best LINUX File System ?


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OK. First of all: There is no single best filesystem. If there was

one particular filesystem that was better than all of the others, do

you think anybody would continue to use those others? No they wouldn't

- everybody would be using this super-filesystem.

In the real world, every filesystem has its strengths and weaknesses.

For an average everyday desktop, I'd choose either ext3 or reiserFS -

ext3 can be read from windows fairly easily, and reiser is perhaps

marginally faster. Both are very stable, and both are journaled

filesystems, so no long filesystem checks during boot.

XFS, JFS, reiser4, et al are good if you know you have a specific need for them,

but as its just going to be a normal desktop box, I wouldn't worry

about them.

  Knight said:
For desktop Linux I wouldn't reccomend ReiserFS, mainly because it doesn't fully support extended atributes, so things like Beagle and a few other search tools don't like it. I use it, however, it's a good FS aside from that.

586370825[/snapback]

Umm.....

Are you sure I don't know much about file systems, but this is on the 2.6.11.* kernel mabye even lower

  Kernel2.6.13rc5 said:
ReiserFS extended attributes (REISERFS_FS_XATTR)

Extended attributes are name:value pairs associated with inodes by

the kernel or by users (see the attr(5) manual page, or visit

<http://acl.bestbits.at/> for details).

If unsure, say N.

  ranasrule said:
iam leanin towards ext3....can i convert later 2 somethin else ?

586371303[/snapback]

Non-destructively? No. You'll need to migrate your data to a reserve-storage solution before re-mk.fs'ing

Having files that are mostly < 600mb-1gb in size does not justify choosing xfs as your fs. You can do without the additional disk-thrashing during simultaneous writes as well. Notwithstanding, it's a fine fs for media-creation. I personally use it on several boxen with raided scsi, and I love it.

For all-round performance on your desktop machine, though, stick with ext3.

If you choose to use ext3, my suggestion would be to do the following upon fs-creation:

[after mkfs.ext3..]

tune2fs -O has_journal,dir_index -o journal_data,acl /dev/hdXY

(this will ensure full-journaling, access control lists, and b-tree hashes for faster listings of large directories.)

Keep in mind that while some fs-types outperform others in certain benchmarks, efficient disk-operation occasionally requires a combination of fs-types. It's up to you to figure out how you'll be using your computer, and take the necessary steps to configure it accordingly.

Edited by sentio
  sentio said:
Non-destructively? No. You'll need to migrate your data to a reserve-storage solution before re-mk.fs'ing

Having files that are mostly < 600mb-1gb in size does not justify choosing xfs as your fs. You can do without the additional disk-thrashing during simultaneous writes as well. Notwithstanding, it's a fine fs for media-creation. I personally use it on several boxen with raided scsi, and I love it.

For all-round performance on your desktop machine, though, stick with ext3.

If you choose to use ext3, my suggestion would be to do the following upon fs-creation:

[after mkfs.ext3..]

tune2fs -O has_journal,dir_index -o journal_data,acl /dev/hdXY

(this will ensure full-journaling, access control lists, and b-tree hashes for faster listings of large directories.)

Keep in mind that while some fs-types outperform others in certain benchmarks, efficient disk-operation occasionally requires a combination of fs-types. It's up to you to figure out how you'll be using your computer, and take the necessary steps to configure it accordingly.

586371551[/snapback]

thanks for the advice :)

I' building a new Gentoo system and I have a simillar question, I can't decide between Ext3 and ReiserFS, it says ReiserFS is good at dealing with small files (4k or smaller) does that mean it will be slower (than Ext3) when dealing with bigger files?

I dunno, I may just give it a shot...

  msg43 said:
Umm.....

Are you sure I don't know much about file systems, but this is on the 2.6.11.* kernel mabye even lower

  Kernel2.6.13rc5 said:
ReiserFS extended attributes (REISERFS_FS_XATTR)

Extended attributes are name:value pairs associated with inodes by

the kernel or by users (see the attr(5) manual page, or visit

<http://acl.bestbits.at/> for details).

If unsure, say N.

586370836[/snapback]

I'm not sure what you mean, "Are you sure I don't know much about file systems", my comment wasn't a slight on you.

Linux has had support for Reiser3 xattr for a while now, but not 4. What you quoted has nothing to do with Reiser4. If no xattr is found, then Beagle jumps to SQLite, which is slow in comparison. This is why I don't always suggest Reiser4 for desktop use.

  Knight said:
I'm not sure what you mean, "Are you sure I don't know much about file systems", my comment wasn't a slight on you.

Linux has had support for Reiser3 xattr for a while now, but not 4. What you quoted has nothing to do with Reiser4. If no xattr is found, then Beagle jumps to SQLite, which is slow in comparison. This is why I don't always suggest Reiser4 for desktop use.

Oh ok I thought you were talking about reiserfs my mistake :blush:

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