Linux Developers Discuss Deprecating & Removing ReiserFS

[gavron]

The teaching seems to be: don't name a project after one's own name unless you want your project's reputation die with yourself.

Don't name a project after yourself.

OR... this being FOSS... do whatever YOU want with naming YOUR stuff, and if someone else thinks it's good enough to use, but not the name or the developer continuing to be associated with it, they'll just fork it.

E

[billbo]

The teaching seems to be: don't name a project after one's own name unless you want your project's reputation die with yourself.

And have your project deprecated as well? If that's the rule, then we are damn lucky that Linus seems to be a good guy...

[billyswong]

Don't name a project after yourself.

OR... this being FOSS... do whatever YOU want with naming YOUR stuff, and if someone else thinks it's good enough to use, but not the name or the developer continuing to be associated with it, they'll just fork it.

E

Most projects aren't popular enough to survive this kind of incident by forking.

[Berniyh]

What happens if the system still runs ReiserFS and then someone upgrades the kernel?

For the moment it would run just fine (unless you hit a bug due to code rot), but the kernel will spit out a warning that the filesystem is deprecated.
Just like it already does due to the 2038 incompatibility (didn't try, but the problem is mentioned in the text, so there will be a warning).
At some point it will be removed and in that case the filesystem won't mount anymore, because the kernel does not know it.
But of course you can still use some live system or a custom patched kernel to get your data.

Honestly though... noone with a functioning brain would use this filesystem these days. There just is exactly zero reasons to do that.
Personally, I would also claim that everybody using Reiser4/5 is out of their mind, too. But that's a different story.

Linux has enough great filesystems, there is no point in having Reiser*.

And if you happen to find some old disk formatted with ReiserFS that you need to get data from, then it should be possible to build the module out of kernel.
Or maybe there will be a fuse driver.

[Sin2x]

Edward is an active maintainer, so it's unlikely to be deprecated.

Also, Michael, in the article you say "Plus these days EXT4, XFS, and Btrfs are all better choices and even OpenZFS." -- do you have the benchmarks to defend your point? Would be nice to see those, especially with a lot of small files on the partition, like in the real world as opposed to the synthetic lab tests.

[vladimir86]

So purge all code that is connected to any shady individual? I find technical reasons more convincing.

Well, not being Y2038 compatible and not having enough maintainers and users seems to have more weith

[Raka555]

You know what Linux could use right now?

yet another file system.

Said no one ever. There are enough production grade FSs in use. Reiser is 20 years ago. No one gives a fuck about Reiser 4/5.

Especially not after one named after a dude who murdered his wife.

The 20 years ago argument can be made for almost all the linux filesystems.

I am not even entirely sure that ext4 had caught up in features/performance to the original reiserfs yet ...

[Volta]

Raka555

Reiserfs wasn't the fastest Linux file system. I bet ext4 is much faster in most cases.

[DanL]

Also, Michael, in the article you say "Plus these days EXT4, XFS, and Btrfs are all better choices and even OpenZFS." -- do you have the benchmarks to defend your point? Would be nice to see those, especially with a lot of small files on the partition, like in the real world as opposed to the synthetic lab tests.

Yeah, he did plenty of benchmarks back in the day when reiserfs was relevant (and even beyond that). Searching for them is an exercise left to you.
Or, if you want the TL;DR version - ext4 made reiserfs irrelevant.

[CochainComplex]

Someone wants to kill the ReiserFS project... Pun intended?

Seriously what should ReiserFS do better then the existing usual suspect's?
I remember using it with SuseLinux 7 back in the early 2000. AFAIK selling point for me was journalling. Can't remember the other pro arguments back then. But I have to admit I was a beginner at that time.