[Discuss] Why use Linux? (back to original question)

[markw at mohawksoft.com]

>> From: markw at mohawksoft.com [mailto:markw at mohawksoft.com]
>>
>> > And you're wrong about sparse files.  All of the above support sparse
>> > files.
>>
>> Yes, with enough work, you can put a V8 in a motorcycle, but that is a
>> strawman argument. The Mac file system HFS does not support sparse files
>
> For disk containers, such as *.dmg files, or truecrypt volumes, for
> virtual machines, vmdk, vdi, etc, for every purpose that I've ever
> encountered or imagined ...  Whether the implementation is lazy
> provisioning, sparse disk image, dynamic allocation, sparse bundle, or
> sparse file is purely semantic.  So go ahead and argue that HFS does not
> support sparse files.  Just like ntfs doesn't have inodes, and ext doesn't
> have file ID's.  Semantics.
>

Not true at all. A sparse file is a file system construct that allows you
to create a file that has "holes" in it. The various virtual machine
management systems implement their own volume management for their VMs ad
that is not available to other applications.

This is a very important capability that is essential for most enterprise
level software. You can create multiple TB sized files on a much smalled
volume and grow as needed. So no, you went from Apple supports that, to it
doesn't matter. You were wrong on the first count and are wrong on the
second.