On FAT vs HPFS
I agree with your sentiments. A newer FS may be better, but if it causes more pain than a user's willing to tolerate, it'll have slow adoption.
I used OS/2 on FAT for quite a while. I started with 2.0 in May 1992. I used FAT because I didn't want to spend the $ on Gammatech's HPFS tools while Norton was a known quantity (and handled .EAs properly). There were occasional HPFS horror stories on USENET - critical bugs that needed to be fixed quickly, etc. For most users, it was a great FS from the get-go. But it made me a little nervous.
After eventually developing trust in HPFS on a test 2.1 partition, I only used FAT for a common partition with DOS. Now I wouldn't use anything other than HPFS for OS/2 - it's a great filesystem.
Similarly, when I first used Win95 I used FAT16 partitions until I developed confidence in FAT32.
I'd act the same way in moving to Linux - I'd start with ext2 before using JFS or ext3 or ReiserFS. While the latter FS are no doubt better, I feel it's better to start with an older FS and develop confidence before moving on.
YMMV.
Cheers,
Scott.
