Every day of the week and twice on Sundays. You think I'm going to apologise for having a need to do a certain task? Eeeugh, that is, for desperate want of a better term, such a linux attitude. How dare I need to read exfat disks! I should try not to have that need, eh? Counter-revolutionary *******, I am. I fear you still misunderstand. Just look at that error message. It knows what exfat is. It knows what command it needs to run to mount the disk. And, as we saw later in the thread, making it possible to do so is - if you believe it'll be as simple as stated on various noname websites, which it probably won't be in reality, but let's give you the benefit of no doubt whatsoever - relatively simple. So what's actually going on here is that Linux Mint is deliberately failing in order to make a political point, and not a political point about anything particuarly worthwhile - a point about filesystem licensing which most people wouldn't even understand, let alone care about. Making that point is more important than, you know, being an operating system. If you can't see anything wrong with that attitude, again, I challenge your fundamental understanding of modern computing.
Pardon? Who said anything about apologising? I have no idea what you're on about now, Phil. I did. Having worked in support - a long time ago, thank goodness - I'd call that an absolutely ideal error message. It tells me what it thought it was doing, what it tried to do it on, and why it didn't work. Compare that with the genuine Windows error message I posted upthread, which starts out by lying right off the bat: the disk is formatted, just not in a format Windows recognises - because Microsoft chose not to implement that format. And I challenge your reading comprehension. Linux Mint cannot bundle exFAT support, because Microsoft prevents it from doing so. Nothing to do with a political point; this is all on Microsoft. Had Microsoft truly wanted to create a nice, easy-to-implement file system to make everyone's life better, it wouldn't have encumbered it with restrictive licensing and patents. Y'know, like the creators of ext4 didn't. I'm still not getting why this all makes you so angry. If you don't like Linux, don't use it. I don't like the way Windows does a lot of things, but it's no skin off my nose - I just don't use it. I certainly don't spend my time badmouthing it in forums for no readily apparent reason. EDIT: Although Alternate-Universe Gareth has something to add:
Sure it can. It'd just have to pay a fee - which on a lot of copies, I'm extremely confident would be cents each, which I'm more than happy to pay. Or, it could also perform a black-box reverse engineering effort, probably. It's exactly the same concern as exists with Ubuntu and the "install restricted things" box. If it can be done, why not do it by default? Oh, because that doesn't present such a juicy opportunity to go... ...now does it? I'm going to keep saying it until someone hears me, but if someone were to bring out a properly licenced version of Linux which solved all these problems, it could probably even be just as expensive as windows, and I'd probably be a user. Why won't they? Because they want to make a point. A point most people would need a four-year degree to even understand, let alone care about.
You still haven't said why you'd be a user? What's wrong with Windows that you're so desperate to move away from it you long for an expensive commercial Linux distribution? Well, your wish is my command. SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop. Pay for a support contract, and they'll add whatever features you like to the operating system - including exFAT support. I look forward to reading about how you've given up Windows and are now a SLED user - y'know, like you said you would. As you can see, they do. There are plenty of commercially-supported Linux distros which include licensed or otherwise restricted technology. Don't like SuSE? Try Red Hat, or buy an Ubuntu contract from Canonical. I mean, you are going to switch away from Windows, right? That's what you've been saying all along. Today's your lucky day, then!
FYI, there is a read-only solution for most of non-Windows filesystems : http://www.diskinternals.com/reader-for-tc/ Sure, it is read only, and it is only a Total Commander plugin, and usually it needs admin privileges for his task - but there is a way if it is required. And once again Phil, exfat IS an esoteric filesystem.
I've actually had read/write ext2 support working in Windows before. I say "working..." It wasn't easy, and it broke after a short while - and it was a heck of a lot harder than "sudo apt-get install exfat*" but it did, briefly, work. That was a long time ago, mind - and I'd imagine the read-only utility you've linked is a lot more robust.
I am filled with confidence that SuSE can solve the problem. Oh, and for what it's worth, the reason I put Mint on my laptop in the first place is that it's only a little atom netbook and all I do on it is write, so I thought it wouldn't be too taxing for Tux's dear little avian head (clearly, I was wrong), and it might be faster. Which was also wrong. It's slower to boot that it was under win7, endless Linux claims of efficiency notwithstanding.
You've paid for a support licence, like you said you would, right? Have you sent in a request for exFAT implementation to your support contact? What's that? No? I'm shocked to learn you've been misrepresenting your desire to use Linux if only it cost the same as Windows. Shocked, I tell you! Then there's something very wrong with your netbook. My daughter - two - has an Atom-based netbook which runs Linux with a customised kid-friendly user interface. Boots from the on-board 4GB SSD in seconds - on the rare times that it actually gets booted from cold; most of the time it sits in suspend mode for instant-on joy. I'd have to check, but I'd guess its current uptime is somewhere in the months - and that only 'cos it ran out of battery at one point. I'm still not sure why you haven't spent your time more productively, and instead of attempting - and, judging from the responses from others in this thread, failing - to paint Linux in a bad light because it doesn't fit your use-case, just install Windows on the netbook instead?
What I actually did was to search their site for "exfat" to see if they'd implemented it, which they haven't. But for some reason, the forum software is failing to show the image. At least, it is for me. It's here: http://imagebin.org/310589 P So, what, your solution to an OS that doesn't implement a feature I need is to suggest another OS that doesn't implement that feature?
I saw the image when I quoted your post. Not really sure what that proves. Here's a search for "Athlon" on Microsoft.com - note how there's no official results, just a bunch of forum posts. Clearly, I should assume that Windows doesn't support Athlon processors, right? Actually, there is exFAT support in SuSE. Just ask your support representative. Oh, wait, right, you were lying about wanting to buy a commercially-supported Linux distribution. My mistake. And no, my suggestion all along has been to install Windows which does include exFAT support. Remember?
