On Monday April 28 2003 03:38 pm, you wrote:
> I've been researching filesystems as of late and am curious what everyone
> is using and why.
>
> Chris Short, SrA USAF
> shortc@centcom.mil
This might interest you http://www.linuxsurveys.com/display.php?poll_id=23
Sorry it doesn't speculate as to the whys but, I'll hazard a probable guess
for you. Most people today, agree that it is more advantageous to use a
journaled file system for reasons of data integrity. You are less likely to
lose data in a powerfailure, for example, with a journaled file system than
with a non-journaled file system such as ext2. Also, with journaled systems
recovery time when you have to fsck the drive are much less.
That said, which of the several journaled file systems (ext3, Reiser, xfs,
jfs, etc.) is best? The answer to this is going to be; it depends on what you
are doing. There are slight advantages to different ones depending on what it
is used for. High throughput of many small files, handling of extremely large
files, heavy database useage(Oracle) and so forth all may have different
requirements and these file systems may meet those requirements differently.
So why have most people opted for ext3. The simple answer is maturity. ext3 is
ext2 with journaling added. That means that all of the features and maturity
of ext2 are there and continue to be used. It also means that the countless
tools that can be used with ext2 can also be used to access ext3 file
systems. Most of the other journaled file systems have only recently entered
a "stable" status and are thus less mature. Additionally, performance issues
such as those mentioned above are not typical for general use workstations
and therefore performance is much less of an issue.
Finally, perhaps the biggest reason of all why ext3 is the most used file
system is that it is the default file system of most distros today. Few
people have reason to deviate from the default for things such as the file
system so, most modern Linux systems will be found to use ext3.
Hope this helps....
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