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You only need your /boot partition in that format for EFI boot. Use a separate partition for /.

Still, the relevant problem here is not being able to use the built in SSD and being forced to use an external drive for dual-boot.

But I don't thnk that is the case.

And of course, there is always FUSE, plus the (decidedly non-free) Paragon File System Link. The problems with FUSE for Mac are that it only seems to provide limited support for ext2, and none(?) for ext3 or 4:

https://www.macworld.com/artic...

So, it comes down to this. Non-Free; but it gets pretty good reviews. Plus, it appears to be the whole enchilada, even allowing FORMATTING. So, since it is compatible with Mojave, one would expect it to be able to format an Ext4 Partition on the internal SSD.

https://www.paragon-software.c...

Sorry I couldn't find a FOSS solution; but it's not the most expensive thing in the world, either.

NTFS

OS X has had built-in read-only NTFS support since I think day one. I have definitely read NTFS drives with OS X. And since MS has never published the specs for Write or Format for NTFS, they can hardly be blamed. But apparently, you actually can enable NTFS WRITE (don't know about Formatting) on a per-Drive basis. Or, if you just want to pull out your wallet, these guys offer full NTFS support in OS X for the princely sum of $16.95.

But MacFuse brings supposedly full NTFS support (disclaimer: Never tried it) to at least Userland on OS X.

Android

Seriously?

NFS3

Not out-of-the box; but it supposedly can be fairly easily done with a little Terminal witchery.

This tool is great and well worth the $20. It will clone the boot as well as do the 4k SSD alignment automatically. Not a shill, just a happy customer.
http://www.paragon-software.co...

As a PC shop guy I run into this problem quite a lot and there are actually a few options. You can have a program like Paragon Backup and Recovery Free set to make daily/weekly/whatever disc images and then easily roll it back when they bone it (because if they are like most older folks no matter how many times you tell them "don't click on that" they will) but the problem with those is that you usually have to be the one to roll it back, too complex to restore from disk image for an old person.

So while this way is no longer supported on Win 8 and above (but since Win 8 is a bomb who cares) this is the way that I do it and it gets the "Hairyfeet seal of approval". This method scores damned near a 10 out of 10 in both keeping infections out and in fixing if they manage to bypass your security and infect it anyway. And yes that is a problem, as i have seen older folks actually turn OFF the AV because an email told them to. As a bonus it costs $0.00 and doesn't take more than an hour tops. Ready?

1.- Install Comodo AV Free and be DAMNED SURE to pick YES when it comes to installing Comodo Dragon, the why will be apparent in a moment. You can go ahead and uncheck geek buddy, that is your job, they don't need some guy at a helpdesk in India to tell them what to do. 2.- Go into Comodo AV after install and turn it to "paranoid mode" this will run everything in a sandbox by default and treat everything as suspect. Now for your not completely clueless you can leave it in clean PC mode, but for those that click the "punch the clown and win an iPad" types paranoid is safest. 3.- the final step is to download and install Comodo Time Machine and LOCK the first image, call it "clean PC" or something else that will be easy to tell grandma over the phone. A bit of warning when it comes to CTS, it dos NOT work on win 8, it does NOT work on dual boots, you should also set it to clean out old snapshots after say 30 days. That said if you want a PC that can recover from pretty much every bug out there? here ya go.

And that is it, stick a fork, there is no step 4. Of course this assumes you have already done the common sense things like set windows update to automatic but other than that you should now have a 100% clean PC that will stay that way. The browser is sandboxed and locked down, runs by default in low rights mode, the AV is watching everything like a hawk and if they manage to talk the old folks into bypassing the AV? Time machine has you covered. I have several users that would get more nasties than a Bangkok whore on coupon night and thanks to this little 3 step program their PCs are pretty much idiot proof. Oh and as a bonus if they screw anything up, uninstall a printer driver or just trash a program? it takes less than 10 minutes over the phone to restore with CTS. You tell them reboot, hit home key when they see the big clock, pick the day before (assuming you set it for daily or snapshot on boot) and leave it alone...and that is it, the CTS will set the machine back and it'll be like they never made the boo boo.

