Is NTFS on the way out? [LWN.net]

Is NTFS on the way out?

Posted Jan 25, 2026 23:16 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Is NTFS on the way out? by marcH
Parent article: Filesystem medley: EROFS, NTFS, and XFS

> Who knows, software updates might not take 30 minutes anymore.

How is that even related? Android and macOS do that, too — and they are not using NTFS.

They all are just using process that is less error-prone (and is actually even recommended by many Linux distributions, just not enforced) instead of giving the user rope and hoping that s/he not hung himself or herself.

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Is NTFS on the way out?

Posted Jan 26, 2026 5:15 UTC (Mon) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (1 responses)

It's related because when you cannot delete files in use then you need to stop, delete and restart processes using the files. And when you are not 100% sure, then you need to restart pretty much everything.

It may not be the only upgrade limitation but it's an important one.

> Android and macOS do that, too

"How is that even related?"

Is NTFS on the way out?

Posted Jan 26, 2026 18:11 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> It's related because when you cannot delete files in use then you need to stop,

Or you nick an idea or two from the 80s ... and rename the old file in place so you can replace it.

You still need to reboot to ensure everything is running the upgrade, and then clean up all the old files, but that's not too hard ...

Cheers,
Wol