Could prove useful, if anyone ever adopts it... http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2012/10/09/samsung-f2fs/1
Wonder how well it will work when you use it in a virtual machine where the Host and Client are running off an SSD...
Will be very interested in this. I don't like disabling access time as a workaround to decrease small SSD writes.
I believe Samsung's intent was (partially at least) to use this filesystem for their new Android handsets; real obscure, yeah?
Well, it ought to be android compatible at some point because otherwise it's entirely useless. EXT4 and btrfs are already pretty polished and SSD-ready, linux doesn't need another filesystem, just like it doesn't need any more desktop environments or distributions. It's time to start phasing out stuff. It would also make more sense if this was more Windows focused, since I get the impression that Windows so far is very SSD-unfriendly, with things like fragmented files, prefetching, superfetching, indexing, paging files, and so on. While many of those things can be disabled as services, what it really comes down to is Windows needs more focus on these matters when installing the OS. It should be able to detect the drive and format it to NTFS for HDD and something like F2FS for SSD, and then disable/enable services accordingly.
Use it for android? they may had the intention at some point, but google buying motorola may well have changed what google will allow to be used by other manufacturers who are now direct competition instead of providing hw for googles software.
Obviously you dont realise the main reason for googles, motorola acquisition. or understand the relationship google has with tech companies with regards it's android OS. I for one see this as a great thing. hopefully it will reach a decent state of maturity, quite quickly.
Your ignorant scepticism is starting to get a bit wearing. This sounds like an interesting development, and is a good thing. Linux is hardly obscure these days, and many servers run Linux and SSDs for high IO transaction volumes - they will be all over this. Similarly re Android, Google isn't in the business of aggressively locking down its mobile OS. Google will have no issues with Samsung and others implementing F2FS if it is stable and offers tangible benefits in terms of performance, data integrity or flash longevity.
You should really read up on some of those terms you just used before you call them SSD unfriendly Windows behaviour. Fragmented files are a problem in the vast majority of file systems, prefetch and superfetch are automatically disabled when Windows is installed on an SSD, search indexing still speeds up searches considerably on an SSD and paging files are an integral part of the virtual memory system that all modern OS's on general purpose PCs use. Not to mention it benefits hugely from being on an SSD.
Not sure I agree with that mate. Well I agree re desktop environments and distros, but not so much re filesystems. There's no panacea for filesystems - each has its strengths and weaknesses. The closeset to perfect I've seen is ZFS, which isn't properly supported on Linux AFAIK. Solaris running Z-RAID on ZFS makes the perfect (admittedly overkill!) home server for me. But even ZFS isn't perfect for every solution - the data integrity overhead means I'd probably choose something different for a deployment where performance is critical and integrity less so, like scratch space on a search engine or something. There's a reason Google have rolled their own filesystems for internal use. And maybe something like F2FS will get the best out of flash in such situations, since it is designed from the ground up exclusively for flash.
@sexyhyde my point is that I fear that the relationship between google and the other companies currently using android could change for the worse and who said google won't change towards a more closed system, like ios or windows rt? sure they wouldn't admit to it, but their shareholders won't say no to a closed but profitable system forever. Besides, there is still hope for this new filesystem, its no secret that Samsung is involved with Tizen, Samsung is a freaking big company, they could help Tizen (or another alternative mobile os) to succeed, especially after they got fined a billion for android standard features they may well be looking at alternatives to android with increased interest.
Fragmented files are NOT a problem in the vast majority of FSs, that's my point. The worst fragmentation I've had from a linux setup in use for several years was 1.3% non-contiguous, and that's considered high for linux standards, and almost unachievable by Windows standards no matter how many times you defragment. I wasn't aware the *fetches were disabled when installing, I tend to notice that all services Windows comes with are always enabled no matter what setup you have. So unless you're saying they're checked on but actually idle, then I guess that's where I didn't notice. I guess SSDs would benefit from indexing when it comes to content and meta tags and stuff like that, but when it comes to just finding a filename, I'm pretty sure you get no benefit from indexing whatsoever. Virtual memory is also something that only Windows has a problem with. Back when RAM was expensive and in small quantities, paging files were created to allow bigger programs to run, or run more programs at a time. Developers designed programs to distribute resources between RAM and PF to be more efficient, so sometimes you need a 256MB PF to not get the "Warning - virtual memory low" message even if you have 8+GB of RAM. But, Windows is the only OS that gets this problem. I'm not exactly sure how Mac does it, I think they allow use for the standard SWAP filesystem partitions just as all other *nix systems but I don't think they have a PF. But in Linux you don't need a SWAP partition at all. In fact if you run commands like "free -m" you'll find that the swap can be untouched after days of use. Anyways, I'm sure SSDs do make a hell of a difference with virtual memory, but y'know what's even faster? Real RAM. The problem is Windows doesn't use the system memory when it has plenty of it. SSD space is limited and expensive, I'd rather use that disk space for other programs that might take a while to load.
I agree, many do have strengths and weaknesses, but there's some being made that are just simply pointless, or being maintained when they've been obsoleted years ago. To me, the only linux-specific filesystems that should be maintained are EXT4, btrfs, SWAP (if that even needs maintenance), and there was some other quirky one that had a specific task but I can't remember what its called. ZFS is great but don't think there's a linux release of that, or at least not a write-compatible one. If someone makes a filesystem for internal use, that's a little different because that's something optimized for their needs and hardware. But Samsung releasing this is like "hey we're making something that currently has no clear advantage over any other linux filesystem and will probably be behind for the next few years" when they could have just pitched in and joined up with one of the other fairly polished FSs. Again, this would be more practical on Windows where they actually need the SSD attention, and if this were Windows focused I probably wouldn't have made a comment, except to say "about time".
I'm just going to give it time before I make up my mind about it. @schmidtbag: many services in windows are enabled but only start on demand. Over half the services have startup type Manual and are not started according to services.msc on my computer.
Google has a successful ethos which they would be crazy to drop. Android adoption is huge and growing, and each new release is reviewed as a great move forward. tizen is a tie in with intel most likely for intels ARM rivalling tech. samsung didn't get stung for 'android standard features' it was its touchwiz interface.
Isn't called "Z-RAID", but RAID-Z ! Source: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23824_01/html/821-1448/gcfof.html#gamtu
