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

[blu at nedharvey.com (Edward Ned Harvey (blu))]

> 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.