[shoo_pl]

It's actually exFAT thats portable. NTFS is mostly for windows users, and macs do support it - though only reading.

[harry8]

Anyone know why? Given ext2 has had a public domain implementation for more than a decade? Is it because windows & mac won't support ext2 even for free? Seems like a better lowest common denominator fs than any of the fats?

[shikoba]

You can't use easily ext2 on an external storage because of permissions.

[MisterTea]

That's because Linux and OSX ignore NTFS permissions making it work more like FAT.

Plug an existing NTFS drive from one Windows system into another Windows system and you get a similar issue where opening a home directory requires you to take ownership.

[shikoba]

But Linux refuse to ignore permissions on an ext2.

[harry8]

Isn't that how it's mounted that matters there?

[shikoba]

I never find an option to ignore permissions.

[cerved]

that depends, exFAT lacks permissions and symlinks. I think FreeBSD has NTFS support but lacks exFAT

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> that depends, exFAT lacks permissions and symlinks.

The lack of permissions is why it works as a portable file system. If you've ever tried to use, say, ext for this it becomes clear why nobody does that.

[boring_twenties]

You can just pass -o uid=X,gid=Y when mounting ext2 to solve this.