50 Years in Filesystems: 1984

Fun facts, back in 2021 Linus was asked what is the most special about Linux in an interview for 30 years of Linux, and he pointed to the Linux File System as the fastest in the business [1].<p>[1] 30 Years of Linux: An Interview With Linus Torvalds: Linux and Git - Part 1:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tag1consulting.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;interview-linus-torvalds-linux-and-git" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tag1consulting.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;interview-linus-torvalds...</a>

What are the latest developments on this front? Still ZFS for stability, XFS for performance? Now that we have NAND storage, would we create filesystems differently? Are there ways to make a step-change in overall performance somewhere?<p>Disclaimer: I know nothing about filesystems..

Note that there are some significant non-Unix filesystems along the way. In particular, a few years later: &quot;Reimplementing the Cedar File System Using Logging and Group Commit&quot;, Robert Hagmann, Xerox PARC. SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, November 1987.<p>That&#x27;s the origin of the journaling approach used in post-FFS unix file systems through the 90s. (I don&#x27;t count ext2 as &quot;post-FFS&quot;, as it&#x27;s basically FFS on a disk with LBA addressing)

Looks like there is 1994 (XFS) but no 2004 (ZFS? btrfs?) or later installments :-(

This is kind of sparse, pardon the pun. The previous chapter covers one Unix filesystem and that&#x27;s it, as if that&#x27;s all there was in 1974-1984. The 1984 chapter is again just one BSD Unix filesystem.<p>How about something lesser known, but excellent?

As the old saying says: &quot;You can tune a filesystem, but you can&#x27;t tune a fish.&quot;

FFS earned its flowers, no doubt, and should be respected for its historic contributions.<p>FreeBSD&#x27;s ZFS[0] is <i>really</i> awesome and has proven to be a deserving successor in all scenarios when legacy needs[1] are not a concern.<p>0 - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.freebsd.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;books&#x2F;handbook&#x2F;zfs&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.freebsd.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;books&#x2F;handbook&#x2F;zfs&#x2F;</a><p>1 - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.freebsd.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;books&#x2F;handbook&#x2F;filesystems&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.freebsd.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;books&#x2F;handbook&#x2F;filesystems&#x2F;</a>

I am so confused. File systems or filesystems?<p>I do not recall anything in my AT&amp;T days referred to as &quot;filesystems&quot;. when I read the article I was expecting mentions of CP&#x2F;M, Files-11, TOPS-10, UFS, VSAM, ISAM, BDAM, FAT? MFS for Macs showed up in 1984, Amiga&#x27;s OFS followed.<p>I mean, not even UFS, which showed up in the 70s, yet still had impact on ext and NTFS...<p>I was trying to see if this article was about history of file system<i>S</i> from the 70s to through the 80s, or just a single file system&#x27;s evolution; alas I could not tell.