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Has any version of unix like OS run on NTFS?

Ubuntu appears to not currently

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    I hope you aren't asking for us to prove a negative? ("No UNIX has ever run on NTFS because...") Also, are you considering only the operating system proper (and if so, are you considering only UNIX, or is any Unix-like operating system a fair answer?), or do you consider software running on top of other operating systems that offer a Unix-like or POSIX-style environment to be acceptable answers? Commented Oct 22, 2015 at 17:35
  • @MichaelKjörling No because they people are going to say yes because of VirtualBox or wubi. Commented Oct 22, 2015 at 17:39
  • At least a VM would not be a valid answer to this because whatever runs inside the VM is unaware of what is outside the VM (to within experimental error). I can run a MS-DOS VM on top of a Linux host with ZFS storage, but that doesn't mean MS-DOS knows how to work with ZFS. Commented Oct 22, 2015 at 17:41
  • @MichaelKjörling And Unix like not Unix OS exactly. Commented Oct 22, 2015 at 17:48
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    "UNIX" is highly specific; all-uppercase UNIX is actually a trademark. "Unix" is fairly broad (it can probably cover pretty much everything from QNX to OSX or FreeBSD). "Unix-like" is even broader, and includes systems like GNU/Linux. Commented Oct 22, 2015 at 17:59

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To the best of my knowledge, no certified UNIX has ever been distributed that could natively handle an NTFS filesystem. Then again, no Linux system has ever been certified as UNIX either.

On the other hand, Windows Services For Unix definitely could, and it was a POSIX-compliant Windows NT subsystem that implemented a UNIX layer on an NT kernel.

At a higher level, there are also UWIN and Cygwin packages that do much of the same today, and these can definitely handle an NTFS filesystem - UWIN, at least, actually requires NTFS in order to recognize and apply UNIX-style fs permissions on/to files.

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  • Cygwin doesn't count because it doesn't support fork and then VirtualBox could count which it really shuoldn't Commented Oct 22, 2015 at 17:40
  • @LiamWilliam - UWIN does. And it does handle UNIX fs permissions on NTFS. Commented Oct 22, 2015 at 17:40
  • Do you mind providing some basic information UWIN? It surprises me considering UWIN isn't wildly known. Commented Oct 22, 2015 at 17:44
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    @Ketan - The Austin Group certifies a system that meets the Single Unix Specification as UNIX. The UWIN package to which I refer above was designed and maintained by AT&T Labs, who were responsible in the first place for UNIX at all. Commented Oct 22, 2015 at 18:02
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    @vonbrand Not fork, file descriptors. I'm not sure the specifics but "File descriptors can't be passed between unrelated processes in Windows like on Unix" from this link superuser.com/questions/965374/setup-ssh-in-background-windows . It prevents application like tmux from working by default although mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg01347.html I believe some patches have been made. Commented Nov 9, 2015 at 4:09
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No, you cannot run a Linux / UNIX system on NTFS. You can mount NTFS filesystems to a Linux / UNIX system, but you cannot use NTFS as the filesystem for the Linux / UNIX system itself.

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  • Ever? It seems like some version of unix might. Commented Oct 22, 2015 at 17:27
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    NTFS does not provide various features in its metadata that Unix is fairly reliant upon. It's possible that this problem could be worked around, but it's also unclear why anyone would ever bother. Commented Oct 22, 2015 at 17:37
  • @TomHunt yes file permissions are one such issue. Commented Oct 22, 2015 at 17:38
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    You can install linux-like tools on a Windows system, such as Cygwin, but you cannot run any currently extant Linux / UNIX system with NTFS as the primary filesystem type. Commented Oct 22, 2015 at 17:40
  • @TomHunt, and then there are the license issues and the only partially reverse engineered format. Sure, Microsoft might do it, but they left the Unix market with Xenix... Commented Oct 22, 2015 at 21:30

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