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Samsung Creates New File System F2Fs For Linux & Android
sfcrazy writes "Samsung has created a new Linux file system called F2FS. Jaegeuk Kim of Samsung writes on the Linux Kernel Mailing List: F2FS is a new file system carefully designed for the NAND flash memory-based storage devices. We chose a log structure file system approach, but we tried to adapt it to the new form of storage. Also we remedy some known issues of the very old log structured file system, such as snowball effect of wandering tree and high cleaning overhead."
While the primary benefit will initially be for Android devices, this will be great news for solid state drives as well. Great job Samsung!
Commercial hardware companies contributing to open-source and the kernel, I mean.
It’s nice to see that Linux and the open-source philosophy more and more just is generally accepted.
Let's hope it.s because they have seen the advantages of humans working together, helping each other out... and not just for nefarious dog-eat-dog (aka capitalist aka "free market" aka law of the jungle*) purposes.
* Don’t worry. I know they're not supposed to be the same. The point I want to make, is that nowadays it gets all used to describe the same thing.
Some freezers too. They are actually involved with the development of the ELF end the enlightenment windows manager.
I think Samsung likes Linux a lot
Because it's legally required to trickle down perhaps?
I think Samsung likes Linux a lot
Considering that a Platinum membership in the Linux Foundation requires plopping down at least half a million bucks, I suspect you're probably right. :)
Heck, Google only has a Gold membership, and we know they like Linux. Samsung is in elite territory with corporations like IBM and Intel.
I know you're kidding, but I should point out that Linux is not a requirement for building bad interfaces (though one might claim that it helps). TV engineers in general seem to have some impressive skills at building bad interfaces. My last three TVs all had terrible interfaces, and none of them were Linux-based. :)
This cannot replace FAT, since the whole point of FAT is to be interoperable with all those Windows machines out there. For as long as Windows only understands FAT and NTFS on removable devices, any consumer device will use those (and specifically FAT, for certain other reasons) in any of its memory that is directly exposed to be mounted as a block device.
On the other hand, for internal device memory, Android has already moved to a high-level protocol (MTP) to expose that to PCs, so they don't care what file system backs it internally. I haven't checked, but I'd expect that any 4.x device has its internal memory fully in ext4 or other Linux native FS already.
It looks to me like most the problems they are solving have already been solved. There are already several open source log-structured file systems. This list excludes experimental and similar software from educational institutions:
- Yaffs - http://www.yaffs.net/ - designed from the ground up for NAND
- JFFS2 - http://sourceware.org/jffs2/jffs2-html/jffs2-html.html - ditto.
- NANDFS - http://wiki.freebsd.org/NAND - BSD style licence
Plus there's Ext4 - which is used in Android now - not designed for NAND, but seems to work ok.
This work by Samsung fixes the problems with their previous file system. It's good, but it's not unique. Good PR though.