{"id":233479,"date":"2026-04-20T14:34:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T18:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/20\/linux-7-1-will-have-an-optional-new-ntfs-driver-the-register\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T15:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T19:40:09","slug":"linux-7-1-will-have-an-optional-new-ntfs-driver-the-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/20\/linux-7-1-will-have-an-optional-new-ntfs-driver-the-register\/","title":{"rendered":"Linux 7.1 will have an optional new NTFS driver \u2022 The Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

Linux 7.1 will have an optional new NTFS driver \u2022 The Register<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.theregister.com\/2026\/04\/20\/linux_71_new_ntfs\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-04-20 14:34:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.theregister.com<\/a><\/p>\n

The feature list for Linux kernel 7.1 is taking shape, and a standout addition has already landed: a new read-write NTFS driver.<\/p>\n

Now that kernel 7.0 is out, the all-seeing Eye of Torvalds has shifted its gaze to the future kernel 7.1, which is likely to appear in a couple of months. One standout feature has already been merged: a new in-kernel read-write driver for Windows’ default disk format, NTFS. Linus referred to it as the ntfs resurrection from Namjae Jeon. Some of the more excitable Linux blogs are getting breathless about this \u2013 but in our humble opinion, they’re missing the real message.<\/p>\n

This will not represent a massive shift in performance or anything like that. The existing in-kernel NTFS support is quite quick already. The real lesson to take from this is about clean, maintainable, thoroughly commented code, which means that one developer can take it over from another even decades later.<\/p>\n

Why the switch<\/h3>\n

The Reg FOSS desk described the driver in October 2025, and we recapped its history back then. It’s from Korean developer Namjae Jeon, formerly of Samsung but now working with Samba. He’s on his way to being one of the Linux filesystem gurus: as we reported in 2022, back then he contributed the code to allow Linux to fix corrupted exFAT volumes, which we are sure by now has saved the data of many users of large flash storage media.<\/p>\n

This is\u00a0not a\u00a0huge new Linux feature. As this archived copy of the Linux-NTFS Project web page shows, Linux got the ability to read NTFS volumes with kernel 2.1.74 in 1997. Just over a decade later, that was joined by the FUSE NTFS-3G driver, which is sponsored by Tuxera. Because it runs as a user-mode program, not inside the kernel, NTFS-3G isn’t as fast and is a little more limited: you can’t boot from it, for instance.<\/p>\n

That changed in 2021, when Paragon Software donated a new read-write GPL NTFS driver to the kernel. After considerable\u00a0effort and discussion, that made it into kernel 5.15…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Linux 7.1 will have an optional new NTFS driver \u2022 The Register https:\/\/www.theregister.com\/2026\/04\/20\/linux_71_new_ntfs\/ Publish Date:…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":233480,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/regmedia.co.uk\/2021\/11\/22\/shutterstock_penguin_window.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[71],"class_list":["post-233479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux","tag-linux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233479"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":233481,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233479\/revisions\/233481"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}