With more eyes on Btrfs given the file-system is set to become the default for Fedora 33 desktop spins, there are some interesting performance optimizations coming to Btrfs with the in-development Linux 5.9 kernel.

The Linux Foundation in cooperation with many hardware and software vendors have announced the Open-Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) for improving open-source security.

After being worked on a number of months, the FSCRYPT file-system encryption framework for the Linux kernel is enabling inline encryption support with the 5.9 kernel.

In addition to the many outlined changes expected for Linux 5.9, here's another big one: lots of IO_uring work for enhancing this modern Linux I/O interface.

Samsung engineers responsible for the modern exFAT file-system driver for Linux have updated the adjoining "exfatprogs" user-space programs around this file-system. Notable to exfatprogs-1.0.4 is much faster "fsck" file-system checking support.

David Howells of Red Hat continues striving for great improvements to Linux storage.

Along with Linux 5.9 set to add NVMe ZNS support for the spec surrounding placement of data within zones, more broadly this next kernel is positioned to bring dm-crypt support for zoned block devices.

A new feature that's been in development for a while with the Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) looks set to land with the forthcoming Linux 5.9 cycle.

F2FS as the Flash-Friendly File-System for Linux continues to see a lot of interesting developments for this file-system beginning to appear on more Android devices and elsewhere given its feature set from flash optimizations to native encryption and compression capabilities.

Edward Shishkin continues pursuing development of new file-system functionality for Reiser5, the next-generation evolutionary advancement over the controversial Reiser4 file-system.

While Ubuntu continues in their path of OpenZFS integration, Fedora is revisiting the possibility of using Btrfs on the desktop, Red Hat is continuing to invest in Stratis, and Reiser5 is being developed, Bcachefs as the file-system born out of the Linux block cache code is continuing to evolve.

Hours ahead of the expected Linux 5.8-rc1 release that also marks the merge window closure of new features for this next kernel version, a secondary EXT4 file-system set of changes were just mailed in.

The Linux kernel's 9P protocol support with the in-development Linux 5.8 kernel will see the potential for faster performance with its Xen transport code.

The Linux MTD subsystem that abstracts raw flash devices will allow emulating MLC NANDs as SLC in an attempt to boost reliability.

Jaegeuk Kim has sent in the Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) improvements for the Linux 5.8 kernel.

Merged back in Linux 5.7 was the new exFAT file-system driver backed by Samsung and replacing the prior "staging" exFAT driver that had been around for the prior few kernel releases. Samsung has now sent their queued up exFAT improvements for the Linux 5.8 kernel.

It was just over a week ago that Reiser4 was updated for Linux 5.6 support while now it's been updated for the newly-minted Linux 5.7 stable kernel along with updating the experimental Reiser5 file-system for this latest kernel series.

The SMB3/CIFS updates for the Linux 5.8 kernel from the Samba camp can offer better performance.

Ted Ts'o sent in the EXT4 file-system changes on Thursday for Linux 5.8 as the summer 2020 kernel release.

The improved DAX code led by Intel has landed in the Linux 5.8 kernel with EXT4 and XFS being the initial file-systems to make use of this improved direct access mode.

SUSE's David Sterba was quite punctual in getting all of the Btrfs file-system updates submitted quickly for the newly-opened Linux 5.8 kernel merge window.

The MMC changes for new kernel cycles don't tend to be particularly noteworthy but it's a different story with the new Linux 5.8 kernel cycle.

Adding to the expected changes for Linux 5.8 is improved EXT4 and XFS file-system direct access "DAX" support.

Statsfs is a new RAM-based file-system proposal by a Red Hat engineer that is designed for exposing kernel statistics to user-space.

Announced at the end of April was Micron's HSE as a new open-source storage engine designed for offering speedy performance and lower latency on modern solid-based storage, especially for systems employing 3D XPoint technology. Version 1.7.1 of HSE was released today as their first open-source release since going public with this technology.

Reiser5 was announced back on New Year's Eve with support for local volumes and supporting parallel scaling out and other improvements over the long-in-development but never mainlined Reiser4. While Reiser5 was not met with enthusiasm, Edward Shishkin has continued working on this next-generation file-system and today announced the latest round of improvements.

Stemming from recent kernel discussions over a hypothetical new system call for reading small files more efficiently, Greg Kroah-Hartman has been working on the readfile() system call and it's looking like it is taking shape well enough to premiere soon in a new mainline kernel release.

Linux I/O expert Jens Axboe who oversees the kernel's block layer and is employed by Facebook while working on IO_uring and other storage innovations has recently been working on async buffered reads support.

FUSE for file-systems in user-space while being criticized by developers in the past and known for being slower than kernel native file-systems is seeing another write optimization come Linux 5.8.

A new patch series has been revived from work originally published by Micron back in 2018 for dealing with the behavior on their planar 2D NAND devices where in rare cases when issuing block erase commands, the flash block might not actually be erased and this could lead to further problems down the road when touching said block.