this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2025
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EXT4 Optimizes Online Defragmentation, Improves Performance & Larger Block Sizes (www.phoronix.com)
submitted 1 month ago by cm0002@europe.pub to c/linux@programming.dev
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The merged EXT4 changes for Linux 6.19 bring some of the most prominent feature changes in recent times for this mature and widely-used Linux file-system.

It's not too often seeing multiple new EXT4 features land for a single kernel merge window, but that's the case this round with Linux 6.19. First up, EXT4 has optimized its online defragmentation process by leveraging folios rather than individual buffer heads. Secondly, there is now support for file-systems with a block size greater than the page size. This follows other file-systems also recently adapting to support block sizes larger than the kernel page size, such as the infrastructure in Linux 6.15 and then used by Btrfs and friends already. EXT4 is seeing some nice performance results with the large block size support.

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[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 18 points 1 month ago

The one platform where I’m actually excited for the new update.

[–] guynamedzero@piefed.zeromedia.vip 4 points 1 month ago

I’m gonna be honest, I don’t know what any of these updates will actually do, but I’m guessing it’s pretty damn cool