Novell Makes ext3 File System Its Default, Boots ReiserFS

Published: October 17, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

It takes a while for some news to percolate through the open source community, and so it is with Novell's decision to replace the ReiserFS file system, which is the default on installations of its SUSE Linux, with the ext3 file system.

Back at the end of September, Jeff Mahoney, who works for Novell's SUSE development labs, said there were technical and maintenance issues related to the ReiserFS V3 file system and because of that, Novell would be using the new ext3 file system as the default in future releases of SUSE Linux. Mahoney explained that ReiserFS V3 has scalability issues, that the ReiserFS community is small and shrinking (with only four people at any given time working on it). Hans Reiser, the creator of the file system, wanted people to move to Reiser4, but that file system is not necessarily commercial grade, and worse still, it requires data to be reformatted. (Like the jump from FAT to NTFS in Windows did.)

Only two weeks after Mahoney did that post on the OpenSUSE site, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Reiser had been arrested and is the suspect in the murder of his wife Nina, who has been missing since September 3.

A bizarre twist of events, indeed. If Reiser did murder his wife, then it is safe to say the Reiser4 file system project is also dead.