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Why Redhat Choose ext3 For 7.2
mz001b writes "There is an interesting article from RH posted on LinuxToday discussing why they chose ext3 over the other available journaling filesystems (ReiserFS, xfs, jfs,...) for RH 7.2"
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I've done some research on the different filesystems. The machines I used were all old Dell Dimension XPS D233's, 64M memory, 2G HDD's.
Machine 1: Redhat 7.0/ext2
Machine 2: Debian Woody/ext3
Machine 3: Slack 7.0/reiserfs
Test 1:
The machines were elevated to a distance of 5 stories to the rooftop of a local building, or approximately 70 feet off the ground. Each machine was dropped veritcally then tested to see if this damaged the filesystem.
Machine 1: Destroyed
Machine 2: Destroyed
Machine 3: Almost Destroyed, but made funny noises and started to smoke during CMOS check
Test 2:
Unable to test due to unpredicted destruction in test 1.
Conclusion:
No current filesystem for mainstream Linux systems is capable of surviving a 5-story vertical drop. Until this feature is implemented in an open source file system, it will be hard for that FS to be widely accepted.
My first thought was that it's because Stephen Tweedie, lead developer of ext3, works for RedHat. ReiserFS was developed primarily by SUSE. JFS and XFS come from IBM and SGI. / So I read the article, and all of those reasons could easily apply to any of the above filesystems.
Your very thorough reading probably missed this surprising section:
"Easy transition:
It is easy to change from ext2 to ext3 and gain the benefits of a robust journaling file system, without reformatting. That's right, no need to do a long, tedious, and error-prone backup, reformat, restore operation in order to experience the advantages of ext3."
It could happen to anyone. I know I had to read the article half-way before I even saw it!
Wow, troll and flamebait. I can't WAIT to see you assholes in metamoderation.