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Will it help making drivers for filesystems which MS doesn't care to support?


Probably not. The filesystem API Microsoft uses, Installable File System, has been in place and used by a bunch of people since the OS/2 days. Support for filesystems like zfs is lacking more due to apathy than anything else.


The IFS kit was a separate purchase from the DDK, even. There's a pieced-together header floating around on the web (as well as some OSS drivers for things like ext2)...


Drivers aren't much of a threat to the Windows hegemony because since Vista they've needed to be signed. If you don't mind taking the risk of running with driver signature verification turned off you can get FSDs for XFS and Ext4.


Last time I checked, code signing certificates could be had for $400 a year, not an exorbitant price to many tech enthusiasts.


However, being able to support the driver so it passes the certification process with every update is not something many tech enthusiasts would want to do.


Certification is only required if you want to display a "Certified for Windows" logo, prevent a warning dialog from displaying on Windows XP, and/or distribute your driver through Windows Update.


The warning dialogue is displayed on all versions of Windows, depending on the driver. Some can't be installed at all.




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