Can Ubuntu Linux be installed on FAT32 or NTFS?

Question

Before I start, don't lecture me on the fact that FAT32 is old and hasn't been updated for nearly 20 years. Right now I have sorted that. I am trying to install Ubuntu Linux onto a 64GB flash drive and it wants me to format it to one of the EXT file systems.

The problem is if I put the flash drive into a Windows PC, I can't use it. I also can't install the required software onto every Windows PC that I will use. When I tried to install it on FAT32 I got an error and there is no option for NTFS.

Does anyone know how I could do this? Maybe a Windows based tool? Thanks in advance.

Solution 1

Linux relies on a number of filesystem features that simply are not supported by FAT or NTFS -- Unix-style ownership and permissions, symbolic links, etc. Thus, Linux can't be installed to either FAT or NTFS. (It used to be possible to do this using a FAT driver that adds those features, but it was removed from the kernel years ago because nobody was maintaining it.)

If you need a USB flash drive that both boots Linux and can be accessed from Windows, then I second Zonder's recommendation to create a FAT or NTFS data partition on the drive, along with the Linux partition(s). Note that you'll need to put the FAT or NTFS partition first on the disk, because Windows treats USB flash drives as "superfloppies," and will access only the first partition on the disk. Linux is not limited in this way, so you can put the Linux partition(s) after the shared-data partition. Also note that you can't use FAT or NTFS as the Linux /home partition; if you go this route, you'll need to mount the shared-data partition somewhere else in Linux.

Solution 2

How about creating 2 partitions one for linux os minimal size and then leave the rest as fat32. That way linux gets what it wants and you can stil use the remaining space.

I am not sure how mac os will behave with this but windows is supposed to ignore all partitions on a removable drive except the first windows readable one.

There is a program called bootice which can help you do this. But a quick internet search will find lots of articles on partitioning a usb drive.

Solution 3

As of 5.15 Linux can be installed on NTFS (though it may break at any minute), and even alongside Windows.

Do not try this unless you're familiar with both Linux and Windows.

Comments

[09stephenb]

The problem is that the other space is bootable too.

[Sergey Ponomarev]

> Also note that you can't use FAT or NTFS as the Linux /home partition As I remember, I used monted /home to NTFS partion and hadn't any problems. But I'm not sure. Why you recommend to avoid this?

[Sergey Ponomarev]

"It used to be possible to do this using a FAT driver that adds those feature" Is I correctly understood you that previously Linux had some special FAT driver with emulation of Unix-like permissions and file links? If yes, where can I read about this? Thanks

[Rod Smith]

The Linux umsdos filesystem type was used to mount FAT filesystems with full Unix/Linux filesystem features (long filenames, permissions, ownership, etc.). Support for it was dropped a long time ago, though -- in the 3.0 or earlier kernel, IIRC. Neither FAT nor NTFS is suitable for use on /home because programs may require symbolic links, permissions, and other features there; and if your system has multiple users, these filesystems can't handle the file owner features required.

[William]

@RodSmith NTFS has both shortcut(you could trick the OS into viewing them as a soft/hard link) and permissions usage what else is missing?

[Rod Smith]

I just checked, and the read/write NTFS3g driver supports symbolic links, but not changing ownership or permissions. (Note that Windows uses very different ownership and permissions models from Linux, so although NTFS supports Windows ownership and permissions, this doesn't translate easily to Linux.) The last I heard, there were some proposed/experimental ways to add this support, but they aren't mainstream. Also, NTFS3g is a non-kernel driver, which makes it iffy at best for use on root (/).

[Sergey Ponomarev]

The posixovl filesystem allows storing files on a FAT filesystem, with extra metadata stored in additional files to implement things that FAT doesn't provide: file names containing characters that FAT forbids or that are too long, additional metadata such as permissions and ownership, other file types such as symbolic links and devices, etc. But it is FUSE module and works in user space. The same can be rewritten as a kmod and adapted for NTFS. The NTFS already supports links and even case sensitivity of file names.

[iBug]

@SergeyPonomarev Even without posixovl, NTFS supports everything Linux needs with its highly flexible "extended attributes" for files and directories (entries).