Tux3 Comes Back To Life, Brings Competition To EXT4

It's been a few years since last having anything to talk about with regard to the Tux3 file-system, but with the new year comes news on Tux3. This file-system has advanced and is more competitive now with EXT4.

Tux3 is a versioning file-system that succeeds Tux2 and this file-system was first publicized in 2008. See An Update On The Tux3 File-System and The State Of The Tux3 File-System.

Up until last night, the latest news on Tux3 was from 2009 when there was chatter about merging it into the mainline Linux kernel. That didn't happen, but for kicking off 2013, the developers have shared some exciting news.

A Tux3 status report was issued in the early hours of 2013. "The Tux3 project has some interesting news to report for the new year. In brief, the first time Hirofumi ever put together all the kernel pieces in his magical lab over in Tokyo, our Tux3 rocket took off and made it straight to orbit. Or in less metaphorical terms, our first meaningful benchmarks turned in numbers that meet or even slightly beat the illustrious incumbent, Ext4."

The benchmark results from the Tux3 file-system developers show this experimental Linux FS as being competitive with EXT4. "Tux3 spends less time waiting than Ext4, uses less CPU (see below) and finishes faster on average. This was exciting for us, though we must temper our enthusiasm by noting that these are still early results and several important bits of Tux3 are as yet unfinished. While we do not expect the current code to excel at extreme scales just yet, it seems we are already doing well at the scale that resembles computers you are running at this very moment."

For more information on the state of Tux3 in 2013, see the mailing list post.