new linux filesystem in development

[inittux]

A new linux filesystem is in development. I wonder how much better it actually will be. I'm actually fine with

ext4 and I think it's better to just stick with ext instead of making up a whole new one. But that's just my

opinion. I'm sure they've got reasons to make a whole new file system. Here it is:

 

source: https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page

 

 

* Extent based file storage

* 2^64 byte == 16 EiB maximum file size

* Space-efficient packing of small files

* Space-efficient indexed directories

* Dynamic inode allocation

* Writable snapshots, read-only snapshots

* Subvolumes (separate internal filesystem roots)

* Checksums on data and metadata

* Compression (gzip and LZO)

* Integrated multiple device support

 

* RAID-0, RAID-1 and RAID-10 implementations

 

* Efficient incremental backup

* Background scrub process for finding and fixing errors on files with redundant copies

* Online filesystem defragmentation

 

Additional features in development, or planned, include:

 

* Very fast offline filesystem check (coming soon!)

* RAID-5 and RAID-6

* Object-level mirroring and striping

* Alternative checksum algorithms

* Online filesystem check

* Efficient incremental filesystem mirroring

[Dungeon-Dave]

Don't forget that EXT4 is basically EXT3 with enhancements, and EXT3 is EXT2 with journalling!

 

I agree with your points, though - I'll also wait until it's been in production for a bit and a comparison table shows me what benefits it has over EXT3/4 before I adopt it.

 

(I used reiserFS on one of my servers since you could do online resizing which EXT2/3 couldn't. Then the newer ext3tools brought online resizing along, and now I have no reason to go back to reiser. My wife's probably safer if I stay away from reiser, too...!)