Reiser
Awkward History of Linux and Latest of Reiser5
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Monday 23rd of November 2020 03:33:53 PM Filed under

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Linux in 2020 [Ed: This is clearly conflating the kernel (Linux) with GNU, which predates it by almost one decade. It also perpetuates the myth that only Ubuntu brought GNU/Linux to the masses.]
Hello. Today I would like to share with you, my perspective of Linux. Please take note that this is all my opinions and the way I see it. If you feel that I missed something very important or have a fact or two wrong, please let me know.
So Linux was announced for the first time, on the 25 of August 1991 by a Finnish student, called Linus Torvalds. Little did he know, and the world knows that 30 years later the world would be using it on a daily basis.
So From 1991, Linux has been maturing several Linux Distros (operating systems) came and went away, with a few of the first ones still around today. But it was mainly/only for those who are computer "geeks" and not for everyday users. But that all changed in October 2004, when the first version of Ubuntu was released.
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Reiser5 Logical Volume Management - Updates
Reiser5 Logical Volume Management - Updates I am happy to inform, that Logical Volumes stuff has become more stable. Also we introduce the following changes, which make logical volumes administration more flexible and simple: 1. No balancing by default Now all volume operations except brick removal don't invoke balancing by default. Instead, they mark volume as "unbalanced". To complete any operation with balancing specify option -B (--with-balance), or run volume.reiser4(8) utility with the option -b (--balance) later. This allows to speed up more than one operations over logical volume being performed at once. For example, if you want to add more than one brick to your volume at once, first add all the bricks, then run balancing. There is no need to balance a volume between the addition operations. 2. Removal completion Operation of brick removal always includes balancing procedure as its part. This procedure moves out all data block from the brick to be removed to remaining bricks of the volume. Thus, brick removal is usually a long operation, which may be interrupted for various reasons In such cases the volume is automatically marked with an "incomplete removal" flag. It is not allowed to perform essential volume operations on a volume marked as "with incomplete removal": first, user should complete removal by running volume.reiser4 utility with option -R (--finish-removal). Otherwise, the operation will return error (-EBUSY). There is no other restrictions: you are allowed to add a brick to unbalanced volume, and even remove a brick from an unbalanced volume (assuming it is not incomplete removal). Comment. "--finish-removal" is a temporary option. In the future the file system will detect incomplete removal and automatically perform removal completion by itself. 3. Balancing is always defined Operation of volume balancing (regardless of its balanced status) is always defined, and can be launched at any moment. If the volume is balanced, then the balancing procedure just scans the volume without any useful work. It is allowed to run more than one balancing threads on the same volume, however currently it will be inefficient: other threads will be always going after the single leader without doing useful work. Efficient volume balancing by many threads (true parallelism) is not a trivial task. We estimate its complexity as 2/5. 4. Restore regular distribution on the volume Custom (defined by user) file migration can break fairness of data distribution among the bricks. To restore regular (fair) distribution on the volume, run volume.reiser4 utility with the option -S (--restore-regular). It launches a balancing procedure, which performs mandatory data migration of all files (including the ones marked as "immobile") in accordance with regular distribution policy on the volume. Moreover, when the balancing procedure encounters a file marked as "immobile", its "immobile" flag is cleared up. 5. How to test The new functionality is available starting with the kernel patch reiser4-for-linux-5.10-rc3 and reiser4progs-2.0.4 (Software Framework Release number of both is 5.1.3).
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Reiser5 Stabilizing Its Logical Volume Functionality - Phoronix
This New Year's Eve will mark one year since the announcement of the in-development Reiser5 file-system. While the outlook for getting Reiser5 upstreamed into the mainline kernel remains murky given the out-of-tree status of Reiser4, Edward Shishkin does continue advancing this latest Reiser file-system iteration.
Since last year's initial Reiser5 announcement, more features continue to be ironed out for this evolution of Reiser4. The latest Reiser5 functionality hitting a point of stability is its logical volume management.
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Reiser4/Reiser5 Updated For Linux 5.8
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Tuesday 18th of August 2020 09:27:03 AM Filed under
Edward Shishkin continues pushing ahead with not only maintaining the existing out-of-tree Reiser4 file-system code but also developing Reiser5 seemingly without any major corporate support. Reiser4 and the experimental Reiser5 file-system code were updated on Monday for Linux 5.8 kernel compatibility.
