APFS FUSE Driver for Linux vs LiME: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
APFS FUSE Driver for Linux is a free digital forensics tool. LiME is a free digital forensics tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best digital forensics fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of available product data, here is our conclusion:
Forensic examiners and incident responders working with seized Apple hardware or cloud-native Linux environments need APFS FUSE Driver for Linux because it's the only free tool that lets you mount and analyze encrypted APFS volumes without leaving the Linux command line. With nearly 2,000 GitHub stars and active maintenance, it's proven reliable enough that major forensic labs have standardized on it for macOS evidence acquisition pipelines. Skip this if your team relies on commercial forensic suites with GUI workflows; read-only FUSE mounting demands CLI competency and won't recover deleted files the way carving tools do.
Incident responders and forensic analysts investigating Linux systems need LiME because it acquires volatile memory with minimal process interference, preserving evidence that disk-based tools will miss. The tool runs from a loadable kernel module and leaves a negligible footprint on running processes, critical when you're trying to capture malware behavior and rootkit artifacts before shutdown. Skip this if your team lacks Linux kernel debugging experience or needs GUI-driven triage; LiME requires command-line proficiency and assumes you have a lab environment ready to analyze the raw memory dumps.