Unless he is willing to be full time 24/7 tech support that would be a BAD idea. Just look at the serious guttings that have happened to Linux in just the last 5 years, ALSA for Pulse, Gnome 2 for GnomeShell then this funky ass hybrid of the 2, KDE 3 to KDE 4 (which was frankly shoved out in alpha quality at best by ALL the "user friendly" distros) and finally the changes in the wireless networking that has made USB wireless hit or miss, usually miss.

Frankly if you know what you are doing you can set up an "idiot proof" Windows that short of the old guy clicking "Why yes, I DO want to get infected, STFU and let me get infected!" then nothing is gonna happen. With this system I've had customers that picked up more bugs than a Bangkok whore on coupon day and they are squeaky clean. Everybody ready? Here we go..

You start by doing the most obvious thing, that is making sure all their software is up to date. Once that is finished you get their ass OFF IE onto something that doesn't have a giant bullseye on it, personally I prefer Comodo Dragon as not only does it have low rights mode like Chrome, but it also has Privalert, which will block all the tracking crap (you can of course whitelist any page with a single click, even grandma could do it) and you have the option of Comodo DNS which in this case i would say YES, use it, as it blocks many malware pages from loading. Once its installed go ahead and add ABP, in less he likes ads bugging the shit out of him, and I usually install ForecastFox as its nice to have the 5 day forecast and the radar right there.

Next you install Paragon Backup and Recovery Free as this will let you not only make a hidden backup capsule (think OEM restore partition, only custom made by you and up to date) but you can set it to any kind of schedule you like, including differential, daily, weekly, whatever. I used to use Comodo Time Machine as it allows you to restore even if they hosed the boot image but its not supported on Windows 8. if you are running 7 might want to check it out. Next you install FileHippo Update Checker and tell it to ignore beta releases. the reason you do this is to keep the old guy for falling for the "you need the latest flash, just download "Iz_Not_Bug_Iz_Flash.exe" right now!". you tell him if the little Hippo don't say there is an update there is NO update, period.

Finally you have the AV, here you can use either Avast free or Comodo IS, I prefer the latter as its not as "chatty" and has built in sandboxing by default but some folks like chatty, both are VERY good at stop malware pages before load and Comodo IS sandboxing means if the old guy does try to run something nasty it'll minimize the risk.

so there you have it, it looks more complex than it actually is, takes about an hour all told depending on how out of date the software on the system is. Once its done that's it, just leave them be, they'll be safe as houses. The browser is sandboxed and in low rights mode, you have the AV scanning every page before load, the browser is blocking ads (one of the biggest attack vectors) and tracking crap, and to top it all off the OS has a hidden encrypted partition with a backup image so if they by some miracle ever do figure out how to break something you can have it back up in under 30 minutes, no problem.

Actually i would recommend the same thing i do with my customers which is get them a USB drive and install Paragon Backup Free which makes it beyond simple to make disc images and even comes with a Linux based CD Image that lets you fix a messed up Windows OS even if it is screwed beyond booting. This way you can try any of the Win 8 previews and if you don't like it? simply roll the OS back using Paragon with no nasty files left behind. of course i also recommend they have a second drive or partition to keep their data on that way you don't have a reason to give a damn about the OS, but that is up to you of course.

Frankly after playing around with both DP and CP in the shop I'm just not impressed by Win 8. Oh I'm sure it'll be nice...on a cell phone or a tablet, but since i'm not running it on a cell phone or a tablet i don't get what the point is. if I wanted all the tweeting twitting social crap frankly i can get that with Win 7 gadgets and I've found metro UI to be like a damned boat anchor without a touchscreen, it always seems like I'm fighting to get it to do what i want it to do while it screams "Hey want to do some tweets? How about FB? Windows Live? What kind of asshole are you that you don't want to know every time a relative passes gas?" and simply refuses to just get the hell out of my way.

so in the end I'm gonna have to agree with those that have played with the Win 8 test box at the shop and say "no thanks, I already have a cell phone" and skip it. hell even my oldest who practically has his smartphone glued to his fingers said "I already have a smartphone so what do i need this for?" and I have to agree, its just trying too hard to be this hipster social media tablet/cell OS and on a desktop that really just sucks.

