[ Thanks to Jennifer DeLeo for this
link. ]
“There’s a fundamental barrier between fans of open-source
software and the world of Microsoft Windows, and no, it’s not the
$299 list price of Windows XP Professional. It’s actually a very
real communication problem based on differences between Windows and
Linux’s file systems—the structures that operating systems
use to file away data on a computer. Think of the file system as a
simple spreadsheet: It associates a filename with an index in a
file allocation table. When you ask your computer to open a
document, the OS checks this table to determine where on the hard
drive it stored the file, down to the precise sector on your disk.
Windows uses a file system called NTFS, today’s Linux distributions
primarily use ext3, and like two warring tribes, the two barely
speak. Fortunately, there’s a handy tool from Paragon Software
Group called NTFS for Linux, which acts like an interpreter for
these battling nations…”