Btrfs

[sledgehammer]

I second GrannyGeek.

I have always used reiserfs.  Just because. Having never killed a wife, should I someday run into Hans Reiser, we will still have at least one thing in common to talk about.

What would be the benefit of switching to something other than reiserfs?  What would be the downsides?

[MikeCindi]

The discussion of various file system's benefits over another have been discussed here before. I posted these articles then: http://linuxgazette.net/122/piszcz.html and http://linuxgazette.net/102/piszcz.html (here's another one just for fun: http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/388).

I have the same thoughts as GG for why I use the FS that I use (which is mostly reiserFS although in VBox I use XFS). I personally don't use JFS or XFS on any partition that I would want to resize as it is not a quick or easy process...yet. As for the few partitions that I don't ever resize (mostly in VBox) I use XFS because it has the smallest footprint. JFS would seem from the articles I've referenced to have some advantages in resource use and speed over most of the other "commonly" used FS but has not yet gained the popularity that XFS has or the history and popularity that the ext series has. ReiserFS and reiser4 would seem to be dead-ends (no pun intended) due to the past legal/criminal issues with its developer (although I've not read up on the saga lately...okay I just looked this up as sledgehammer posted while I was typing: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10029168-38.html).

Another point that I believe GG makes which IMO is probably the most crucial: what is the advantage for the average user of any FS over another? In most situations of a home desktop or laptop one will not be aware of FS benefits/shortcomings (at least not until there's a problem). Perhaps a moderate to high load server (whatever that really is) may see performance improvements with one FS vs. another.

FWIW,
Mike

[sledgehammer]

ReiserFS and reiser4 would seem to be dead-ends (no pun intended) due to the past legal/criminal issues with its developer

Last I heard (6 months or a year ago), Hans was trying to get a computer installed in his San Francisco jail cell.

[arkaland]

I guess my blurb about the JFS filesysytem was a little too general in nature (I must admit, it almost reads like a commercial). I was speaking primarily from my own personal experiences. I myself have used ext3, Reiser3 and XFS - all of those BEFORE switching to JFS, so, believe it or not, I DID indeed mean that IMHO the jfs fs is better OVERALL. I will readily admit that if you expect a possible need to resize the partition at some future date, the JFS is not what you want to use. But to me, that's the one and ONLY disadvantage in picking JFS.
When I used ext3, I had no real problems to speak of, as long as no fsck or "tuning" of any kind were needed. For those of you who are TRULY "tech-savvy", ext3 is fine (though rather slow and very "picky" about some things). But for the "average" user, the "man" files are a bad joke (I used to get headaches trying to understand them). And - if e2fsprogs is so good - then why (apart from the new ext4) do they have so many darned "upgrades"? (You might ask that about XFS as well).
As you can surmise by now, I am no "geek" (no pun intended, Granny) - just a rather typical "intermediate" user (I switched from Bill Gates' crap in February of 2006). I did have some file corruption problems with both Reiser3 and XFS, and broken symlinks troubles with XFS which is what I used for Vector-5.8.  The manuals for Reiser & XFS are "bad news" compared to the clear, short, simple and UNDERSTANDABLE man files that come with jfsutils. I don't doubt that they're no real problem for "pro's", but please remember that the experts are a small minority of today's Linux users such as myself. Also, since switching to JFS in 2008 (almost 2 full years ago), I have gone through several power outages here in stormy Arkansas, several fsck's, I've formatted & used several flash (USB) drives with JFS, and I have NEVER yet experienced any filesystem slowdowns, corruption or problems of any kind - whatsoever.
As far as current JFS availability on Vector, quite frankly, I haven't tried a Vector release for several months now because the last time I did (with a then-current Live CD), I couldn't even mount my hard drive or flash drive for "repairs" due to the fact that they were JFS-formatted. As a result, I simply gave up on you for the time being (maybe you can now understand why I cared enough to write my first post). I guess when a guy's been "burned", he thinks twice before lighting ths same match a second time!
If you REALLY care about making & keeping Vector "user-friendly", then the jfs filesystem is simply as good as it gets. It's virtually identical to both Reiser and XFS in terms of space efficiency (compare that to ext3), it's smaller, simpler, bug-free (as far as I can see), fast, very reliable AND the "man" files are written for relative tech-dummies like me. What more can I say?

[MikeCindi]

JFS is part of the VL6 series and I suspect (though I have not tried the new VL7 alpha yet) JFS will continue to be available in future VL releases. Since I too have never had a problem with >5 years of reiserFS use (since SuSE 9.x) and the past 2+ years of XFS and a few months of JFS (I only us ext3 on my ClearOS server install as that is the choice) I've not looked at the man pages for any of them that I recall so it has never played a role in my decision making. I live in Oklahoma and have also survived multiple power outages but even my NTFS partitions recovered without issue.
As for the live CDs in the VL line I couldn't give any input as I've not tried or tested them. If I need to do any "repairs" I use other OSes designed for that purpose.
Thus I don't think you will find any users here opposed to JFS being available but you may need more data that is objectively and clearly superior to the other options to convince a in change personal preferences (and speaking as a medical doctor even that doesn't work a lot of the time).
FWIW,
Mike