Up until today the newest Linux kernel version supported by the official Reiser4 out-of-tree file-system driver patch was Linux 5.0, but that has now changed with the belated Linux 5.1 kernel support arriving as well as a separate patch for Linux 5.2 kernel support.

Fscrypt is the common Linux kernel framework leveraged by the likes of the EXT4, F2FS, and UBIFS file-systems for providing native encryption support. While that Fscrypt-based file encryption has been part of the kernel for several releases now, there's been some shortcomings in how the encryption keys are handled but that should be cleared up for the upcoming Linux 5.4 cycle.

EXT4 set off the new trend for opt-in, per-directory case-insensitive file/folder support on Linux systems. EXT4 picked up that optional case-insensitive support for Linux 5.2 while the for Linux 5.4 kernel cycle the Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) is set to receive similar support.

While initially the user-space utility for Huawei's EROFS file-system was not publicly available, it came last November and this past April they began rewriting these EROFS user-space bits. Fortunately, since then they have done a better job of keeping EROFS-utils up-to-date against their latest kernel module changes for this read-only file-system.

IO_uring is designed to deliver fast and efficient I/O operations thanks to a re-designed interface introduced in Linux 5.1 with various efficiency improvements compared to the kernel's existing asynchronous I/O code. But it turns out there was a big bottleneck within the current IO_uring code up until now.

Sent out on Thursday were the NFS client updates for the Linux 5.3 kernel merge window. This time around are a few interesting changes.

Following EXT4 getting initial (and opt-in) support for case-insensitive directories/files, the Flash-Friendly File-System has a set of patches pending that extend the case-folding support to this F2FS file-system that is becoming increasingly used by Android smartphones and other devices.

In addition to Linux 5.3 bringing a VirtIO-IOMMU driver, this next kernel version is bringing another new VirtIO virtual device implementation: PMEM for para-virtualized persistent memory support for the likes of Intel Optane DC persistent memory.

For those making use of the Ceph fault-tolerant storage platform, a number of updated kernel bits are landing in Linux 5.3.

Those running ZFS On Linux (ZoL) on post-5.0 (and pre-5.0 supported LTS releases) have seen big performance hits to the ZFS encryption performance in particular. That came due to upstream breaking an interface used by ZFS On Linux and admittedly not caring about ZoL due to it being an out-of-tree user. But now several kernel releases later, a workaround has been devised.

David Sterba sent in the Btrfs file-system updates on Monday for the Linux 5.3 kernel.

The UBIFS file-system for usage on un-managed flash memory devices now has support for Zstd compression.

While not too eventful on the end-user feature front, the XFS file-system has seen another round of clean-ups with the ongoing Linux 5.3 merge window.

F2FS is already very fast compared to the long-standing Linux file-systems when benchmarking on solid-state drives while for Linux 5.3 this file-system is getting in even better shape.

The EXT4 file-system updates have already landed for the Linux 5.3 kernel merge window that opened this week.

Microsoft's exFAT file-system is more than one decade old and while there has been out-of-tree efforts, the mainline Linux kernel as of yet does not support the file-system even with it appearing on more SD cards and other devices. But there is now a renewed effort to get an exFAT driver into the Linux kernel.

Huawei's EROFS file-system has been part of the mainline Linux kernel for about one year albeit as part of the "staging" area until it's been proven stable and mature. Now with this file-system reportedly in use on "10+ millions of Huawei Android mobile phones", they are looking to have this file-system promoted out of staging.

The Linux 5.2 kernel brings optional per-directory case-insensitive filenames/folders while with the Linux 5.3 kernel that new EXT4 feature will see better performance.

Huawei's EROFS Linux read-only file-system continues to be improved upon and with the upcoming Linux 5.3 kernel cycle will see yet more improvements.

Released at the end of May was the huge ZFS On Linux 0.8 release with many new features like native encryption, TRIM/discard support for SSDs, device removal, Python 3 compatibility with its tooling, pool check-points, and much more. Out today is now the first maintenance release following that big release.

Kent Overstreet who has been developing the Bcachefs out of the BCache code has announced core feature work has wrapped up, he's very happy with how the work has panned out, and potentially could be merging the code into the Linux kernel soon if the review is pleasant.

In addition to SUSE continuing to advance the Btrfs file-system, Western Digital has also been working on a big patch series around providing native support for zoned block devices.

SUSE continues to back the Btrfs file-system and as part of that investing in new/improved functionality around this Linux file-system once billed as the competitor to ZFS. This week one of the SUSE developers sent out a set of patches implementing a new "DRW" lock and wiring that into the file-system driver.

For those concerned by the kernel's most recent data corruption bug involving LVM, dm-crypt, and Samsung SSD drive combinations leading to FSTRIM/Discard wiping too much data, the issue should be resolved in the newly-minted Linux 5.1.5 kernel.

As a forewarning to those using LVM, dm-crypt, and Samsung solid-state drives, this combination in some manner(s) may lead to data corruption if using the Linux 5.1 kernel.

The feature-packed and long-desired ZFS On Linux 0.8 release has finally taken place! ZoL 0.8 is out there!

While no flashy features like EXT4's case-insensitive option with Linux 5.2, the Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) did see a good amount of fixes and other improvements for this new kernel round.

If you make use of BCache as a Linux block cache so that an SSD cache for a slower HDD, watch out as there is an active corruption bug.

The change in Linux 5.0 that initially broke ZFS On Linux compatibility ends up being pretty nasty for the ZFS encryption performance... A NixOS developer reports that the functions no longer exported by Linux 5.0+ and previously used by ZoL for AVX/AES-NI support end up dropping the ZFS data-set encryption performance to 200MB/s where as pre-5.0 kernels ran around 1.2GB/s.

AFS, the Andrew File-System that serves as a distributed file-system and used by the likes of Carnegie Mellon University and has seen ports to different operating systems, can now handle more programs running on top of the file-system like Firefox and GNOME.