Windows compatibility is insane!

https://lemmy.ml/post/1414775

Windows compatibility is insane! - Lemmy

Yes, install your 25-year-old software on your 30-year-old NTFS filesystem (it's that old).

EDIT: I just looked it up and NTFS turns 30 on July 27th, 2023 LOL

Weren't they working on some database-like replacement for it a while ago?

You're thinking of WinFS which was abandoned by Microsoft in 2006: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS

Microsoft has a newer filesystem, ReFS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReFS but it's not really made for end user devices (it's more of an enterprise/server thing). For example, it doesn't support encryption, sparse files, or hard links (which IMHO is just plain stupid). It's not even more performant than NTFS except in special circumstances (e.g. backing up files). Real world testing shows NTFS outperforms ReFS on regular day-to-day filesystem operations:

https://www.joshodgers.com/2016/07/10/storage-performance-refs-vs-ntfs/

ReFS still doesn't fix the biggest filesystem mistakes Microsoft made when they designed Windows. Specifically, that all files are executable by default and that you can't open a file that's currently open by another process--even if just to read it. This is why logging on Windows is so complicated and why updating any stupid little thing requires a reboot (because you can't overwrite a file that's in use).

...but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Windows filesystem performance and features are just so far behind literally everything else at this point it's like using a dumb phone in the world of smartphones. Actually, it's even worse than that because computer-like smartphones were introduced in 2003 (Windows Mobile). So I guess it'd be like using a land line telephone with an integrated mini-cassette tape answering machine from the 1980s.

WinFS - Wikipedia