windows which, unfortunately, is already included with most computers. Maybe people buy Cedega for the same reason they buy hybrid cars.

Yes, but since the 'Linux market' is amporphous, that's a big impediment to commercial Linux apps ever gaining a foothold in the consumer market, thereby establishing a reliable degree of standardization. With so many free Linux apps available, what compelling reason do commercial Linux app developers have in comparison to Windows? MS Windows offers a consistent interface with a large reuseable code base. How many different laguages or API's would I have to code if I wanted to write an application that worked in Enlightenment, Gnome, KDE, Fluxbox, and etc... Commercial Linux vendors really have to target a specific market segment to be successfull.

Well not just major kernel versions, but more importantly minor versions. For example current Atheros wifi or ALSA sound, or NVidia display, or... drivers may work well with 2.6.19, but be a pain to deal with in 2.6.8.1. For a long time (2 years maybe?) there was only one officially stable NVidia driver available for Gentoo and it was stuck on one particular version. I imagine I could have manually tried a different (maybe the proprietary NVidia) module if I gamed on Linux, but that would have been a relative pain, and what issues might have I encountered? Serious sound support still requires the use of OSS dev's out of kernel modules as well. I suspect there are a number of users out there that don't want to have to change and/or reconfigure their kernels or recompile modules to best support their favorite hardware and/or applications. I suspect programmers who want to work directly with modular devices are beholden to devfs/udev developments, but I can't confirm. There are also several different package management systems used on different Distro's, each with their own conventions.

True, but the OSS community has done a decent job of proving that where there's a will, there's a way. NTFS is huge and will continue to be for at least 5 more years. Beyond that is perhaps a questionmark, but I believe industry adoption will drive the need for continued support just as the need to communicate between Linux and MS machines drove the development of SAMBA.

When I was in manufacturing about 2 years ago (they're probably still doing this), we were still using MS-DOS machines to program EPROMS, and programming FAT formatted Compact Flash cards for use in products we produced. "If it aint broke, don't fix it" is the industry mantra.

Perhaps, but there are several open source and/or commercial alternatives out there, and there have been for quite some time. In addition, a read-only in-kernel driver has been around at least as long as kernel 2.2, and useable write support introduced in 2.5 (and backported to 2.4). Again, from the info you've given me, I assume that it will probably stay in there for as long as Linux is around.

Bingo, and not only that but new cameras are still being released with FAT support even though MS has the patent.

I agree it will change, and probably pretty soon. We still disagree on a speculative point: IMHO NTFS is the most logical evolutionary step other than perhaps proprietary solutions, but I think NTFS will be so widespread that it wont matter that NTFS is proprietary to MS. Next gen flash products will have to be NTFS to take advantage of some of Vista's improvements, so why not make it the standard? I'm sure that's what MS wants to happen in the industry, especially as flash tech advances and prices drop and flash drives become more ubiquitous across a widening range of portable devices. Even if MS does ask for royalties, I think they will still make it attractive in comparison to forcing vendors to come up with their own proprietary solutions.

In summary, you've convinced me that the Linux FS's wont be abandoned by OSS dev's. I'm still not sure that ext will be the best solution for long term storage, but I do think that point can still be reasonably debated.

As I understand it the in kernel driver is still limited to overwrites that do not change a file size. Pretty much anything else has a good chance of destroying things. Could be wrong though as I haven't used it for anything but reading for that exact reason. NTFS-3G is the only one I have heard of that provides decent speed and reliability(Thus far) that doesn't require binary MS libraries(Captive). Since it is a relative newcomer it is difficult to judge long term stability in it though. Seablade

Seablade PWNS this thread LOL! Linux will always be interested in supporting at least read from other file systems if mainly for the reason of data recovery. Most PC repair places I know keep at least a copy of Knoppix around for data recovery and other options.
There is Windows XP PE Boot CD" you can make but from my expirience with them I would stick with using a live Linux distro for data recovery.
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
www.knopper.net