F2FS Gets More Fixes In Linux 4.21 With The File-System Now Supported By Google's Pixel

[phoronix]

Phoronix: F2FS Gets More Fixes In Linux 4.21 With The File-System Now Supported By Google's Pixel

The Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) has some new features for the current Linux 4.21 development cycle but it's mostly fixes stemming from increased testing with Google now supporting this flash-focused file-system for their Pixel device line-up...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=F2FS-Linux-4.21-Changes

[stqn]

Is it time to use F2FS on SSDs instead of, say, ext4? I’m still unsure of the actual benefits of this file system.

Edit: I see that it is faster in some (synthetic or database-oriented) benchmarks, but also that it isn’t well-supported by gparted, and it is impossible to shrink f2fs partitions.

[discordian]

Is it time to use F2FS on SSDs instead of, say, ext4? I’m still unsure of the actual benefits of this file system.

Benefits should be less writes to the underlying flash. But SSDs have their own, very sophisticated algorithms to compensate those along with a lot Ram

F2fs is a good fit for eMMC storage (phones, embedded), where it should provide better performance and lifetime. It competes more with JFFS2 and other logbased filesystem than a ext4 which is journalbased.
(Tha said I would not mind comparisons on SSD, particularly in terms of how much actual data is written with different fs)

[Zajec]

F2fs is a good fit for eMMC storage (phones, embedded), where it should provide better performance and lifetime. It competes more with JFFS2

Except it doesn't because F2FS runs on block-presented devices while JFFS2 runs on raw flash. It's really hard to compare them by their extra features if there are designed for a totally different cases.

[Raka555]

A new filesystem shoot-out in 4.21 would be nice.

[Brane215]

I'm running it on 500GB EVO870. It works just fine.

[V10lator]

Benefits should be less writes to the underlying flash.

I'm not sure this is true cause AFAIK f2fs uses GC and wear-leveling algos which move chunks of i.e. longterm read-only data around to higher lifetime in case the underlyings FTL GC / wear-leveling algos aren't good enough. These algos might actually cause more writes esp. on idle (so when i.e. ext4 does nothing f2fs starts to move data around).

The FTLs on modern SSDs should be good enough to have less to none benefit from these algos in f2fs but I'm using it since years on different SSDs (and other FTL based flash media) without any problems.

[Vistaus]

I'm running it on 500GB EVO870. It works just fine.

The question was if there's any noticeable improvement over, say, ext4, not whether it works fine.

[starshipeleven]

Is it time to use F2FS on SSDs instead of, say, ext4? I’m still unsure of the actual benefits of this file system.

It was designed for flash devices with crappy controllers, like USB flash drives, SDcards or eMMC. On an actual SSD there is much less difference as the SSD controller is vastly more powerful and can deal with all you can throw at it.

[pal666]

Is it time to use F2FS on SSDs instead of, say, ext4?

it is designed for flash. not every ssd is flash, optane for example isn't
and it is time to use optane if you value speed