The Linux kernel supports various filesystems. We'll explain ext2, ext3, ext4, ReiserFS, XFS and JFS as these are the most commonly used filesystems on Linux systems.

The Linux kernel supports various filesystems. We'll explain vfat, ext2, ext3, ext4, ReiserFS, XFS and JFS as these are the most commonly used filesystems on Linux systems.

Several filesystems are available. Some of them are found stable on the amd64 architecture, others aren't. The following filesystems are found to be stable: ext2, ext3, ext4 and XFS. JFS and ReiserFS may work but need more testing. If you're really adventurous you can try the other filesystems.

Several filesystems are available. Some of them are found stable on the arm architecture, others aren't. ext2, ext3 and ext4 are found to be stable. JFS, XFS and ReiserFS may work but need more testing. If you're really adventurous you can try the other filesystems.

Several filesystems are available. Ext2, ext3, ext4, XFS and reiserfs are found stable on the HPPA architecture. The others are very experimental.

Several filesystems are available. ReiserFS, EXT2, EXT3 and EXT4 are found stable on the MIPS architectures, others are experimental.

Several filesystems are available for use on the PowerPC architecture including ext2, ext3, ext4, ReiserFS and XFS, each with their strengths and faults.

Several filesystems are available, some are known to be stable on the SPARC architecture. Ext2, ext3 and ext4, for example, are known to work well. Alternate filesystems may not function correctly.

vfat is the MS-DOS filesystem, updated to allow long filenames. It is also the only filesystem type that the EFI firmware on ia64 systems understands. The boot partition on ia64 systems should always be vfat, but for your data partitions you should use one of the other filesystems listed below.

ext2 is the tried and true Linux filesystem but doesn't have metadata journaling, which means that routine ext2 filesystem checks at startup time can be quite time-consuming. There is now quite a selection of newer-generation journaled filesystems that can be checked for consistency very quickly and are thus generally preferred over their non-journaled counterparts. Journaled filesystems prevent long delays when you boot your system and your filesystem happens to be in an inconsistent state. If you intend to install Gentoo on a very small disk (less than 4GB), then you'll need to tell ext2 to reserve enough inodes when you create the filesystem. The mke2fs application uses the "bytes-per-inode" setting to calculate how many inodes a file system should have. By running mke2fs -T small /dev/<device> the number of inodes will generally quadruple for a given file system as its "bytes-per-inode" reduces from one every 16kB to one every 4kB. You can tune this even further by using mke2fs -i <ratio> /dev/<device>.

ext3 is the journaled version of the ext2 filesystem, providing metadata journaling for fast recovery in addition to other enhanced journaling modes like full data and ordered data journaling. It uses an HTree index that enables high performance in almost all situations. In short, ext3 is a very good and reliable filesystem. If you intend to install Gentoo on a very small disk (less than 4GB), then you'll need to tell ext3 to reserve enough inodes when you create the filesystem. The mke2fs application uses the "bytes-per-inode" setting to calculate how many inodes a file system should have. By running mke2fs -j -T small /dev/<device> the number of inodes will generally quadruple for a given file system as its "bytes-per-inode" reduces from one every 16kB to one every 4kB. You can tune this even further by using mke2fs -j -i <ratio> /dev/<device>.

ext4 is a filesystem created as a fork of ext3 bringing new features, performance improvements and removal of size limits with moderate changes to the on-disk format. It can span volumes up to 1 EB and with maximum file size of 16 TB. Instead of the classic ext2/3 bitmap block allocation ext4 uses extents, which improve large file performance and reduce fragmentation. Ext4 also provides more sophisticated block allocation algorithms (delayed allocation and multiblock allocation) giving the filesystem driver more ways to optimise the layout of data on the disk. The ext4 filesystem is a compromise between production-grade code stability and the desire to introduce extensions to an almost decade old filesystem. Ext4 is the recommended all-purpose all-platform filesystem.

JFS is IBM's high-performance journaling filesystem. JFS is a light, fast and reliable B+tree-based filesystem with good performance in various conditions.

ReiserFS is a B+tree-based journaled filesystem that has good overall performance, especially when dealing with many tiny files at the cost of more CPU cycles. ReiserFS appears to be less maintained than other filesystems.

XFS is a filesystem with metadata journaling which comes with a robust feature-set and is optimized for scalability. XFS seems to be less forgiving to various hardware problems.