Another New NTFS Driver for Linux Introduced

To three open-source NTFS drivers for Linux with medium or major weaknesses, “ntfsplus” now joins, promising to overshadow all previous ones. The new one comes from Namjae Jeon and is a kernel driver based on the first driver, which was removed from the kernel in Linux 6.9. However, it is still completely unclear whether or when the new driver for accessing Windows' standard file system will be integrated into the kernel: other Linux developers must first review it and approve its inclusion.

Kernel Integration: Whether and When is Uncertain

On the one hand, the chances are quite good, because Namjae Jeon knows what he is doing: He was the lead developer of the exFAT driver included in the kernel and the kernel's own SMB3 server (KSMB3); he continues to maintain both solutions. His expertise is evident in ntfsplus, which utilizes much of the infrastructure used by modern Linux file systems. This is likely also a reason why, according to the developer, the ntfsplus driver is expected to deliver better performance than the current NTFS driver in the Linux kernel, named ntfs3. Its feature set is also more extensive, which is why more tests are being run by the file system test suite valued by kernel developers.

On the other hand, ntfsplus includes all sorts of code, so the review will not be child's play. Above all, Linux developers normally avoid the inclusion of a new approach that is intended to replace an older one for the same task sooner or later; instead, they usually strongly push for incremental improvements to existing approaches. However, with ntfs3, originally developed by Paragon rather independently of the kernel, there was already an exception, as it was significantly better than the old NTFS driver, ntfs. The latter was a rather rudimentary approach that only offered experimental write support for NTFS. As a kernel driver, ntfs3 also promised advantages over the driver ntfs-3g, which is based on FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace).

It remains to be seen how the integration process will proceed. It is likely to speak in favor of ntfsplus that it runs somewhat unevenly with ntfs3 and many distributions still rely on the older ntfs-3g – which, however, also reveals some weaknesses upon closer inspection. In any case, Namjae Jeon seems to be very committed to the matter and wants to improve the file system tools for repairing and administering NTFS volumes, as well as implement full journaling support in the kernel driver. Further details on the whole matter can be found in the announcement about ntfsplus on the Linux kernel mailing list.

(olb)