UEFI GPT is actually pretty simple, its a lot like the old boot sector only with a backup sector and support for large disks. But with virtual box you don't have to worry about partitioning, its treated as a file, no different than say a BD Rip. I wouldn't want to try multibooting it anyway since 1.-Its only a time limited copy and if its like Win 7 you'd have to reinstall when the time runs out, even if you buy it and 2.-Frankly after trying you won't want to buy it anyway!

But the way GPTworks is you have your wrapper for the old boot sector, that lets XP and other non UEFI aware OSes boot, then you have the GPT which is an extended partition table, then you have the error correcting code along with a pointer to the backup in case the original boot sector gets hosed for any reason. Remember how in the old days if track 0 failed you were boned? Not anymore, it'll just work off the backup.

For a nice free tool that works with UEFI and GPT I'd recommend Paragon Partition Manager Free as that's what I use. It supports pretty much any kind of drive, lets you resize existing partitions, its a good tool. I also use their Backup And Recovery Free which I have to say has saved my ass in the past. I was working with a partition when we had a brownout and the system lost power, the partition was fucked but I was able to boot off their recovery CD and restore the OS from backup on a separate drive, it couldn't have been easier to do.

But anyway just use VBox and give it a spin, It'll just treat it as a file so no need to screw with your partitions. Once you get tired of playing with it you just have VBox toss the partition and you can then uninstall VBox no problems. Personally I keep VBox around though as its great for checking out new OSes, I have been using it to play with OpenELEC which looks like it might make a good OS for a cheap HTPC. later bro and sorry about the tune, but who don't love Joel and the bots?

UEFI GPT is actually pretty simple, its a lot like the old boot sector only with a backup sector and support for large disks. But with virtual box you don't have to worry about partitioning, its treated as a file, no different than say a BD Rip. I wouldn't want to try multibooting it anyway since 1.-Its only a time limited copy and if its like Win 7 you'd have to reinstall when the time runs out, even if you buy it and 2.-Frankly after trying you won't want to buy it anyway!

But the way GPTworks is you have your wrapper for the old boot sector, that lets XP and other non UEFI aware OSes boot, then you have the GPT which is an extended partition table, then you have the error correcting code along with a pointer to the backup in case the original boot sector gets hosed for any reason. Remember how in the old days if track 0 failed you were boned? Not anymore, it'll just work off the backup.

For a nice free tool that works with UEFI and GPT I'd recommend Paragon Partition Manager Free as that's what I use. It supports pretty much any kind of drive, lets you resize existing partitions, its a good tool. I also use their Backup And Recovery Free which I have to say has saved my ass in the past. I was working with a partition when we had a brownout and the system lost power, the partition was fucked but I was able to boot off their recovery CD and restore the OS from backup on a separate drive, it couldn't have been easier to do.

But anyway just use VBox and give it a spin, It'll just treat it as a file so no need to screw with your partitions. Once you get tired of playing with it you just have VBox toss the partition and you can then uninstall VBox no problems. Personally I keep VBox around though as its great for checking out new OSes, I have been using it to play with OpenELEC which looks like it might make a good OS for a cheap HTPC. later bro and sorry about the tune, but who don't love Joel and the bots?

Alright now I'm afraid I can't help with your verify problem but I do have one piece of solid advice: get rid of Paragon HFS immediately!

