You know, ZFS, ButterFS (btrfs…its actually “better” right?), and I’m sure more.

I think I have ext4 on my home computer I installed ubuntu on 5 years ago. How does the choice of file system play a role? Is that old hat now? Surely something like ext4 has its place.

I see a lot of talk around filesystems but Ive never found a great resource that distiguishes them at a level that assumes I dont know much. Can anyone give some insight on how file systems work and why these new filesystems, that appear to be highlights and selling points in most distros, are better than older ones?

Edit: and since we are talking about filesystems, it might be nice to describe or mention how concepts like RAID or LUKS are related.

  • @BeefPiano
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    208 months ago

    I don’t know about the new ones, but ReiserFS was a killer back in the day.

    • @[email protected]
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      78 months ago

      The horrible part is it was. Your other choice was ext2, which wasted so many lifetimes with its hours long fsck times. Reiserfs was a cut above the rest, we would all be using it today if it weren’t for that one teensy-weensy legal issue.

      • @cybersandwich
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        18 months ago

        I have an old drive with it in there. The drive is going bad so I haven’t messed with it too much. I never knew at the time why the development and shine faded so quickly.