Accessing an external hard drive on ubuntu linux

[Colin Watson]

On Sat, Feb 13, 2021 at 02:32:04PM +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
> On 13/2/21 1:51 pm, Volker Wysk wrote:
> > Am Samstag, den 13.02.2021, 13:43 +0800 schrieb Bret Busby:
> > > On 13/2/21 1:05 pm, Volker Wysk wrote:
> > > > Do you have installed the exfat-utils package?
> > > 
> > > My experience is that the xFAT driver has been present by default, in
> > > Ubuntu Linux, since 12.04 .
> > 
> > I have a different experience. It wasn't installed by default in Ubuntu and
> > Xubuntu...
> 
> Ah.
> 
> Maybe it is a feature of UbuntuMATE?
> 
> Although, I am not sure whether 12.04 was UbuntuMATE, or, was Ubuntu running
> gnome2.

Ubuntu MATE didn't exist until 15.04 (or maybe 14.10, but if that
existed I think it was an unofficial release).

I'm not sure how you got it by default in 12.04, as exfat-utils doesn't
seem to show up in the list of packages installed by default there.
Perhaps this is some kind of special case, or perhaps I'm missing
something, or perhaps you're misremembering; I'm not sure which.

exfat-utils currently seems to be installed by default by Ubuntu MATE
and Ubuntu Kylin, but not the other flavours.  At one point we
explicitly decided not to include it by default in Ubuntu due to patent
licensing concerns [1].  Later, Microsoft announced that they were
supporting integration of the kernel side of exFAT into the Linux kernel
[2] [3]; it's possible that may change Ubuntu's view of things, though I
wouldn't be surprised if we wanted to run it past internal legal review
first.  (It's not something that I personally have the time or
motivation to push for.)

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/exfat-utils/+bug/1649537
[2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/intellectualproperty/tech-licensing/programs?activetab=pivot1:primaryr5
[3] https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/opensource/2019/08/28/exfat-linux-kernel/

-- 
Colin Watson (he/him)                              [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]