Slackware + Ext4 = WIN!

The results of the poll so far are not surprising. Having read this thread I might actually give btrfs a try with ssd.

If you have installed XFS to the raw disk (e.g. /dev/sda) and write lilo to it with lilo.config "boot = /dev/sda", then XFS will be trashed.

If you have installed XFS to the partition (e.g. /dev/sda1) and write lilo to it with lilo.config "boot = /dev/sda1", the XFS wil lbe trashed! LOL!

But okay... if you write a lilo MBR to /dev/sda only, while having XFS on partition /dev/sda1 then I believe you are okay. You get the idea though... it is just that some documents talk about writing lilo boot sector into a partition and doing things like install a MS-DOS or other bootloader into /dev/sda that chain bootloads lilo installed in say /dev/sda1! You cannot do such a thing with XFS installed there. This is an issue that will bit people that try to use XFS as a root filesystem and try to put lilo into the volume/partition boot sector with XFS and maybe chain/multiboot to it while they run Windows and other OSes inside other partitions.

So, with different filesystems, there is the question: Is this filesystem compatible with having a boot sector installed at the head of it? The question is most important for multiboot/chainbootloading.

More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_boot_record

Interesting.. I've got it set up with a single XFS '/' partition at /dev/sda1 with LiLo installed to the MBR. Things seems to work fine, but I'm not doing any multi-boot or chain loading.

There is ext2/3/4 File System driver for Windows, but not for ReiserFS. So if there is Windows in dualboot, both Windows and Linux have full access to each others partitions. If no Windows, ReiserFS is my choice.
If you, or somebody else know about ReiserFS driver for Windows it will do me a favour.

I choose ext4. This is stable and simple. But I don't have a specific requirements for filesystems. I use Slackware in home, on desktop.

Just to clarify a bit: this thread's goal is not to collect statistics about filesystems used in existing installations (this has already been done, as one of us pointed out) but merely what will be your choice for the next installation - the very next, that's why only one choice is allowed.

That would mean that my answer is dependent on with which device I decide to start after the release of 14, wouldn't it? Since I currently think I will start with the laptop my answer should have been btrfs, not ext4.

@TobiSGD: That's my fault, I should have been clearer from the beginning. I edited the first post accordingly.

Also onstalling to an ssd but not convinced from my googling that any advantage to be had from btrfs and ext4 with journaling should be fine.

Alan

ext4

<Off Topic>I just saw in Phoronix news that Reiser4 has been ported to Linux 3.5.3. Adventurous among us, feel free to apply the patch. I won't.</Off Topic>

Reiser4 is probably fair enough to say, dead in the water.

I'd rather risk the wrath of Richard Stallman and add ZFS support.

That is correct.

It is for this very reason I will be formatting my small root partition with an ext3 filesystem - I chainload from NetBSD and need Lilo installed to Slackware's root, not the MBR.

usr, var, home and other partitions will be formatted with XFS.

I have chosen ext4, because / is a filesystem, where not much action happens. On my typical Slackware installation it contains between 0.3 and 0.5 GB of data, which is mostly only read on boot and almost never written to. So I see no point in using btrfs or something else there.

Of course, /var, /home, /opt and /usr are a different story, but that was not question.