The upcoming Linux 6.2 kernel should see improved filesystem handling, including performance gains for SD cards and USB sticks, as well as FUSE. As for next-gen storage subsystems… not so much.
For a mature operating system kernel, there are still significant improvements to Linux’s handling of current disk formats, and this should improve when kernel 6.2 is released in early 2023.
A patch from Sony engineer Yuezhang Mo Makes creating new files or directories faster on an exFAT disk with lots of files – the more files, the greater the optimization. This follows the same programmer’s earlier patch for better handling of exFAT, in March.
Next Microsoft releases the exFAT specification in 2019 and Access the Linux kernel in 2020, its support has steadily improved. Recently Linux gained the ability to repair exFAT volumes thanks to a patch from Samsung developer Namjae Jeon, which keeps out of the exFAT Drive tree for an older kernel – like the one used in Android. this is a commit log It shows many contributions from a Sony programmer. Another Samsung engineer, Jaeguk Kim, contributed a patch to improve F2FS, the Flash Friendly File System.
Formerly Ubuntu and now Microsoft engineer Christian Braunner He was busy too. Posted in detail fix To add custom VFS API for POSIX ACL. It’s been supported for a long time, as you can see from this Describe About How It Works from 2002, but the new version should clean up and make it easier to get started. Browner also filed a patch to support ID holders assigned to SquashFS volumes. This is an add-on to this earlier patch which provided sample ID mappings, which also contains an explanation of how they work and what they are used for.
Improvements have also been made to some of the more established file systems. one is a Lister for fixes and improvements for XFS, targeting an important new online repair feature. another fix Provides performance improvements for fused mounted volumes. In other words, where the filesystem code runs in the userspace program, not as part of the kernel. There are even bugfixes for now distinguished ext4.
There are also some improvements in Btrfs, especially in its handling of RAID 5 and 6. In particular, a patch addresses a “kill on read, modify, and write” issue for Btrfs RAID5 arrays ( but not RAID6). This is a good thing, but these disk layouts are still not recommended. In the words of the producer private documents:
The feature should not be used in production, only for evaluation or testing purposes.
Since this is the FOSS file system of the FOSS operating system, there are of course workarounds, such as using the embedded Linux kernel. mdraid cross support mdadm , to create a RAID-6 volume, then format it with Btrfs. Our story is on Upgrading to an Older Debian Installation He mentioned that he was running LVM, on RAID, on LVM. This kind of thing is possible and people do it, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea if you’re not an old Linux nerd.
Simplifying and consolidating this kind of complex disk layout is exactly what next-gen file systems were meant to provide, but as code changes continue to emerge, two of the most important have fallen relatively silent.
While Ubuntu continues to maintain the ZSys Code, there isn’t much activity. It should be noted that there have been no new posts on ZSys Articles Since the Ubuntu 20.04 period, some users have started Asking What’s going on and if it should happen Removal.
It’s certainly not due to the lack of development of OpenZFS, which released Variant 2.1.7 earlier this month, with numerous updates and support up to Linux 6.0. There are also active and innovative third-party tools that use it, such as ZFSBootMenu. it’s also supported on NixOS, the innovative distro we talked about last week.
On the Red Hat side, the stratis Team released Variant 3.4.1 in November, three minor point releases since then. However, the changelog does not show any very important work. It always targets a version of Fedora older than the current one, for example. Could you use it in RHEL 9, but it’s still an unsupported tech preview, as is I did in RHEL 8 in 2019.
We could be wrong, but it seems to us that Canonical and Red Hat have lost interest in pushing this innovative technology forward. We’d love to see someone else select, merge, and optimize projects like some Android vendors do with exFAT. This seems like a huge opportunity for companies creating their own Ubuntu-based distros, such as Linux Mint and ZorinOS, that fix perceived weaknesses in their flagship desktop product. ®
