Ubuntu 9.04 Receives EXT4 Support

With the EXT4 file-system having been stabilized with the Linux 2.6.28 kernel, the Ubuntu developers are preparing to adopt this evolutionary Linux file-system update. EXT4 will not replace EXT3 as the default file-system until at least Ubuntu 9.10, but as of yesterday, Ubuntu 9.04 now has install-time support for EXT4. In this article we are looking at the EXT4 support within Ubuntu as well as providing a few Linux file-system benchmarks from a netbook-embedded solid-state drive. In this article we have published Ubuntu benchmarks of EXT4, EXT3, XFS, JFS, and ReiserFS file-systems.

Committed to the Ubuntu development repositories last Thursday were the last bits of code needed for Ubuntu to properly support EXT4 and then appeared in Friday's daily ISO spins. This work will also appear in the upcoming Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha 3 release. The LiveCD and alternate/server install CDs of Ubuntu 9.04 offer the option to use an EXT4 file-system when manually partitioning the disk. Some other distributions like Fedora have already supported EXT4 while it was still in development.

The EXT4 file-system option is listed next to the other file-systems supported for installation by Ubuntu. The EXT4 support for the GRUB boot-loader in Ubuntu 9.04 was already committed and is in place. We tested out both the alternate and LiveCDs of Ubuntu from the January 9, 2009 daily spins. Setting up the EXT4 file-system for the / partition worked as expected without any issues.