[GRLUG] WMNTUG Windows 7 Meeting

[Jeff DeFouw]

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 03:12:01PM -0400, Bob Kline wrote:
> Please elaborate.  XFS can be checked
> much faster, but  just as thoroughly in
> some sense?  What are the "valid reasons?"
> As in, I don't know  a thing about it, so a
> small word salad about what it is, and its
> virtues and advantages over ext3, would
> be appreciated.
> 
> Hasn't ext4 started to be used in Linux?
> Anyone know what it offers in the way
> of improvements over ext3, and the rest
> of the world of file systems?

I case wikipedia didn't cover it...

ext4 is ready for general use now, but some bugs are still being found.  
XFS has always had a few features that are useful for working with large 
files in real-time applications.  XFS can pre-allocate files based on a 
data rate, and do online defragmentation of individual files.

ext4 now does many of the same things, or at least has kernel support 
for adding them in the future.  ext4 also has a faster fsck than ext2/3.

Here's another page about ext4:

http://kernelnewbies.org/Ext4

I haven't converted any ext3 filesystems yet, mainly because benchmarks 
show typical desktop patterns don't benefit much.

-- 
Jeff DeFouw <jeffd at i2k.com>