NTFS3 support (Now that kernel version 5.15 contain new NTFS driver?)

[CKingX]

From what I have read on it, the major issue supporting NTFS has been the NTFS-3G FUSE driver. That said, at least in my tests, fstransform does work both ways (albeit I needed to manually specify source file system). Now that Ubuntu 22.04 will use kernel 5.15 (which has a new in-kernel driver NTFS3), I think its support will be super useful

[cosmos72]

Very good :)
I was following the kernel mailing list linux-ntfs-dev@lists.sourceforge.net, and after a lot of sustained traffic for NTFS3 technical discussion, last december it became very quiet - I take it means the integration is complete.

I am currently somewhat stuck on kernel 5.14 for technical reasons (due to work-from-home, I have a complex setup that is cumbersome to upgrade) but I'll try to switch to 5.15 or 5.16 and test the combination fstransform + NTFS3

[cosmos72]

I have upgraded my installation and tested conversion using the new NTFS3 driver.

It's very fast, but it seems sparse files are not supported (!)
Furthermore, the driver is already orphaned, as the author is no longer responding on linux-ntfs-dev mailing list or on other channels.

Both problems are unexpected and will significantly delay support for NTFS3 in fstransform - and likely for other applications too.

[CKingX]

Lack of sparse file is really surprising. Pretty sure ntfs-3g fuse driver supported sparse files, though it is fuse. Also no communication puts a damper on the NTFS3 driver. This is really unfortunate as having a proper in-kernel driver for NTFS was actually good news.

[CKingX]

I checked again today and sparse files are supported. You just need to add sparse as mount flag to create new sparse files.