At which point you're asking why Apple doesn't have default support for something like ext4, which is a decent point.

That would both get you easier compatibility between Mac and Linux and solve the NTFS write issue without any more trouble than it's giving people now because then you'd just install the ext4 driver on the Windows machine instead of the NTFS driver on the Mac.

Is it that easy to use on Windows these days? I should give it a try.