Ext4 compatibility with Mac Studio M4 Max and previous post that got closed.

What about ext4 and Max Studio M4 Max compatibility? I saw a question about a person having difficulty with accessing and processing a large collection of photos with a brand new Mac Studio. It looks like the thread was left unanswered and closed [Photo folder processing unbelievably slow M4 Max Studio] perhaps left idle too long?

I got curious about it, and searched around a bit, and based on what the OP wrote and what I found, it sure looked like that was a true case of mixing Apples and Oranges (semi-pun). He was adding the Mac to an existing Windows and Linux setup and evidently expecting it to simply fit right in I think?? However, based on what I found and what Claude Sonnet AI (Warp Terminal for Mac) has reported it just will not work well at all: "ext4 has limited compatibility with macOS:"

I'll wager that there are folks out there who really know what the true score on this is and I would appreciate your expert input regarding this.

I also have a boat load of RAW photos that I have taken with various NIKON cameras and have saved to external SSDs formatted as APFS, and my new Mac Studio simply blazes through them. I also, in the past, used a 2017 iMac and more recently a Mac mini M2, and they were both orders of magnitudes faster than what that poor person experienced. I got the Studio, because the ports on the iMac are failing.

I use DxO PhotoLab for post and it takes no time at all get them done.

So I am guessing that the answer to that initial post is that the person will need to transfer all those photos onto a APFS SSD and then work on them with that Mac Studio. Again I would appreciate your help and education regarding this for that person, and hopefully he will see it.