Ars Technica reports that the Linux Foundation, a nonprofit vendor-neutral organization that coordinates development of the Linux kernel, may discontinue its use of Microsoft’s legacy FAT filesystem. The indicator came from blog post by Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin in which he comments on the outcome of the recently-settled patent dispute between Microsoft and navigation device-maker TomTom.
Microsoft’s FAT filesystem became the dominant format for memory cards and removable media due the popularity of the Windows operating system and many companies pay Microsoft to license the technology for use in their devices. Linux distributions use open source filesystems on internal storage, but still use Microsoft’s FAT format on removable media in order to ensure compatibility with Windows and existing devices.
Wed, Apr 1, 2009
General