Someone said that there that JFS is no longer being maintained and that only bugfixes are being released. I don't know, that sounds like it is being maintained to me. I don't see any reason that JFS would need a version update, it seems to work well. I like JFS, and even on a faster machine I would use it, especially with a much bigger disk volume. I remember when I got my external HD, and I tried out ext2/3 and reiserfs. They were all horrible as far as I was concerned. The ext* filesystems allocated too much space to itself, like 6% out of my 250GB, and that to me was unacceptable. I don't know how reiserv4 handles large volumes, but I remember after formatting it to reiser(v3), it took a VERY VERY long time just to mount, at least a 2+ minutes, I'm not joking!! I then thought about trying XFS, but it's unreliability one when it actually writes information down vs just issuing it a copy command and hoping it would sync, plus certain issues of a crash drove me away from XFS, then I realized JFS, since I was already using it on my desktop, tried it, and worked like a charm.

Reiserfs v4 is effectively dead, it has been out a number of years, and still not in the kernel, so at this point, forget it! According to that ibm link, and even reiserfs v3 has fewer and fewer chances of released bugfixes over time. I think the name itself will probably go away, and probably when that happens more work might be done with the ex-reiserfs (insert_new_fs_name_here).

I am still curious about when ext4 comes out, but I think I have found my all purpose FS, (J)FS. :D

Still in development would have been a better term.

Err, but one of the reasons that Reiser 4 hasn't made it to the kernel is that in any negotiations with the kernel guys, Hans Reiser's rather abrasive attitude didn't help. And, at least temporarily, that part of the problem has gone away...

And anyway, for probably 18 months or more, it has been available in Xandros desktop 4. Not sure if that was buggy (didn't do any long term evaluation) but Xandros did seem one of the snappier distros.

Thats just Xandros, and it was not just Reiser's attitude that prevented v4 to be included, there were technical reasons why it wasn't included either. http://wiki.kernelnewbies.org/WhyReiser4IsNotIn

I concur. I've been running the JFS on Slackware 12.1 on my two old crappy machines, a Plll 667 IBM, and an 850 Celeron IBM. I've noticed real gains in CPU usage with the JFS. I'm happy that I switched from ext3. For newer machines it may not matter, but, for these old beasts I need every optimization that I can get. JFS for me:-)

Well, I know I'm repeating myself but, I like JFS on my old system, and would still use it on a more modern system as well. :p

Agreed. I would eventually like to buy a newer, faster Slackware box, but, I see no reason to switch file systems:)
JFS works well for me.

The experience I had with ext3 was on a P4 (3Ghz, 1024 MB RAM -not really old/crappy) and I found it noticeably slower.

Was going to try these, but my desire to try JFS got the best of me:
http://en.opensuse.org/Speeding_up_Ext3

JFS mounts faster, runs on less CPU and has decent I/O speed compared to:
reiser
ext3
ext2
and does recover from dirty unmount in sub seconds on both PII and newer boxen
to my honest surprise !

My wote is for good ol' JFS(2)

;-)

Of course now the inode 256 byte change in ext3 has broken compatibility with some Windows fs programs, so if cross-system compatibility is an important reason to stay with ext3 you'de better not use the new version in slack 12.1

Can't you just change the inode size during the installation? The 256 byte inode size is now the default, but I'm pretty sure (though not positive since I haven't installed fresh for a while) that you can just select 128 bytes as an option during installation.

[edit]Well, after trying it out in a VM, it looks like you can't change the inode size from within the setup script -- you would have to hack the mke2fs line in /usr/lib/setup/SeTpartitions on the install CD. Something like the following would do (I think):
I seem to remember being able to select that in Slackware 11.0, but I could be (and probably am) incorrect.[/edit]

I didn't know Window$ actually had ext2 support. But you know that usb flash drives are usually used for say taking one to the library, putting all your research materials on there, and then taking it home, or for going to a friend's house and getting some goods from them. Most of the time I don't even use usb flash drives, in the library case I would just upload them to gmail. In the latter, I'd tell him to up it to a file sharing site. Of course there are other uses for usb flash drives, but typically they should remain formatted with something universally compatible, otherwise it defeats the purpose, IMO.

ext2/3 support windows 256 byte inodes
 

You can certainly change the inodes back for compatibility by setting up the filesystems prior to running setup. It's just that if you run the defaults and pick ext3 because of some of the reasons given above (compatibility) you'd better think ahead and do that since the setup script doesn't give you a choice or a "heads up".

Windows doesn't have ext2 support. However there are a number of free utilities available to give it access. For example, Ext2fs automounts ext2 filesystems and gives them a drive letter, just like diskmgmt.msc does for NTFS volumes. It doesn't do 256 byte inodes. Backup programs like Acronis MaxBlast or TrueImage support Ext3 and Ext2 fs natively (and I think some of the others too) but 256 byte inodes force it to copy sector-by sector (very wasteful of time and space). But I agree that for USB key drives something like fat16/32 is probably better for the widest possible compatibility, if that's what you want.

Personally, I like to keep Windows out of my Linux file systems. I'd rather just share NTFS or FAT partitions. You can use permission inheritance in NTFS to keep it sane on the Windows side of things.