EXT4 Goodness Coming Soon

On Christmas eve it was announced that the new EXT4 file system for linux was declared stable and will be built into the Linux kernel as of version 2.6.28.

One of the big things that I think will help modern Linux users is the default Ext4 behavior for allocation of space on the file system.

Most file systems create files by filling the requested space with zeros.  As anyone who has used BitTorrent to download an ISO knows, this can be time consuming as the system creates a 700mb file full of zero’s that will only be overwritten as the real file is downloaded into that space.

Ext4 handles preallocation more efficiently.  Using BitTorrent to download that ISO onto a volume formatted with Ext4 results in the file system simply “Reserving” the of 700mb contiguous (if possible) space but doesn’t actually write anything to the drive until you start using the file.

As more people use iTunes to download TV shows and movies or as people do more video editing the size of the files they work with get bigger and bigger.  Ext4 addresses this problem and keeps Linux ahead of the curve for users who need to work with lots and lots of data.

OK, OK… so how will the end user benefit from this EXT4 filesystem? Well, first of all, the whole system will be much faster and more reliable compared to one with EXT3 (I guess that some of you still remember the Firefox/Ext3 issue), it will boot faster (the current article proves that) and it’s able to handle files with sizes of up to 16 TB (terabytes). But these are just a few of the features brought by the fourth extended filesystem, for more details you can check the Wikipedia entry for EXT4.

via Ubuntu 9.04 Boots in 21.4 Seconds – With EXT4 as the default filesystem. – Softpedia.

Sadly, this April’s  9.04 release of Ubuntu will only support Ext4 installs via the Alternative/Text based installer.  It won’t be until October’s 9.10 release that Ext4 will become the default file system format for the main Ubuntu installer.