It is a truly shoddy piece of software that as of version 9.0 has a terrible bug that will cause it to destroy HFS+ filesystems. Google "paragon hfs corruption" and you will see many many horror stories from people who just plugged a Mac OS X disk into a Windows machine w/ Paragon HFS and then discovered the entire filesystem was hosed. In my dual-boot win/mac setup I replaced my copy of MacDrive with a trial version of Paragon HFS 9.0 from their website and every single one of the six HFS+ disks I had connected internally were damaged. Disk Utility couldn't do a thing and I had to buy a program called Diskwarrior to even begin to recover data. I ended up losing two disks worth of files anyway.
http://www.mac-help.com/t12137-opened-hfs-drive-win7-paragon-hfs-now-wont-boot.html
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=299306
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1677099
http://www.avforums.com/forums/apple-mac/1509344-hfs-super-block-not-found.html

whew! Anyway the pain I went through after that software very nearly ruined my life was so great, I don't want it to happen to anyone else. According to their own website 9.0 has this awful bug but they fixed it in 9.0.1. Evidently the trial download on the main page is still for version 9.0 and still has the disk destroying bug! Any software company that releases a filesystem driver with this terrible a bug (not to mention the numerous reports of BSODs and other relatively minor problems) clearly has terrible quality assurance and simply can't be trusted.

You are most welcome Achenaar and be sure to add to the suggestion box if there is a free app you like that isn't there as they add those that get submitted a lot. And despite what others have said here their autoupdate service may be pay for but their website installer is 100% free. just pick all the apps you want, start it and watch it go, really great for a new build.

BTW if you don't mind another suggestion, how would you like to never have to reinstall her PC again? Just use Paragon Backup Free which ironically if you click the download it goes to Cnet but if you'll type in the name of the software into major geeks you can get the 32 and 64 bit versions there. The nice thing about it is not only will it let you schedule backups, not only will it let you do differential as well as full, it'll let you make a hidden partition with it that will store your backup images and work similar to an OEM restore partition.

Once you get her PC just the way she like it just install Paragon and make a full backup. Then you can have a daily differential or if your lady is like mine and doesn't do a lot of installing or changing things just have it do a weekly. Since i have all her docs and other user folders on a D: drive she can just restore back with paragon and doesn't lose a single thing. If you DO use my little system with Paragon and a separate drive for her user files be sure to give her a browser that syncs like Comodo Dragon or Chrome. That way all her passwords and bookmarks will be synced to her gmail and if she needs to restore her browser will just resync on the next start. makes everything easy peasy and the PC as close to indestructible as you can get. I've got PCs out in the field that have been running for years using the above, no need for me with insta-restore. With the above the only time the little lady needs me to install a new OS is on a new PC for her, after that she is hassle free.

Anyway enjoy and i'm glad to help.

Have you looked at Paragon Drive Backup Server software? You can backup live servers, back them up to VMs or vice versa, its pretty nice.

As for TFA I deal with more SMBs now than I do corp but with the SMBs we switched to HDD backups. A Tb drive will easily hold a year or two for the average files a typical small business puts out and just switching the drives once a week for the offsite and syncing them makes for an easy and cheap offsite backup for a small office situation.

As for the big corps frankly i wouldn't be surprised if the bean counters are just too damned cheap with the economy being down. i know that even when times were good "Hey lets screw IT on the budget!" seemed to be the order of the day and I doubt anything has changed. Everyone always seemed to see IT as a waste of money until shit broke, then it was blame the IT guy, not the bean counter that has already moved up thanks to his "cost saving measures". That was the main reason i got out of corporate, got tired of being given incredibly difficult problems and a shoestring budget to fix it with.

Sure thing friend, here you go...Bam! It even comes with a linux based ISO to restore so if you bone your OS, a virus infects you (which WILL toast your mirror as well) or any other nasty thing happens its easy peasy to restore. oh and 100% free, so enjoy!

As for TFA I'm glad I loaded my machines up with Samsung drives when I heard they were selling their HDD division. I got 3Tb on the main machine, another 2Tb on the other, and a 1Tb external just for OS images and ISOs, I'm a happy camper with plenty of space!

