F2FS is a file system built to take into account the characteristics of NAND flash memory-based storage devices (such as solid-state disks, eMMC, and SD cards). While we’ve had support for F2FS for a while now, we recently added support for it as a rootfs and made it an option in the installer. Ext4 is still the default, but you can opt for F2FS if you select manual partitioning. For more features of F2FS, see the F2FS Wiki. Phoronix recently ran a comparison of Ext4 and F2FS, and you can read that report here.
Chris
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On my test system, I reinstalled ClearLinux with f2fs. As a desktop user, I really can’t tell the difference between f2fs and ext4 as my accesses are not high-IO demands.
A question I have “Is the f2fs able to be as assuredly recoverable as ext4 or as xfs after a power failure?”. With ext4 and with xfs, I am confident that the tools to check and repair these two mentioned are mature and work well. What about f2fs? What would someone using a laptop or desktop with “rare power failures” find with f2fs versus ext4?
I am running Clear Linux on a ThinkPad. Is F2FS stable for you? My laptop is already very fast, and I don’t think I want to trade stability for a marginal speed gain.
F2FS is not faster than xfs, or ext4, both of the later two which I use. It is designed to be a “flashdrive” based interface. It is designed to produce less wear and tear of an SSD, or M.2 NVME
Bottom line f2fs provides about the same performance as ext4.
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