The Reiser4 kernel driver along with the unstable Reiser5 kernel code saw new patch releases for supporting them on the Linux 5.8 stable kernel (Linux 5.8.1 target to be exact).
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Reiser4/Reiser5 Updated For Linux 5.7 Kernel Compatibility
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Monday 8th of June 2020 07:48:44 AM Filed under
It was just over a week ago that Reiser4 was updated for Linux 5.6 support while now it's been updated for the newly-minted Linux 5.7 stable kernel along with updating the experimental Reiser5 file-system for this latest kernel series.
Uploaded today by Edward Shishkin was Reiser4 for Linux 5.7.1. Though given the minimal changes with 5.7.1 compared to last week's 5.7 release, the patch presumably should apply cleanly there as well. There are no reports of any other functional Reiser4 changes besides re-basing to the new kernel series.
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Reiser5 Updates For Linux 5.5 Along With Reiser4
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Sunday 16th of February 2020 01:07:56 AM Filed under
The out-of-tree Reiser4 and Reiser5 (Reiser4 v5) patches have been updated against the recently stabilized Linux 5.5 kernel.
Main Reiser4 developer Edward Shishkin re-based the Reiser4 file-system patch against Linux 5.5.1 along with the experimental Reiser5.
At the end of 2019 is when Shishkin announced Reiser5 file-system development with introducing the concepts of local volumes capable of parallel scaling out and other key iterations over the current Reiser4 design.
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Reiser4 File-System Is Still Ticking In 2019 - Now Updated For Linux 5.3 Compatibility
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Monday 11th of November 2019 01:23:22 AM Filed under

Edward Shishkin continues near single-handedly maintaining the out-of-tree Reiser4 code that at this point still has no apparent trajectory towards mainline. The former Namesys developer previously indicated it's unlikely to see Reiser4 merged unless there is a company backing it to get it through the review process for merging into mainline. While Reiser4 was quite promising for its early time, it's only getting more difficult with Reiser4 effectively stagnating for years now while SUSE/openSUSE continues backing Btrfs, Ubuntu increasingly investing in ZFS support, Red Hat developing Stratis, XFS continuing to be advanced by Red Hat and others as well, Google continuing to invest in the likes of EXT4/F2FS, and there also being Bcachefs and other open-source storage solutions that are more promising than Reiser4 in 2019. Nevertheless, the out-of-tree kernel patches continue to be updated.
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Reiser4 Brought To The Linux 5.0 Kernel
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Saturday 13th of April 2019 06:02:40 PM Filed under
For those still using the out-of-tree Reiser4 file-system, it may be about time to consider alternatives like Btrfs, XFS, ZFS On Linux, F2FS, or even the likes of Stratis and Bcachefs. But should you still be using this once promising file-system, the out-of-tree patches have been revised to now work with the Linux 5.0 kernel.
There still is no trajectory for Reiser4 to the mainline Linux kernel with no major companies or other stakeholders backing Reiser4 but just a small group of developers and enthusiasts left working on this successor to ReiserFS. With the latest code posted on Friday by former Namesys developer Edward Shishkin, the Reiser4 kernel driver has been re-based to the Linux 5.0 kernel but with no other changes to the file-system noted.
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Reiser4 File-System Benchmarks With Linux 4.17
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Tuesday 3rd of July 2018 07:04:10 AM Filed under


It's been about three years since last carrying out any file-system performance benchmarks of Reiser4, but being curious how it stacks up against the current state of today's mainline Linux file-systems, here are some fresh performance tests of Reiser4 using the Linux 4.17 kernel. The Reiser4 performance was compared to Reiserfs, EXT4, Btrfs, XFS, and F2FS.
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Reiser4 Updated For Linux 4.14 & Introduces Zstd Compression Support
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Monday 27th of November 2017 07:50:30 PM Filed under
The out-of-tree Reiser4 file-system driver has been updated with compatibility for the latest Linux 4.14 stable series. Besides reworking the code to run on Linux 4.14, this controversial file-system has also added support for Zstd file-system compression.
Linux 4.14 introduced Zstd support in the mainline kernel and wired it in for SquashFS and Btrfs. Our Btrfs Zstd benchmarks have been promising for transparent file-system compression compared to the other supported algorithms. Reiser4 has now picked up Zstd compression as an eventual replacement to their Gzip compression support.
