Until now I have never dwelled on the word fuse but then I saw that there is nofuse.
Based on searches I have done in the the internet they don't clearly explain the difference. What is the difference between fuse and nofuse?
For example, what does fuse versus nofuse this in terms of performance and benefits? nofuse allows you to start a flash drive at boot time and fuse doesn't? This is what interests me.
They're two different drivers. One of them is created using FUSE, the other is a kernel module.
FUSE is a framework that allows filesystem drivers to be written in "userspace", i.e. as standalone services rather than kernel modules. This makes development much easier, at the cost of lower performance.
FUSE-based filesystems may be somewhat slower than in-kernel ones, as each operation goes through several context switches – from your program to the kernel to the corresponding FUSE service (which has to read data from a device, so back into the kernel and out again), then the reply is again handled by the kernel and delivered to your process. It's nothing special compared to e.g. databases which also run as services, but it does make things slower when compared to filesystems that directly run as part of the kernel.
However, FUSE-based drivers like exfat-fuse can be installed regardless of currently running kernel (the interface is specifically meant to be stable), compared to kernel-based ones such as ZFS which have to be adapted to each new major kernel version and the module has to be recompiled separately for each minor version (often on the user's machine).
So for filesystems that are not (yet) part of the Linux kernel (regardless of the reason), using FUSE is a common choice because it makes the driver easier to write and easier to deploy – which is why exfat-fuse became commonly used. (Due to the drivers being ordinary programs, FUSE also makes it easy to build custom filesystems like sshfs, ftpfs, or wikipediafs.)
At this time, though, the 'exfat-nofuse' package is now obsolete (well, both of them are obsolete), as current kernel versions have a built-in exFAT driver, so neither of the external drivers is needed anymore.
Similarly, the "ntfs-3g" NTFS driver is also FUSE-based, though it is likely to be replaced by the new in-kernel "ntfs3" driver at some point.
From fuse(8):
FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) is a simple interface for userspace programs to export a virtual filesystem to the Linux kernel. FUSE also aims to provide a secure method for non privileged users to create and mount their own filesystem implementations.
The nofuse, means it is handled purely by a kernel module.
Your Kernel has a method of talking to hardware. This method (and the kernel itself) runs in Ring 0, which means it's privileged. Filesystem code can contain a rootkit. Moreover, you have to be root to install a kernel module that implements a filesystem driver. You also have to be root to set up the mount point.
FUSE means the filesystem driver runs in user space. A module in the kernel bridges to code that executes as a regular user. This means the footprint for vulnerability is smaller, and more universal. A novice implementation of a FUSE driver, will rely on the same kernel bridge as every other FUSE driver.
Here your distro provides two methods for exfat, one is kernel based one is in FUSE.
