What do you think is the best filesystem for Linux?

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CryptoNerd
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25 May 2016, 7:55 am

I'm installing Slackware, and it gives you a choice as to which filesystem to format your system partition as. Here is a screenshot showing the options:

Image

My question is, which of these filesystems would you pick, and why? Would you choose ext2, ext3, ext4, jfs, reiserfs, btrfs, or xfs? I'm not really that familiar with the science of filesystems, and I'm wondering what the respective advantages are to each one.



steve30
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26 May 2016, 8:18 am

I use ext3. Not sure why; probably because that always seemed to be recommended when I first started out with Linux.

I can't really comment on the others unfortunately.



Fogman
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28 May 2016, 4:25 am

What partition? I use XFS for / and BTree for /usr.


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mr_bigmouth_502
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28 May 2016, 9:45 am

I use Ext4 because it's the standard and I can open it from Windows using Ext2fsd if need be. I've always wanted to experiment with something different though, what's a good file system for desktop performance?


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JJabb
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11 Jun 2016, 5:36 pm

If I remember correctly, they said at Linux Academy quite often "EXT3 is stable enough now..." so I would go with that if presented with the option.



Nine7752
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11 Jun 2016, 5:40 pm

ext4 with journaling. If you want to encrypt the filesystem, then ext4 on top of LVM on top of LUKS.


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Edenthiel
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11 Jun 2016, 10:46 pm

EXT4 has performance and maturity going for it, so it's my usual choice unless I have some very good reason to do otherwise. EXT2 can have greater performance (esp on older or more basic hardware), and has been around even longer but it's rarely worth giving up journaling.


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Lantylam
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01 Jul 2016, 3:05 pm

I've used Ext4 for several years. Never had any problems with it.



dcj123
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01 Jul 2016, 7:41 pm

I used ext3 and never had a problem and then I upgraded to ext4 when it was in beta and my hard drive crashed hard and then when ext4 became stable, I used it again with no problems. I use ext4 today with few issues.

Moral of the story, avoid the latest and greatest and go with a version that works. Funny I should say this being an Arch Linux user but there is a big difference between Arch Linux's testing repos and Debian's testing repos. Debian will boot after going to testing repos, Arch Linux won't.