Linux Foundation End User Summit wrap-up [LWN.net]

Linux Foundation End User Summit wrap-up

Posted Oct 17, 2008 22:19 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
In reply to: Linux Foundation End User Summit wrap-up by kragil
Parent article: Linux Foundation End User Summit wrap-up

Linux kernel releases are roughly about every 2 to 3 months. So yes, another kernel is still possible within this year if it is a quick cycle. Andrew Morton expressed interest in merging Btrfs as early as 2.6.28 or 2.6.29. Even if it isn't this year exactly, it is going to be be available pretty soon but with caveats similar to Ext4dev up until recently. Large scale production deployments are probably going to have to wait for much longer than that however.

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Linux Foundation End User Summit wrap-up

Posted Oct 18, 2008 23:29 UTC (Sat) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link]

From http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/news/article/...

"""
The roadmap for adoption includes alpha tests on laptops this year followed by alpha tests on servers next year, preview releases on community distros in 2010, incorporation in production OSes in 2011 and the start of enterprise adoption in 2012. Even if btrfs is "feature complete" in 2009, it will require extensive work to debug and tune for optimized performance before it is enterprise-ready, he said. Another critical step ahead is the addition of a user space file system consistency checker for file recovery, Ts'o said, adding that the last 20% of the project requires 80% of the effort.
"""

So this not a "just around the corner" thing. (I've never believed in a 20/80 rule. It's more like a 10/90 rule.) I cannot help but feel that the Namesys hype machine, the false start that was Reiser4, and the fan-base that fell for both may have cost us some time getting our future filesystem planning in gear. However, btrfs's feature set seems solid. And Chris Mason is certainly worthy of our faith. Ext4 looks adequate to get us to 2012. So I would say the future of Linux filesystems looks bright, if delayed.

Linux Foundation End User Summit wrap-up

Posted Oct 19, 2008 4:16 UTC (Sun) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

I'm a bit confused about ext4 and btrfs, what is the difference and what are the advantages of them over each other, or over earlier file systems. If I may offer a suggestion to the editors: I think here a LWN article summarizing the situation would be helpful.

ext4 and btrfs

Posted Oct 19, 2008 21:43 UTC (Sun) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

ext4 is an extension of the earlier ext* filesystems. It retains a semilar organization, and it has some of the same advantages and disadvantages. One big gap in ext4, even after all the work, is that it does not do checksumming of data (or metadata).

btrfs does have that checksumming, along with a lot of other features that people have been asking for (snapshots, for example).

The long-term plan is that btrfs will be the "next-generation filesystem" that we'll all be using. But btrfs is new, under heavy development, and does not yet have a stable on-disk format. OTOH ext4 is ready (or nearly ready) now. So think of ext4 as the interim solution which carries us through the next few years until btrfs is ready.

ext4 and btrfs

Posted Oct 20, 2008 10:20 UTC (Mon) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

Thanks for the answer!