Or you can just be smart (or have hired a smart guy like yours truly) and have previously downloaded and run Paragon Backup & Recovery 2011 Free and then you'd have a nice disc image preferably backed up to a USB drive that with the included recovery CD .ISO burnt takes about 20 minutes to have the machine up and running.

I swear in this age of 1.5Tb USB external drives costing less than $70 you'd think that having a disc image would be a no brainer. The software above is free, it is simple, does differential if you like, and I have yet to see any malware that would infect a third party disc image

So seriously folks, if you have friends or family that don't have a backup plan show them TFA and point them to some nice disc imaging software and a cheap external drive. Sellout.Woot has a 1.5Tb for $70 last I checked, which is more than enough space for your average folks to easily keep over a years worth of backups if they so choose. Mine has not only disc images of all my OSes, but a synced backup of all my tunes, all my GOG installers, backups of my pics, they really are handy things to have and take the work and worry out of nasties like TFA.

Allow me to agree and disagree. yes to being a pro, and I have never EVER looked at someone's files (I go so far as to tell them if they want me to back up their files they should be aware I may see file names during the backup so please don't be asking me to back up funky files) but as far as MSE? Meh.

It is great if you already know what you are doing and aren't going to any dodgy sites, but home users? Avast free is a better choice, as it has web shield which scans pages before they load and will strip out nasty scripts like drive bys, has P2P and messenger protection, all in all I'd say it is a better AV and with both being 100% free (I'd never give a customer trialware crap) why not use the better solution?

As far as NTBackup? If you want built in Windows 7 imaging backup is fine, personally I prefer to give my customers the free Paragon backup and recovery. Its solid, its free, it is reliable, it gives you a live CD option if the machine ever gets borked beyond booting, and if the customer has a USB HDD I'm happy to set it up to backup to it so they don't have to worry about HDD failures.

I used to have this argument with my former boss all the time. he was one of those "give them just enough rope" types, that wouldn't patch it, no AV, just clean it, so they'd get boned later and have to pay him again, whereas I believe I've done my job if the ONLY reason they have to come to me is they want to upgrade the hardware. I give them either Dragon or Firefox for a browser, put in ABP so they don't get ads (which are a big source of infection) give them a full AV, I even ask if they'd like the "full package" at no extra charge and if they say yes they get the latest Flash, Klite codec so they can play any format, and Libre Office so they can edit word docs, and a PDF reader (Foxit) along with a PDF printer so they can easily save files offline without printing. Thanks to Ninite it takes no real time from me and gives them a nicer PC

Between that and Comodo time machine which lets them just push F11 if they ever screw up the boot to restore from there, otherwise they can restore straight from Windows, makes it pretty damned hard to screw up a machine that I fixed. Sure I don't see these people again hardly ever, but I get enough referrals from their friends and family they send by to make the extra effort worth it. I'm quite proud to say many of my builds from a decade ago are still going, they just get passed down through the family as they age. Like I tell my new build customers "My machines won't be as cheap as a Dell, but you know what? MY machine will keep going past the warranty period." Just take pride in your work, treat folks right, and you'll get a good rep and with that comes the work.

Actually it didn't do anything because not only am I on Win 7 X64 (which uses GUID instead of the old sector 0 boot) but I also back up my boot using the free Paragon Backup and Recovery that makes it trivial to backup and restore anything including both GUID and old style boot sectors. It also comes with Linux LiveCD based restore CD image so even if something manages to bork the OS I can be back up and running in under 20 minutes. Just plug in my 1Tb USB drive, run the CD, and away I go.

That said isn't it sad that thanks to mighty mighty dollar bill they are able to get away with this shit? Where else are you allowed to sell a product that is broken out of the box and often needs a third party crack just to run on a legal system? Why hasn't someone class actioned their asses right out of existence? This is frankly ridiculous, with the pirate version running faster, more stable, and is in every way BETTER than the legit version.

You're welcome, I just try to warn folks as most of the new machines are X64 and I've found out the hard way after having to clean broken SecuROM and Safedisc installs.

