Ext4 to be standard for Fedora 11, Btrfs also included (heise online) [LWN.net]

Ext4 to be standard for Fedora 11, Btrfs also included (heise online)

Posted Jan 22, 2009 23:36 UTC (Thu) by kev009 (subscriber, #43906)
In reply to: Ext4 to be standard for Fedora 11, Btrfs also included (heise online) by giggls
Parent article: Ext4 to be standard for Fedora 11, Btrfs also included (heise online)

It should at least match performance of XFS in most workloads (similar features including extents, delayed alloc, etc. Search this site for the details you need.), but has the benefit of way more experienced devs than XFS ever will, and is home grown to the Linux kernel. Suffice to say, once the dust settles and ext4 has been incorporated into the major distros it will be far more stable and reliable than XFS could ever dream, even though the latter has been around for quite a while.

This seems to be how FOSS works, where the most popular projects attract the best devs and tend to take the lead and run with it even if it isn't [originally] the best technology. That isn't to say that niche projects don't exist, but for a general purpose FS, XFS really has no advantage over ext4. The more advanced XFS features like freezing are being ported to other FSes anyways.

In summery, ext4 is a worthy contender in the FS space and should handle most user's needs better than any of the other general purpose FS, at least until Btrfs stabilizes. Btrfs might not even benchmark as well as ext4, but it will allow for novel features like efficient/safe backup, Time Machine work-a-like, easy multi-volume management, and all the hype of ZFS and co. This tandem of ext4 and Btrfs should keep us content for a few years yet.

I'll link dump to my blog with more FS thoughts: http://www.kev009.com/wp/2008/11/on-file-systems/

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Ext4 to be standard for Fedora 11, Btrfs also included (heise online)

Posted Jan 23, 2009 3:35 UTC (Fri) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link]

I can't wait to run an ext4 root / btrfs home combination. One wonders if Sun's time machine-like slider on OpenSolaris' Nautilus file manager has been contributed back to the GNOME project, and can be used with a different file system backend (i.e. replacing ZFS with Btrfs).

Ext4 to be standard for Fedora 11, Btrfs also included (heise online)

Posted Jan 25, 2009 8:42 UTC (Sun) by dgc (subscriber, #6611) [Link]

> [ext4] ... has the benefit of way more experienced devs than
> XFS ever will ...

Oh, that's a bit harsh.

Yes, the ext4 developers are experienced and talented.
Yes, the XFS developers are experienced and talented.

But who is more talented or experienced *does not matter*.

What matters is that they put their time and effort into
improving Linux and supporting their user community.

Respect them for providing you with a choice in filesystems
and doing everything they can to keep your data safe and
accessible. Respect them for supporting their users even
things go wrong and helping them to recover as quickly
possible. Respect them for introducing new technologies
that help their users.

The fact that some filesystem doesn't meet your particular
needs does not give you an excuse to disparage the efforts
of the community which develops and uses that filesystem.
Some people may find that offensive and be far less polite
that I have been. So, in future, please be more thoughtful
before posting.

FYI: Yes, I'm an XFS developer.