F2FS Improves Zoned Block Device Support & Per-File Compression For Linux 6.9

[phoronix]

Phoronix: F2FS Improves Zoned Block Device Support & Per-File Compression For Linux 6.9

Merged today were all the Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) updates for the in-development Linux 6.9 kernel...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.9-F2FS

[AKoskovich]

Not really sure why F2FS isn't the defacto standard on every Linux desktop (for regular users). Basically any system is going to be using some form of flash storage and that's where F2FS shines.

[byteabit]

* https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/next...tems/f2fs.html
* https://f2fs.wiki.kernel.org/

[Anux]

Does per file compression reduce the needed disk space or is it still only for saving writes?

[geerge]

Does per file compression reduce the needed disk space or is it still only for saving writes?

How would you get one without the other? Would a FS really implement compression without the extremely mild extra bookkeeping required to mark blocks correctly?

[sobrus]

Not really sure why F2FS isn't the defacto standard on every Linux desktop (for regular users). Basically any system is going to be using some form of flash storage and that's where F2FS shines.

Had it for few years, performance after a while (few month) was worse than EXT4 (Crucial MX500 2TB drive), and I had near data loss situation on kernel update on two machines. Gave up (just like with XFS and BTRFS) and returned to EXT4. F2FS doesn't offer anything useful over EXT4, but the latter is far more reliable for sure. Compression is also useless - it doesn't offer any more disk space.

[direc85]

IIUC SSD drives do their own balancing, and F2FS is meant to be used with "raw" flash media, like SD cards.

Nope, it's not for raw devices. See this article, paragraph two.

[Anux]

How would you get one without the other? Would a FS really implement compression without the extremely mild extra bookkeeping required to mark blocks correctly?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/F2FS#Compression

Unlike other filesystems with inline compression, f2fs compression does not expose additional freespace by default and instead reserves the same number of blocks regardless of whether compression is enabled or not.

[aviallon]

IIUC SSD drives do their own balancing, and F2FS is meant to be used with "raw" flash media, like SD cards.

This is why I do not understand why the Raspberry Pi is not using it.
The performance difference is HUGE on a SD card.

[cynic]

Had it for few years, performance after a while (few month) was worse than EXT4 (Crucial MX500 2TB drive), and I had near data loss situation on kernel update on two machines. Gave up (just like with XFS and BTRFS) and returned to EXT4. F2FS doesn't offer anything useful over EXT4, but the latter is far more reliable for sure. Compression is also useless - it doesn't offer any more disk space.

so, you had data loss with XFS, btrfs and F2FS?
That's quite odd. Did you verify your hardware?