Sadly the best protection you can give yourself besides the weekly backup (which if you'd like a free program I'd recommend Paragon Backup and Recovery Free as it has many of the normally pay features like Bootable restore CD and differential disc imaging) and making a restore point before an install is to go to GameCopyWorld and get the NoCD and use it immediately after installing the game but before launching it as I've found that will keep most Safedisc and SecuROM installs from activating and boning the machine.

Which of course just proves that once again the legit customer gets bullshit and hoop jumping, while the pirate gets a lower resource and less buggy game that "just works". But if you take my advice you'll find you can install any older game hassle free. I have games from as new as this year to as old as 1997, and all "just work" thanks to a little forethought.

I'd say that the advantages of x64 computing, not only the extra RAM but having the larger math registers which makes programs like transcoding faster, are well worth the extra work. I've been x64 since XP X64 right up to Win 7 X64, and I'd never want to go back to x86. It is just sad that it isn't the programs that need the extra work and caution, it is the shitty DRM with all the Ring 0 horseshit. I swear I've seen malware that is nicer to the system than some of those SecuROM versions. Good luck and happy 64 bit computing!

Here's a commercial $39.95 implementation of ext2/3/4 for MacOS. No idea if it's actually any good. I'd really like to hear if someone here has tried it, because I might like to use it for a shared /home between Linux and MacOS if it would work. I tried hfs+ (or it was it just hfs?) without journaling, and the dang thing needs to be fsck'd nearly every time I booted the alternate OS, which wastes a lot of time. Particularly, when shutting down Linux it's unmounted cleanly (such that Linux is happy if I just boot back into Linux again), but MacOS is still not happy and does the fsck in the background for 15 minutes or so before I can access it again. Sometimes it fails too, and has to be done manually from Disk Utility. Quite annoying.

But it doesn't sound like it'll make disc images, does it? I frankly couldn't give a shit about backing up my files, as I have them stored on at least 2 drives and the important ones also have off-site backups. What I do NOT want to have to do is spend hours reinstalling and setting everything back up the way i like it.

I have been using a really nice software from Paragon* that does pretty much anything you'd want to do with a disk, along with the Windows 7 built in disk imaging, so I've been having good luck so far in that regard, but the LAST thing I want is to have my images borked by some new sector size BS. Not to mention i dual boot XP and Win7 so i have no idea if having both XP and 7 on the same drive will cause problems. Does anybody know if using the WD XP tool will slow down or Bork Win7?

*-For those that don't want to pay the $35, which it is WELL WORTH BTW, you can keep an eye out on Giveaway of the day as Paragon is really good about placing their tools on there when a new version comes out. Between that and Primewares (great site, lousy name) and its excellent freeware only search engine you can pretty much completely outfit a new PC for zero $. But for disk imaging I've found you really can't go wrong with paragon. Really solid software IMHO.

Linux is notoriously finicky when it comes to hardware, windows has always been more forgiving, and even Vista at release had fewer hardware issues than Linux has always been stuck with.

In my anecdotal experience, Windows and Linux can both be finicky with hardware. Upgrading Windows frequently makes too-old or too-new peripherals useless (usually due to driver issues). Linux (and BSD) drivers typically, though certainly not always, continue working or get updated across operating system upgrades.

My company uses just one image for at least 50,000 pc's, maybe more, about 10 different manufacturers and about 20 models apiece. So, yeah. It's harder to set up in Vista, but it is doable.

Which doesn't jibe with this:

I can't wait till Windows7 gets cleared for my environment so I can start playing with the server side tools, since Vista will never be approved and the server tools don't work for making XP images (they work for deployment though).

So the server tools don't work for making XP images, Vista will never be allowed on your 50 000 PCs, but everything will work great on yet-to-be-released Win7? Sounds like marketing talk, not experience. In case you're young, MS is famous for saying their next version will be so much better, old-timers have learned to wait for proof.

If you try to go with imagine for Linux without a mass deployment tool to save time (and therefore money), you are talking hundreds of images to deploy Linux vs just one for Windows. I guess you'd have to be rolling your own mass produced images (like I do, heh) to understand how much manpower that is going to add to the sale of a Linux PC.

