Why does linux native file system prefer 'ExtFS' file system? What is the benefit over NTFS? [closed]

For almost all linux distros I came across, it seems to prefer 'ExtFS' file system for the installation drive. Why does it not go for NTFS ?

Obviously, everyone has their own taste and style and more suitable environment to be at optimal whilst performing. But coming from windows, it does seem new.

I want to know what are the benefits of 'ExtFS' over 'NTFS' ?

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3 Answers

NTFS doesn’t support some features that are important for Linux, like Unix-style file permissions and symlinks. It can't be used for most parts of a Linux system.

Microsoft doesn’t support the creation of a NTFS driver for Linux. The current driver is largely made by reverse engineering and doesn't support all NTFS features.

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The preference isn't about a subjective or theoretical EXT vs NTFS, just as this isn't about Linux's native EXT implementation against Microsoft's native NTFS implementation. It's about Linux-mainline EXT vs the NTFS-3G driver.

That's the choice these installers are making. And that's why they always pick the native version.

Ext is more mature in Linux. It has had powers more people testing it under Linux. It has more people working on it (being part of Linux itself, rather than a third-party driver). And developments to the EXT standard happen in Linux, not another operating system first.

There are technical reasons too. Historically there have been some limitations around what NTFS-3G can do. The permission system is subtly different. The users are different. ACL support is different. These are all things that would bias you towards another filesystem that did support all those things in the way you were expecting them to work.

Linux is free open source software. As such you find manufacturers such as Apple, Microsoft and Google will take that code and develop it for their own platforms.

On Linux the ext file system was created in April 1992. On Windows the ntfs file system was created in 1993. Some would say Microsoft Engineers could have looked at Linux systems as a model for their own code. I'm not saying that though :)

Linux can read and write ntfs file systems but it is not a native file system and performance would be sub-standard in many instances. Plus you may have problems with permissions.

Anyway when using Ubuntu the best choice for the average user is ext4 (the fourth extended file system).

HTH (Hope This Helps)

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