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View Poll Results: Which Is Your Preferred Linux File System?
I have to agree with rknichols, in that the only time the file system has been an issue on my ubuntu systems is when I have had to run the fcsk command as admin. In the versions of Puppy Linux that default to the ext2 file system I have on my 286 antiques with the 100mb hard disks, it takes longer to do the disk check than on the newer one or two terrabyte systems. The ext4 seems more robust in that it tolerates the kids improperly shutting down the computers without corruption. ext4 for me!
Ext2 was the de-facto file system for the longest time, but it seems we breezed through ext3 to ext4. Anyone care to share some real world experiences that gives them cause to favor ext3 or ext4?
Actually I am not sure when I started using ext3 but it was first introduced in November 2001 and was a journalling file-system whereas ext2 was not. If you had worked on Redhat distributions such as 2, 3, 4 and 5 you could have used ext3 as your preferred file-system. I could be wrong here but I think it wasn't till Redhat 6 (introduced November 2010) that ext4 (introduced October 2008) became supported although it was possible to install ext4 on RHES version 5 and I think 4.
Basically ext3 has had a fairly long run of about seven years and is still used even today.
Personally I switched to ext4 fairly early since I use Fedora as my main Linux distribution and I have found that the performance of ext4 is so much better than that of ext3. This is not to say ext3 is bad it is just that ext4 has a better performance and even ext4 will be superseded one day
No matter what file-system you use you still need to perform backups.
I'll stay with ext4 and if I decide to mess with Windows XP offline, I'll use FAT32 and never NTFS. Always using LMDE or a Debian Distro.
While I have been using ext4 since it was introduced to Fedora I normally format usb keys with FAT32 although I have tried ExFAT and was quite surprised at how much better it was. The problem you find with ExFAT and even NTFS is not all devices can read those file-systems so you are stuck with FAT32 for USB portability. However if you are running a MS Windows OS then you really should be using NTFS. Actually my backup disks have an ext4 file-system on them.
I should also note that ExFAT and NTFS have patents on them however you can create those file-systems under Fedora and many other Linux distributions although I would suggest you don't do this on commercial systems. As for running MS Windows XP why bother since it is not a supported product any-more you would be better off with MS Windows 7 or Ugg! MS Windows 8.
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