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So I would like to be able run Linux an a Fat32(preferably ExFat) partition is this possible?

It appears this has been done Can I install GNU/Linux on a FAT drive?

Couldn't shorcuts be used in place of hard and soft symbolic links?

Watching random videos on youtube it appears ExFat is faster then NTFS in most cases https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc98Vgc25hM which would make me believe it would be a good candidate for a file system.

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William
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It's technically possible. The posixovl filesystem allows storing files on a FAT filesystem, with extra metadata stored in additional files to implement things that FAT doesn't provide: file names containing characters that FAT forbids or that are too long, additional metadata such as permissions and ownership, other file types such as symbolic links and devices, etc.

That doesn't mean that it's a good idea, though. It would be difficult to set up (I don't know of any distribution that sets it up for you) and slow.

Shortcuts could in theory be read as symbolic links, but this would have several downsides. Someone would need to write a filesystem driver that stores symbolic links as shortcuts. Windows might mess up symbolic links when it edits shortcuts (shortcuts are only very vaguely like symbolic links: symbolic links point to a file path, whereas Windows shortcuts track a file and Windows modifies the shortcut if the target file is moved). Linux would have no way to tell whether a file that looks like a shortcut is in fact intended to be a symbolic link or a regular file.

There used to be a way to install Linux on a disk image which is stored as a single file on a Windows system, called Wubi. It has been abandoned. It works, but it too has a number of downsides: lower performance, high risk of losing data if the system crashes, etc.

The normal way to install Linux is the best way: let the installer create a Linux partition. If you really, really don't want to create a Linux partition (for example because your corporate IT management forbids it), run Linux in a virtual machine. With Windows 10, you can run many Linux applications through the Windows Subsystem for Linux; you can get a whole Ubuntu userspace that way.

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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  • What about ExFat assuming you are talking about Fat32? Wubi seem to work pretty well I would assume they dropped it because of Ubuntu's file size growing. – William Jan 29 '17 at 00:42
  • Well not do to file size **Since it's no longer an optimal solution for the default new installs, it has been de-emphasised on the ubuntu.com/download website.** and to quote the Subsystem link **My beloved byobu, screen, and tmux don’t quite work yet, but they’re getting close!** – William Jan 29 '17 at 00:49
  • The posixovl is a great idea but it is FUSE module and works in user space. The same can be rewritten as a kmod and adapted for NTFS. The NTFS already supports links and even case sensitivity of file names. In related thread a guy said "I have installed Linux on FAT32 in the past, but, because of the large number of small files, storage is very inefficient and occupies twice or more times the space you'd expect". – Sergey Ponomarev Apr 25 '20 at 20:43