So mass deploying Linux without a mass deployment tool is time consuming? Well, yes, but then so is mass deploying Windows without a mass deployment tool. You would have to explore mass deployment tools to understand how much manpower they save.

Your OEM key will work perfectly fine with 64-bit vista business, though once used it is tied to the hardware. You'll just need to beg, borrow or steal a 64 bit disc.

I just store all my documents on a linux server, and back that up using the usual methods :)

For the local image itself - I tend to do a backup after doing a clean install + apps - I've an older copy of acronis trueimage I use from cd/usb boot for dumping, and paragon partition manager for juggling partitions (I dual/triple boot a lot). As I don't keep anything important on the local os drive (things like steam/games go on a separate partition), I tend to just blow it away and go back to clean image or reinstall.

Though I've just seen paragon have got a free drive snapshot program for home users, backup express - given I like their other software, I think I might check it out.

First, if you have to INSTALL SOMETHING (even a small something) other than the filesystem itself, BEFORE other filesystems can be used, then by definition it is not "out of the box"!

Sorry, but you're the one who isn't understanding -- you don't have to do any such thing! Apple's own ZFS is an example of that. The developer samples they provide are examples of that. Inactive open source projects like ext2fsx are examples of that. The various commercial (e.g. Paragon NTFS) and in-house filesystem extensions in use in obscure places (e.g. VirtualPC, Parallels, Symantec's filters, etc) are examples of that.

It's just that not many non-commercial developers are providing filesystem modules for OS X. Filesystem development is some of the most demanding work there is. That's why FUSE is popular: the filesystems are implemented as userland applications, where the demands of the programming environment are much less intensive.

Everything that uses FUSE (Linux, NetBSD's PUFFS, MacFUSE for OS X, etc) takes the form of installing a framework module in the kernel, which in turn uses the FUSE interface for the userland filesystems. This has absolutely nothing to do with out-of-the-box support for anything; it's just an abstraction that's made it easy for people experimenting with filesystems across several OSes, thus more filesystems are available with it. If you don't want to use that abstraction, that's fine, but it has nothing to do with an operating system's support for pluggable filesystems (other than showing it exists in the first place).

Ignoring the first link I gave you, which details the level of support available in OS X according to Apple itself, and instead trying to play semantic games using a single sentence from the MacFUSE homepage in order to justify the incorrect position that OS X does not support pluggable filesystems is the height of arrogance.

Second, according to TFA, ZFS will be provided for the server product, not for plain off-the-shelf, out-of-the-box Mac OS X. And that was part of my point.

ZFS is provided by Apple for OS X Leopard right now; it's just not officially supported for production use because it's a work-in-progress and still contains bugs. It will continue to be available for Leopard, and will therefore also be available for the non-server version of Snow Leopard.

Apple may, of course, choose to not officially support it on the non-server version, much like they did for both the journaled and case-sensitive versions of HFS+ in the beginning. If that's the case, then it will likely be supported at some point after Snow Leopard.

But what exactly is your point over that? And what on earth does it have to do with pluggable filesystem support? It's just a question of what Apple chooses to provide itself, which you already said was not an issue.

Third, MacPorts (like the other examples you gave) is yet another outside-party add-on; it is NOT an "out-of-the-box" feature of OS X!

MacPorts is a package management system and repository for OS X. Of course it's an add-on, just like all the package management systems for every other OS out there. I mentioned it because it's a convenient method of obtaining software and may be familiar to you if you like other package managers. But what does that have to do with pluggable filesystem support?

And fourth, I have an excellent grasp of what "pluggable" means. That has no bearing whatever on whether it is supported out-of-the-box, versus a self-compiled add-on or the like!!!

I remind you of your assertion in your original post:

If Apple really wants to start calling OS X a "modern" operating system, they are going to have to start supporting pluggable filesystems.

You don't get to change the argument now. You're absolutely ri