OpenZFS 2.1 is nearing release as the next feature update to this open-source ZFS file-system implementation currently supporting Linux and FreeBSD systems.

While EXT4 supports both case-folding for optional case insensitive filenames and does support file-system encryption, at the moment those features are mutually exclusive. But it looks like the upcoming Linux 5.13 kernel will allow casefolding and encryption to be active at the same time.

Normally we don't see the out-of-tree Reiser4 file-system ported to new Linux kernel releases until after the inaugural stable release, but this time around Reiser4 has seen an early port to the near-final Linux 5.12 kernel.

At the end of March the release candidate phase began for the upcoming OpenZFS 2.1 open-source ZFS file-system on Linux and FreeBSD systems. The second release candidate is now available for this noteworthy OpenZFS update.

The past year there has been work led by Greg Kroah-Hartman on a "READFILE" system call for efficiently reading small files such as for data exposed via sysfs. While not yet mainlined, this week the patches for this new system call were re-based giving us hope that perhaps we'll see it with Linux 5.13.

The first release candidate of the forthcoming OpenZFS 2.1 file-system for Linux and FreeBSD systems is now available for testing.

For those running Linux MD RAID10 arrays you may have found the performance around discard requests such as when running MKFS and FSTRIM operations to be rather slow... Well, with Linux 5.13 it will be lightning fast.

It's 2021 and proposed patches by upstream developers would finally remove Linux's legacy IDE driver code.

OpenZFS 2.0.4 is out as the latest version of this open-source ZFS file-system implementation for Linux and FreeBSD systems.

For a number of years it has been known that the Btrfs RAID5 and RAID6 code is potentially unsafe and not nearly as mature as the native RAID support found in this Linux file-system for other levels. Finally now we are seeing the Btrfs user-space programs warn the user when attempting to create such Btrfs native RAID 5/6 configurations.

While Linux 5.12 has many great new features, what you won't find in the mainline kernel is the new "NTFS3" kernel driver developed by Paragon Software for NTFS file-systems. That driver is still coming for a future kernel and has now been sent out a twenty-second time for review.

The block subsystem and related storage changes were merged today for the in-development Linux 5.12 kernel.

XFS maintainer Darrick Wong characterized the file-system driver changes for Linux 5.12 as "a lot going on this time, which seems about right for this drama-filled year."

The Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) with the Linux 5.12 kernel will allow configuring the compression ratio when enabling the transparent file-system compression support with LZ4 or Zstd.

David Sterba on Tuesday submitted the Btrfs file-system updates for the Linux 5.12 kernel, which once again include more performance optimizations and notable new features.

IO_uring has been one of the greatest Linux kernel innovations in recent times. IO_uring for more efficient asynchronous I/O has continued getting faster and introducing new features over the past two years and for the upcoming Linux 5.12 cycle will be even faster.

Exfatprogs 1.1 have been released as the open-source, user-space utilities around the Linux/Android exFAT file-system support maintained by Samsung.

OpenZFS 2.0.2 is out today as the latest version of this open-source ZFS file-system implementation currently supported on Linux and FreeBSD systems.

GParted as the widely used, GUI solution for managing Linux partitions/file-systems on the Linux desktop now finally supports dealing with exFAT file-systems.

For those making use of Linux's modern exFAT file-system, a significant optimization is on the way for when deleting files with the "dirsync" mount option set.

While the Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) allows selecting between your choice of optional compression algorithms like LZO, LZ4, and Zstd -- plus even specifying specific file extensions to optionally limit the transparent file-system compression to -- it doesn't allow easily specifying a compression level. That is fortunately set to change with the Linux 5.12 kernel this spring.

Released at the end of November was the much anticipated OpenZFS 2.0 open-source ZFS file-system implementation for Linux and FreeBSD systems. Today that has been succeeded by OpenZFS 2.0.1 with support for newer Linux kernels and many bug fixes.

The Linux kernel has been seeing incredible innovations and optimizations in the I/O area in recent times from IO_uring to numerous performance enhancements. One of the recent performance enhancements seeing activity and promising results is the no-copy bvec behavior.

One of the pleasant kernel surprises in 2020 was Paragon Software looking to upstream their previously commercial NTFS driver. This driver offers read-write support and more advanced capabilities than the current read-focused NTFS driver presently in the mainline kernel and better off than the other FUSE-based driver. This driver hasn't been mainlined yet but Paragon published new patches on Christmas.

Linux 5.10 as a Long-Term Support (LTS) kernel has been off to a rocky start after an immediate point release due to a RAID issue, some reporting AMDGPU problems, and also a staggering Btrfs performance regression hitting some users.

The out-of-tree Reiser4 file-system has now been ported to the week-old Linux 5.10 kernel code-base. This also comes days ahead of the one year anniversary since the "Version 5" announcement.

The main feature change for the XFS driver code in Linux 5.11 is adding a new "needs repair" feature flag. When the XFS code marks a file-system as needing repair, it will refuse to mount until the xfs_repair operation is run on it.

This first week of the Linux 5.11 merge window continues to be very active with many of the kernel maintainers looking to land their changes ahead of the Christmas week where they are often taking time off work.

The Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) continues seeing new work around its transparent data compression, optional case insensitive behavior, and native encryption support with the new code queued for Linux 5.11.

Kent Overstreet who developed the Bcachefs file-system out of the Linux kernel's block cache code has sent out the latest patches for review and to also serve as a possible pull request for mainlining the code.