Filesystems — Keru OS

The filesystem is how the kernel organizes data on disk — and it's a genuinely meaningdifferent choice: reliability vs features, volume management, snapshots, checksums, performance on specific workloads. Keru leaves it to you.

Filesystem	Character
ext4	The default. Proven, journaled, everywhere-supported, boring in the best way.
ext2 / ext3	Classic lineage — ext2 is unjournaled simplicity, ext3 added the journal.
btrfs	Snapshots, subvolumes, checksums, and a rich feature set out of the box.
xfs	Scale-friendly, robust, excellent for large files and heavy workloads.
zfs	Snapshots, RAID-Z, checksums, volume management. Serious features, more moving parts.
f2fs	Flash-friendly filesystem, designed for SSDs and flash storage performance.
jfs	IBM's journaled filesystem — lean, historically aimed at servers.
reiserfs	Once a pioneer; now effectively unmaintained. Offered, but flagged.
swap	As a separate swap area, part of the root setup.

Filesystem

Character

ext4

The default. Proven, journaled, everywhere-supported, boring in the best way.

ext2 / ext3

Classic lineage — ext2 is unjournaled simplicity, ext3 added the journal.

btrfs

Snapshots, subvolumes, checksums, and a rich feature set out of the box.

xfs

Scale-friendly, robust, excellent for large files and heavy workloads.

zfs

Snapshots, RAID-Z, checksums, volume management. Serious features, more moving parts.

f2fs

Flash-friendly filesystem, designed for SSDs and flash storage performance.

jfs

IBM's journaled filesystem — lean, historically aimed at servers.

reiserfs

Once a pioneer; now effectively unmaintained. Offered, but flagged.

swap

As a separate swap area, part of the root setup.

Honest flags

Two filesystem options carry warnings in the installer:

zfs as root needs a kernel module + ZFS userspace, and isn't yet proven end-to-end in the 0.1 pipeline. Warned, not blocked.
reiserfs is unmaintained with no stable future. Offered because the choice is yours; flagged because honesty is cheaper than regret.

The filesystem tooling (mkfs, fs tools) is built alongside the kernel and init in stage 2 — your choice dictating exactly what gets compiled in.

← All swappables