Filesystems galore

Linux supports several types of filesystems. As of this writing the most important ones are:

minix

The oldest, presumed to be the most reliable, but quite limited in features (some time stamps are missing, at most 30 character filenames) and restricted in capabilities (at most 64 MB per filesystem).

xia

A modified version of the minix filesystem that lifts the limits on the filenames and filesystem sizes, but does not otherwise introduce new features. It is not very popular, but is reported to work very well.

ext2

The most featureful of the native Linux filesystems, currently also the most popular one. It is designed to be easily upwards compatible, so that new versions of the filesystem code do not require re-making the existing filesystems.

ext

An older version of ext2 that wasn't upwards compatible. It is hardly ever used in new installations any more, and most people have converted to ext2.

msdos

Compatibility with MS-DOS (and OS/2 and Windows NT) FAT filesystems.

umsdos

Extends the msdos filesystem driver under Linux to get long filenames, owners, permissions, links, and device files. This allows a normal msdos filesystem to be used as if it were a Linux one, thus removing the need for a separate partition for Linux.

iso9660

The standard CD-ROM filesystem; the popular Rock Ridge extension to the CD-ROM standard that allows longer file names is supported automatically.

nfs

A networked filesystem that allows sharing a filesystem between many computers to allow easy access to the files from all of them.

hpfs

The OS/2 filesystem.

sysv

SystemV/386, Coherent, and Xenix filesystems.

There is also the proc filesystem, usually accessible as the /proc  directory, which is not really a filesystem at all, even though it looks like one. The proc filesystem makes it easy to access certain kernel data structures, such as the process list (hence the name). It makes these data structures look like a filesystem, and that filesystem can be manipulated with all the usual file tools. For example, to get a listing of all processes one might use the command

$ ls -l /proc
total 0
dr-xr-xr-x 4 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 1
dr-xr-xr-x 4 liw users 0 Jan 31 20:37 63
dr-xr-xr-x 4 liw users 0 Jan 31 20:37 94
dr-xr-xr-x 4 liw users 0 Jan 31 20:37 95
dr-xr-xr-x 4 root users 0 Jan 31 20:37 98
dr-xr-xr-x 4 liw users 0 Jan 31 20:37 99
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 devices
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 dma
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 filesystems
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 interrupts
-r-------- 1 root root 8654848 Jan 31 20:37 kcore
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 31 11:50 kmsg
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 ksyms
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 31 11:51 loadavg
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 meminfo
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 modules
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 net
dr-xr-xr-x 4 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 self
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 stat
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 uptime
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 version
$

Note that even though it is called a filesystem, no part of the proc filesystem touches any disk. It exists only in the kernel's imagination. Whenever anyone tries to look at any part of the proc filesystem, the kernel makes it look as if the part existed somewhere, even though it doesn't. So, even though there is a multi-megabyte /proc/kcore  file, it doesn't take any disk space.