I think this is the fourth attempt at an NTFS implementation for Linux.

The first was the classic, abandoned NTFS kernel driver. It was removed from the kernel last year, but used to be found in fs/ntfs.

The second is FUSE-based ntfs-3g / ntfsprogs (which is the one which is most reliable). Unfortunately this is basically abandoned upstream.

The third is the fs/ntfs3 kernel driver, which we found in testing to be quite unreliable, although I was hoping it would improve.

Why I'm interested in all this is because reliable NTFS support, including writes, is vital for our virt-v2v product (https://pretalx.com/devconf-cz-2024/talk/SN93LG/)

I was very hopeful for ntfs3, but unfortunately I think it was doomed from the start because of the ill blood built during the initial "code donation" regarding code quality, egos, and general stability.

Ntfsplus looks very promising based on this email and what's been done already. Something as "simple" as writing an fsck utility (something linux never had for ntfs) tells me that the author actually cares about real world usage. And that makes me very hopeful!