Over the past week there has been a lot of talk about the EXT4 file-system following the announcement that Google is migrating their EXT2 file-systems to EXT4. Their reasons for this transition to EXT4 are attributed to the easy migration process and Google engineers are pleased with this file-system's performance.

"... I am a full-time Debian user. Debian has plenty of really great sources of information and support — it’s been around a long time, it has many, many users, and no matter what problem I discover, it seems like 'they’ve seen it all before.' Debian looks great, it works great, and I couldn’t be happier. [...] However, what’s the fun in using Debian? I once installed some stuff on a Debian-server, with some help from a Howto, and everything just worked like it said in that Howto! ..."

Via thedebianuser: http://blog.thedebianuser.org/?p=282

It has been quite some time, actually years, since I started using Debian. I just thought to write the reasons for which I really like Debian compared to other systems.

Debian…the father and grandfather of many a Linux distro. I think indirectly Debian is probably running on more computers than any other Linux distro. It’s the basis of Ubuntu, Mepis, Xandros, and many others. And many people use Debian where they need a nice, stable distro.

Last week we introduced ourselves to Sidux, the excellent Debian Sid implementation that makes Debian Sid a bit friendlier. Even though I thought I gave a number of reasons why a user might prefer Sidux to Debian Sid, or Ubuntu, or some other Debian derivative, they apparently were not clear to a number of readers. So here they are in nice bullet-pointed lists:

Since the CF card serving as the sole disk drive in the Self-Reliant Thin Client (Maxspeed Maxtor converted to use as a full desktop PC) checked out with fsck via a card reader on another PC, I decided to do a reinstall of Debian, this time Lenny instead of Etch.

"Hi! As many of you might have noticed, our weekly newsletter died more or less some time ago[1]. Considering that to be a great loss and a shame for a project as large as Debian, I think it's high time to resurrect it! [...] You saw an interesting blog or news about Debian? Report it to us! There is an interesting discussion on one of our mailing list?

With the EXT4 file-system having been stabilized with the Linux 2.6.28 kernel, the Ubuntu developers are preparing to adopt this evolutionary Linux file-system update. EXT4 will not replace EXT3 as the default file-system until at least Ubuntu 9.10, but as of yesterday, Ubuntu 9.04 now has install-time support for EXT4.

Ext4 is the latest in a long line of Linux® file systems, and it's likely to be as important and popular as its predecessors. As a Linux system administrator, you should be aware of the advantages, disadvantages, and basic steps for migrating to ext4.