Re: File systems -- reiser vs. ext3
Quoting Al Davis <ad15@freeelectron.net>:
> I am trying to understand them.
>
> The basic question ... Why choose one over the other? Technically, what is
> different?
>
> My benchmarks seem to show that Reiser is superior, but they may be flawed.
> What I see is that it is faster and uses space more efficiently.
>
> I get about a 4:1 difference for an md5sum of a large .iso file. This was
> different partitions of the same drive. Later, I copied all out of an ext3
> partition, reformatted it as reiser, and got the same 4:1 speedup.
>
> I have been using Reiser for a few years without trouble. (On the laptop
> since Suse first made it available as an option.)
>
> Does anyone know where I can find technical documentation on ext3? Does
> anyone have any hard data (as opposed to anecdotal like mine) to show the
> relative merits? (other than ext2 compatibility)
>
> Tech documentation of Reiser is available on his web site. I am looking for
> something comparable on ext3.
>
>
Benchmarks generally indicate the which is better depends on your work
load. IIRC, Reiser does not do well with very large files. As you
noted, it is more space efficient, particularly with lots of small
files. Try and create a benchmark that accurately reflects your work
load and run it. Reiser is more mature at this point. But there are
people who will flame either or both.
Jeffrey
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