[Discuss] Reading Linux book

[Richard Pieri]

aldo albanese wrote:
> Hi, First of all, thanks for your previous tips on the Linux box, it
> was very much appreciated.  I'm reading the different filesystems,
> when would you use XFS or JFS or ext4.  If I'm correct currently
> Linux uses ext4, am i right?  From the reading both XFS and JFS look
> like a great choice.

I wouldn't (and mostly don't) use ext4 for anything. The only reason 
that I would consider using ext4 is for large scale storage in 
preparation to migrate to Btrfs at which point I'd go with Btrfs and 
save myself the migration. ext4 is NOT backwards compatible. ext4 file 
systems with extents cannot be mounted as ext3.

For large scale storage I prefer ZFS. It does almost everything, and it 
does everything well. Btrfs is my other choice for when ZFS isn't a good 
choice.

System volumes get ext3. None of ext4's features are of any benefit to 
system volumes and can sometimes be detrimental due to the lack of 
backwards compatibility.

Red Hat is backing XFS for RHEL 7. That's good for XFS and might make it 
viable as a replacement for ext3 on system volumes. XFS may be good for 
certain types of large scale storage where performance is a higher 
priority than absolute data integrity.

-- 
Rich P.