[KLUG Members] FYI: Fedora and NTFS

[Robert G. Brown]

On Fri, 17 Mar 2006 22:40:19 -0500, Eric Beversluis <econophil at charter.net> wrote:

>After just about a full day's work (lots of learning got done--I just
>didn't want to be spending my time now learning this stuff), I got it
>all running.
Well, that's good! Software has it's own way of decidin gwhat you need to
know, like a lot of things.

I am nearing the end (let's hope) of something of a slugfest concerning so 
many issues it's hard to beleive. Clearly I've probably made a mistake or two, 
but persistance and the constant availability of alternatives has seen me 
through. I've learned that former through experience on many platforms, but 
the latter is available to me cheifly via Linux.

>Had to download a separate RPM and then figure out how to
>edit fstab to get the FAT32 and NTFS firs to mount and then to let me
>have ownership and reading privileges.
All seems like good experience to me!

>Here's what I found out about things:
>
>On p. 186 in _The Complete Guide to Linux Administration_, in what is
>one of only three references to the Windows NTFS file system, Nicholas
>Wells says, "Linux supports read access to this file system."
>Unfortunately, while virtually every other Linux distro includes support
>for reading NTFS files systems (relevant for dual-boot systems),
>Fedora/Red Hat does not.

Here you go again with the books.

>The wiki at linux-ntfs.org, FAQ 6 asks:
>"6.1 Which distributions support NTFS out of the box?
>The Linux Distributions that are known to support NTFS are: Mandrake,
>Debian, SuSE, Gentoo, Lindows and Caldera
>In fact, the pattern is, that if the name isn’t RedHat, then they will
>support NTFS.
Not hardly an established pattern yet. We've got anpther 150 or so distros to 
check out :)

>Back to the top
>6.2 Why don't RedHat support NTFS?
>I’d really like to know. The rumours are that it’s a legal worry."
Now now, let's not spread these rumours. It is best to leave them be. The 
practical fact is that it doesn't support NTFS, but wuith a bit of digging and 
thanks to RPM, you got what you needed. Fact is, you didn't have to do a LOT 
ofthings that were essential until fairly recently.

							Regards,
							---> RGB <---