SUMMARY On Kubuntu 20.04, partitionmanager does not allow formatting partitions as exfat unless exfat-utils is installed, thus failing to recognize that as of kernel 5.4 and above, exfat is intrinsically supported by the kernel. In addition, exfat-utils recommends exfat-fuse as a dependency. Should partitionmanager be able to format as exfat without the exfat-* packages? STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. In kubuntu 20.04, sudo apt remove exfat-* 2. Open partitionmanager 3. Select a partition to format and note that exfat is not an option. OBSERVED RESULT no exfat on the drop down EXPECTED RESULT exfat on the dropdown SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Windows: macOS: Linux/KDE Plasma: yes (available in About System) KDE Plasma Version: 5,18.4 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.68 Qt Version: 5.12.8 kernel: 5.4.0-26-generic ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
exfat-utils are required even if kernel supports mounting exfat. Just like btrfsprogs are required to format btrfs partitions even though kernel knows about btrfs but it can only mount it, not format it. Formatting partitions is always done by userspace code. There is no reason to put it into the kernel.
So packagers can eliminate the dependency for exfat-fuse for kernels 5.4 and above since partitionmanager works fine without it on 5.4. Good to know.
(In reply to Darin Miller from comment #2) > So packagers can eliminate the dependency for exfat-fuse for kernels 5.4 and > above since partitionmanager works fine without it on 5.4. Good to know. Yes, that's true. Although, maybe exfat driver left staging area later, so maybe best to use it with 5.7 or later.