[paulddraper]

Compatibility.

The number of exFAT filesystems is large. (Perhaps not as big as FAT32, but on the other hand it has fewer limitations.)

[m-p-3]

That, and the performance penalty of implementing a filesystem in userspace compared to the kernel is significant.

So having ExFAT natively supported and having better performance is great for everyone.

[squirrelicus]

Hmm. By compatibility do you mean translatable metadata across filesystems?

[tssva]

By compatibility he likely means that exFAT is supported by Windows and macOS which means allowing the usage of exFAT will facilitate easy exchanging of external storage media between systems.

Also by spec SDXC cards come formatted as exFAT filesystems and this change means Linux can now be compatible with them without requiring reformatting them with another filesystem.