Linux Torvalds has given his approval for the removal of the old driver for the NTFS file system from the Linux kernel. This decision will take effect with the release of version 5.15, which will instead include the new NTFS3 driver developed in collaboration with Paragon Software. The move to eliminate the old driver is justified as it has not been updated for many years, is in poor condition, and is only capable of functioning in read-only mode.
The new NTFS3 driver offers support for read and write operations, as well as all the features of the current NTFS 3.1 version. This includes advanced file attributes, access control lists (ACL), data compression, efficient handling of file voids (Sparse), and the ability to replay journal changes for integrity restoration in case of failures. The removal of the old driver is not expected to impact distributions, as Debian, for instance, does not utilize NTFS drivers from the kernel but provides NTFS-3G for user space implementations. Arch Linux, on the other hand, defaults to using the new NTFS3 driver.