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Reiser4 Is Now Ready For Linux 4.13
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Friday 8th of September 2017 08:42:56 AM Filed under
For those wanting to use the Reiser4 file-system with the just-released Linux 4.13 kernel, patches are already available.
Less than one week after the release of the Linux 4.13 stable kernel, Edward Shishkin has already released an updated patch for the out-of-tree Reiser4 file-system for working with this new stable series.
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Reiser4 Updated For Linux 4.12, Experimental Data Striping Support
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Monday 14th of August 2017 04:44:51 PM Filed under
Those using the Reiser4 file-system in some capacity can now safely upgrade to the Linux 4.12 kernel.
Edward Shishkin has updated this out-of-tree file-system for the Linux 4.12 kernel so it can be built with the latest mainline stable release.
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| Review: Artix Linux in 2021
Artix Linux is a fork (or continuation as an autonomous project) of the Arch-OpenRC and Manjaro-OpenRC projects. Artix Linux offers a lightweight, rolling-release operating system featuring alternative init software options, including OpenRC, runit, and s6. The distribution is available in many editions, including Base, Cinnamon, LXDE, LXQt, MATE, KDE Plasma and Xfce. With all of the desktop options, combined with the available init choices, there are 21 editions, not including community spins from which to choose. All editions appear to be built for 64-bit (x86_64) machines. Picking randomly, I selected Artix's Plasma edition featuring the runit init software. The download for this edition is is 1.3GB. Browsing the other editions it looks like most flavours are about 1.1GB to 1.3GB in size, though the minimal Base edition is a compact 618MB.
The project's live media boots to the KDE Plasma desktop. On the desktop we find multiple documentation and README icons. There is also an icon for launching the system installer. The default layout places a panel at bottom of the screen where we can find the application menu and system tray. The default wallpaper is a soft blue while the theme for windows and menus is dark with high contrast fonts.
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Artix Linux is one of those distributions I really enjoy using and yet struggle to review in a meaningful way because it doesn't really go out of its way to introduce new or exciting features and everything works smoothly. The distribution is wonderfully easy to install, offers top-notch performance, and is unusually light on resources. Artix is somewhat minimal, but still ships enough software to be immediately useful right out of the gate. We can browse the web, install packages, view files, and play videos. Meanwhile the application menu isn't cluttered with a lot of extras. The developers clearly expect us to install the functionality we need, while doing a really good job of providing enough for the desktop environment to feel base-line useful right from the start.
Artix does a nice job of balancing performance and functionality while also juggling ease of use against not getting in the way. There is a little documentation, but no initial welcome screen or configuration wizards that might distract the user.
The one piece I felt was missing was a graphical package manager which would have made it easier to build the extra functionality I wanted on top of the base distribution. However, that one piece aside, I felt as though Artix was really well designed and put together, at lease for someone like me. It's not a distribution geared toward beginners, it's not a "first distro". It is a bit minimal and requires command line knowledge. However, for someone with a little experience with Linux, for someone who doesn't mind the occasional trip to the command line or installing new applications as needed, then Artix provides an excellent experience. It's fast, light, looks (in my opinion) great with the default theme, and elegantly walks the line between minimalism and having enough applications ready to go out of the box to be immediately useful. I'm unusually impressed with how smooth and trouble-free my experience was with this distribution and the fact it offers such a range of desktop and init diversity is all the more appealing.
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Alpine Linux Review: Ultimate Distro for Power Users
Alpine Linux is gathering a lot of attention because of its super-small size and focus on security. However, Alpine is different from some of the other lightweight distros we covered on FOSSLinux. It isn’t your typical desktop distribution as it is terminal-based like Arch and is marketed as a “general purpose distro.”
It is currently widely adopted as a Docker container thanks to its ultra-small footprint. However, it can be used for all sorts of Linux deployments that benefit from small, resource-efficient Linux distros.
Now, that statement might feel too generic. But don’t worry, as we have put together an in-depth and comprehensive review of Alpine Linux, giving you a detailed look at what it has under the hood and how to use it. As such, by the end, you should have a clear understanding of whether you should consider Alpine Linux as your next Linux distro.
So without further ado, let’s dive in.
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