Filesystem for Linux installation?

[plazma]

Should I format my drive as Fat32 or NTFS before installing Linux?

Thx

 

[ponder]

None of the above. Just leave it and let linux format it. It uses different filesystems like ext3, ext4, xfs, jfs, reiserfs, btrfs etc Usually defaults to ext3 or ext4 though.

If the drive is exclusively for linux then ignore MS filesystems. If however you are going to dualboot with windows it's optional to create a NTFS or FAT32 data partition which both can then read. Windows can also read ext3 files system with the addition of a ext3 driver.

 

[plazma]

Thank you, it became apparent that Linux would take care of this housekeeping by itself, and I allowed it to happily do so.

 

[SilverNodashi]

if you're going to share data between two OS's, then you could use something like explore2fs, or otherwise install fuse & fuse-3g on the Linux box to access your NTFS drives.

 

[plazma]

Thanks for the suggestion, I'm checking git out now.

 

[BigAl-sa]

if you're going to share data between two OS's, then you could use something like explore2fs, or otherwise install fuse & fuse-3g on the Linux box to access your NTFS drives.

I'm interested as to why you'd use these?? On my Ubuntu machine, Nautilus picks these up automatically for r/w, and on Kubuntu, I use a simple mount command and access the drives from krusader with r/w access.

 

[SilverNodashi]

I'm interested as to why you'd use these?? On my Ubuntu machine, Nautilus picks these up automatically for r/w, and on Kubuntu, I use a simple mount command and access the drives from krusader with r/w access.

Are you using FAT32 or NTFS?? And did you know that NTFS writes from Linux sometimes cause problems?? Did you also know there are other linux distro's than (*)buntu? Just cause Ubuntu supports it doesn't mean other distro's support it as well, hence my advice. Someone else with a different distro may look for an answer to this same problem and find my reponse useful

 

[BigAl-sa]

Are you using FAT32 or NTFS?? And did you know that NTFS writes from Linux sometimes cause problems?? Did you also know there are other linux distro's than (*)buntu? Just cause Ubuntu supports it doesn't mean other distro's support it as well, hence my advice. Someone else with a different distro may look for an answer to this same problem and find my reponse useful

Been using the mount method (which should work on any distro) for more than three years now, with no hassles, and I mainly mount ntfs drives, but have used it with FAT32 (and FAT16 for that matter).

BTW, I wasn't having a dig, I'm genuinely interested to know why you rate the software, especially with your hardware b/g.

 

[SilverNodashi]

Been using the mount method (which should work on any distro) for more than three years now, with no hassles, and I mainly mount ntfs drives, but have used it with FAT32 (and FAT16 for that matter).

BTW, I wasn't having a dig, I'm genuinely interested to know why you rate the software, especially with your hardware b/g.

Well, I made my suggestion on the base that I mainly work on servers which doesn't have X installed, and XEN based virtual containers which needs fuse support in order to mount NTFS. I also don't recall CentOS being able to mount (as read-write) NTFS on X, out of the box

The mount method does work on any distro, but mounting NTFS doesn't work on any distro out of the box, so you may need to install extra software and fuse works very well

 

[BigAl-sa]

Well, I made my suggestion on the base that I mainly work on servers which doesn't have X installed, and XEN based virtual containers which needs fuse support in order to mount NTFS. I also don't recall CentOS being able to mount (as read-write) NTFS on X, out of the box

The mount method does work on any distro, but mounting NTFS doesn't work on any distro out of the box, so you may need to install extra software and fuse works very well

Doesn't mount -t ntfs ... work? I thought that was kernel level??

 

[SilverNodashi]

Doesn't mount -t ntfs ... work? I thought that was kernel level??

Yes, it does. if you have a kernel with NTFS support It's not included in all kernels by default.

 

[BigAl-sa]

Yes, it does. if you have a kernel with NTFS support It's not included in all kernels by default.

Ok I understand now

When I still had a running webserver, I didn't upgrade the kernel for the four years that it was up

 

[Tacet]

Microsoft released the FAT32 specification, making it easy to write support for it. NTFS is still propriety (afaik), so support for it is backward engineered. Hence the occasional trouble in writing to NTFS.

If you're not sure about what filesystem to format as, I wouldn't recommend a distro that doesn't have NTFS enabled in the kernel, though. Imagine, a Linux newb on Gentoo or Arch....