File systems supported by the Linux kernel

NT File System (NTFS) is a proprietary journaling file system developed by Microsoft in the 1990s.

family of file systems originally developed by Microsoft

ext4 (fourth extended filesystem) is a journaling file system for Linux, developed as the successor to ext3.

ext2, or second extended file system, is a file system for the Linux kernel. It was initially designed by French software developer Rémy Card as a replacement for the extended file system (ext). Having been designed according to the same principles as the Berkeley Fast File System from BSD, it was the first commercial-grade filesystem for Linux.

ext3, or third extended filesystem, is a journaled file system that is commonly used with the Linux kernel. It used to be the default file system for many popular Linux distributions but generally has been supplanted by its successor version ext4. The main advantage of ext3 over its predecessor, ext2, is journaling, which improves reliability and eliminates the need to check the file system after an unclean or improper shutdown.

Btrfs (pronounced as "better F S", "butter F S", "b-tree F S", or "B.T.R.F.S.") is a computer storage format that combines a file system based on the copy-on-write (COW) principle with a logical volume manager (distinct from Linux's LVM), developed together. It was created by Chris Mason in 2007 for use in Linux, and since November 2013, the file system's on-disk format has been declared stable in the Linux kernel.

XFS is a high-performance 64-bit journaling file system created by Silicon Graphics, Inc (SGI) in 1993. It was the default file system in SGI's IRIX operating system starting with its version 5.3. XFS was ported to the Linux kernel in 2001; as of June 2014, XFS is supported by most Linux distributions; Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses it as its default file system.

ReiserFS is a general-purpose, journaling file system initially designed and implemented by a team at Namesys led by Hans Reiser and licensed under GPLv2. Introduced in version 2.4.1 of the Linux kernel, it was the first journaling file system to be included in the standard kernel. ReiserFS was the default file system in Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise until Novell decided to move to ext3 for future releases on October 12, 2006.

exFAT (Extensible File Allocation Table) is a file system optimized for flash memory such as USB flash drives and SD cards, that was introduced by Microsoft in 2006. exFAT was proprietary until 28 August 2019, when Microsoft published its specification. Microsoft owns patents on several elements of its design.

RAM used to emulate secondary storage

historical Linux file system

filesystem created for OS/2 operating system

file system

NTFS-3G is an open-source cross-platform implementation of the Microsoft Windows NTFS file system with read/write support. NTFS-3G often uses the FUSE file system interface, so it can run unmodified on many different operating systems. It is runnable on Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenSolaris, illumos, BeOS, QNX, WinCE, Nucleus, VxWorks, Haiku, MorphOS, Minix, macOS and OpenBSD. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License. It is a partial fork of ntfsprogs and is under active maintenance and development.

Unionfs is a filesystem service for Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD which implements a union mount for other file systems. It allows files and directories of separate file systems, known as branches, to be transparently overlaid, forming a single coherent file system. Contents of directories which have the same path within the merged branches will be seen together in a single merged directory, within the new, virtual filesystem.

native file system of the Minix operating system

Reiser4 is a computer file system, successor to the ReiserFS file system, developed from scratch by Namesys and sponsored by DARPA as well as Linspire. Reiser4 was named after its former lead developer Hans Reiser. , the Reiser4 patch set is still being maintained, but according to Phoronix, it is unlikely to be merged into mainline Linux without corporate backing.

Bcachefs is a copy-on-write (COW) file system for Linux-based operating systems. Its primary developer, Kent Overstreet, first announced it in 2015, and it was added to the Linux kernel beginning with 6.7. It is intended to compete with the modern features of ZFS or Btrfs. In June 2025, Linus Torvalds announced bcachefs would be ejected from the kernel as a result of repeated violations of kernel development guidelines. In August 2025, bcachefs status was changed from 'Supported' to 'Externally maintained'.

OpenAFS is an open-source implementation of the Andrew distributed file system (AFS). AFS was originally developed at Carnegie Mellon University, and developed as a commercial product by the Transarc Corporation, which was subsequently acquired by IBM. At LinuxWorld on 15 August 2000, IBM announced their plans to release a version of their commercial AFS product under the IBM Public License. This became OpenAFS. Today, OpenAFS is actively developed for a wide range of operating system families including: AIX, Mac OS X, Darwin, HP-UX, Irix, Solaris, Linux, Microsoft Windows, FreeBSD, NetBSD.

aufs (short for advanced multi-layered unification filesystem) implements a union mount for Linux file systems. The name originally stood for AnotherUnionFS until version 2.

extent-based file system

EROFS (Enhanced Read-Only File System) is a lightweight read-only file system initially developed by Huawei, originally for the Linux kernel and now maintained by an open-source community.

OpenZFS is an open-source implementation of the ZFS file system and volume manager initially developed by Sun Microsystems for the Solaris operating system, and is now maintained by the OpenZFS Project. Similar to the original ZFS, the implementation supports features like data compression, data deduplication, copy-on-write clones, snapshots, RAID-Z, and virtual devices that can create filesystems that span multiple disks.

NILFS or NILFS2 (New Implementation of a Log-structured File System) is a log-structured file system implementation for the Linux kernel. It was developed by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) CyberSpace Laboratories and a community from all over the world. NILFS was released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Xiafs was a file system for the Linux kernel which was conceived and developed by Ge (Frank) Xia and was based on the MINIX file system. Today it is obsolete and not in use, except possibly in some historic installations.

widely used Linux filesystem format

File system used on Amiga computers