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Mount Mac And Windows Filesystems In Linux
By Taylor Gillespie
Expert Author
Article Date: 2010-11-30
As most offices are mixed platform environments these days, with more Apple products and Linux desktops co-existing with Windows boxes, there was a time when converter applications had to translate files one by one into a format, understandable to each respective system.
The Linux kernel as of 2.2 has supported NTFS, the filesystem that Windows uses, and on Debian systems, such as Ubuntu, there are the Apple developed mkfs and fsck for HFS+, the filesystem Apple uses. Setting up Linux to mount and access Mac and Windows filesystems so that Linux uses them natively with full read, write operations can be a chore, especially for mounting Apple devices. Third-party drivers and software packages make the process more seamless and more manageable.
The NTFS support in the Linux kernel takes some manual configuration to get working, and HFS+ support is very weak. Third party software, for example, you can mount Mac and Windows partitions Paragon Software's NTFS and HFS+ for Linux. They are a commercial software package, which is the only caveat, but they have two versions depending on your needs. So, while not open source, this software installs its own drivers and supporting scripts that do all the heavy lifting, making Mac and Windows filesystems appear and behave like normal disks. In a truly mixed environment, you can you can even access Mac and Windows filesystems with, because it run atop the Linux kernel, Paragon Software's NTFS and HFS+ for Android. Removable media becomes truly shareable and usable.
With such easy native usage of foreign filesystems, especially the arguably superior HFS+, could become a viable filesystem choice for Linux desktops and servers, although the ubiquitous FAT32, ext2/3, and the more common variants will have vastly more support. Nonetheless, with a more intuitive setup than out-of-the-box Linux, through third-party applications, Linux can more natively utilize Mac, Windows and Linux filesystems in a variety of situations: over the network or even more commonly through removable media.
About the Author:
Taylor is a Staff Writer for WebProNews
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