Reiser4 or Ext3

[rhmc]

All

I’ve been using OpenSuSe 10.2 for quite a while now on my laptop using the Reiser3 file system as a default with no problems. However I am planning on creating a rather large 200GB file system on my desktop system and thinking of using the Reiser 3 or Reiser 4 file system vs.ext3. I have read some reviews that say the Reiser file system is faster in dealing with small files. I’ve also read praise about the maturity and stability of ext3. Anyone experiences with either filesystem would be welcome especially the trade offs between speed and stability.

Thanks

Rich

[bigtomrodney]

Using Reiserfs or Ext3 is a long running debate. Personally I find both to be pretty fast and maintenence free. Right now I am running ReiserFS as my home partition in openSUSE 10.2 but if I was to choose again I would pick ext3. The only reason for that is that it is not (to my knowledge) being actively developed anymore and SUSE have decided it will not be the default filesystem anymore in future versions.

With that said if you do choose ReiserFS I would go for 3 over 4 as 4 was still in development and not considered complete yet. Ultimately it does come down to personal preference.

[oz]

All

I’ve also read praise about the maturity and stability of ext3.

I generally stick to ext3 for that very reason and have not regretted it.

[thehemi]

In an environment with a SAN, it's nice to have online resizing
of partitions as an option. I believe this is possible with Reiser
but not with Ext3. I have not tried resizing yet, but we're using
Ext3 on our servers anyways, so I'm not looking forward when it
comes time to attempt to increase filesystem space.