[Nottingham] Filesystems: ReiserFS3.6 vs ext4 vs XFS (& ZFS?)

[Richard Ward]

Jim Moore wrote:
> As to ReiserFS, the only real advantage I find of that over ext4 over
> multiple physical volumes is the ludicrous speed with which ReiserFS
> seemed to be able to access directories with several hundred to
> several tens of thousands of files. Not very useful if you're only  using it to run a home system

I have noticed a big difference when doing certain things on a home 
system using reiser, and I assume it is for the reason you mention. For 
example bash auto completion seemed much faster when I was using reiser, 
now I am on ext4 it can take 3 or 4 seconds when I press tab in a bash 
shell (I have about 4000 files in my $PATH). The way packages are 
installed means that (for example) $PATH and /usr/lib can end up with 
loads of files. I assume this is what causes what I perceived as a more 
responsive system when I was using reiser.