. . . That is a question that crops up with regularity on Linux forums when new users are unable to find the defrag tool on their shiny new desktop. Here's my attempt at giving a simple, non-technical answer as to why some filesystems suffer more from fragmenting than others.
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Rhapsody
16 years 27 weeks 1 day 21 hours ago
Not really accurate...
"Linux" isn't a filesystem. ext3, ReiserFS, JFS, XFS and so on are filesystems. A Linux system could be using any of those.
Also, these steps simple mean a filesystem needs LESS defragmentation to work properly, not that it never requires any. This is why while ext4 has steps to further reduce fragmentation over ext3 (extents, allocate-on-flush), it's also going to have an online defragmenter when finished this time.