I could choose to be offended by that, but to be honest I'm used to linux people being offensive and difficult, so once again, I'll let you off. And no, I'm not going to pay money for something that only might solve a problem and doesn't seem to know that the problem exists. I doubt they're going to write an exfat driver for me for - what is it - £30? P
Ooh, Alternate-Universe Gareth has something to say about that: Good job the driver's already written, then. And I can say that as a fact, 'cos I just installed it on my desktop. Took less than thirty seconds, and then another minute to find an SD card and my reader and format said card as exFAT. Have you given SuSE your credit card details yet?
Then why do they want money for it?! Please, Linux world, make up your mind whether you can or can't do something and what the cost of it is if I want it. P
They don't: they want you to pay for a support contract so you can have your hand held. You wanted to pay for it, remember? "I'm extremely confident would be cents each, which I'm more than happy to pay." You did say that, right? You can do it for free, as you were shown in the very first message in this thread. That wasn't good enough for you, though, so now you've been shown how you can pay to have it done for you. And yet you're still not happy. What is it, exactly, that you want? Oh, and in case you thought I wasn't being truthful: See? ExFAT, working just fine and dandy in Linux. And no, I didn't need to use the terminal to show you that - it was just quicker than using the GUI.
Then why the hell is it not included by default?! What works? What doesn't? What does it do? What does it not do? Good grief!
You're going in circles, Phil. That question was answered on page one. Answer me this: why the hell is DVD playback not included by default in Windows 8.1?! I've certainly got a lot more DVDs than I have exFAT drives - although I now have one, to my previous zero, so that's basically infinite growth. In Linux in general? Too big a list to put in a forum post. That's a pretty big list, too. What does what do? Linux? Slice? Dice? Julienne? My sentiments exactly. If you're not going to come up with anything new to say, Phil, I'd say we're done here. Nice playing with you!
No, it wasn't. You said it couldn't be included for legal reasons. Then you said it was free. You'll have to excuse my confusion. Right now I'm at the stage where I need a feature which can maybe be made available in the OS I have, which in Linux-world tends to mean that it was or may have been available at some time to someone somewhere and might possibly be available to some other people, which may include me, give or take some fiddling, downloading, hacking, patching, compiling, installing and configuring, which may or may not require a first-class degree in comp sci. Or, possibly, there might be a commercial option which might possibly do it, but I have to pay them £30 even to ask, and the answer is likely to be "well we could develop it if we get enough interest", which is, funnily enough, exactly the same answer you'd get from the open source crowd, just with less txtspk and less whining about microsoft. So, well, yes, we have a few might-maybe-possibly options. Which is sort of what Linux specialises in, in my experience. P
Nice wriggling, Phil, but you're misrepresenting the facts. You have been told several times that exFAT cannot be distributed with Linux by default owing to licensing restrictions placed upon it by Microsoft. Said restrictions do not prevent it being distributed as a user-installable userspace driver, though. You have been shown how a user-space module can be quickly installed in your Linux distribution to add exFAT support, at zero cost to yourself. This is apparently not good enough. You have been shown how you can pay for a commercial Linux support contract in order to have somebody else install and support it for you. This is apparently not good enough. I fail to see where your confusion lies. Here, perhaps this will help: Microsoft does not provide DVD codecs with Windows 8.1 owing to licensing restrictions placed upon it (well, because it doesn't want to pay the pennies per copy it would cost - but let's keep things simple.) You can install a free, third-party codec package to get DVD support back in Windows at no cost to yourself. You can pay for Microsoft's official Windows Media bundle and get a fully supported DVD codec pack. See the similarities, Phil? Oh, but wait - I have an incoming message! Remember, it took me thirty seconds and a single command to install exFAT support into Linux. And guess what: amazingly, I don't have a degree in computer science! A shock, I know.
You're reduced to supporting your position, here, by citing a situation which makes no sense whatsoever. Slow handclap time, I think. Your attempt to characterise windows in the same light would be laughable if it weren't being used as an excuse for bad behaviour by the open source community. Yes, it's completely insane that Windows still ships with no DVD support - an absolutely jaw-dropping oversight for which there is no excuse. It's appalling. I'm astounded by this situation every time I install VLC for someone. Notice, if you haven't already, that I have no difficulty in acknowledging this problem because I'm not emotionally invested in an operating system, for christ's sake. I just want things to work, as do most of the people I support. They want, for instance, a program to watch DVDs on, not an error message designed to make a political point practically nobody does or should have to care about. Maybe it'll help to consider an example: let's say someone is taking a periodical to press, and needs to upload files from an exfat device, using a laptop that runs linux. They will, of course, get that error message. Now, do you think that the need for linux people to wave that placard in the face of someone who won't even understand why it matters is more or less important than the need to get a magazine out on time to all of its readers, supporting the work of the journalists, publishers, printworkers, and other people? Could we, for instance, put out a photocopied pamphlet whingeing about microsoft's business practices instead? Would the customers accept that? Because that's ultimately what we're talking about here. The people who make these decisions are so pathologically tiny-minded, their concerns so inexpressibly trivial, that I struggle to express just how little this stuff matters against the simple need to build things that work, and work immediately, out of the box, with no hassle and no need to type "$ su - cat /proc/partitions cd /media mkdir usbdrive mount -t exfat /dev/sdd1 usbexfat". Which wouldn't have worked for me anyway and will naturally have changed by Friday. P
