UFS, was Re: [geeks] OSX optimizations

[Bryan Fullerton]

On Wednesday, January 22, 2003, at 03:49 PM, David Cantrell wrote:

> How bad is it, really?

UFS in OSX is, as commented by others, dog-ass slow. This is mostly  
because the UFS in OSX is based on code from 1997, which doesn't have a  
lot of the improvements made in UFS in the past 6 years.

An interesting email about updating UFS:
http://www.opendarwin.org/pipermail/hackers/2002-June/000066.html

> Considering that the apps I use are pretty much
> restricted to the stuff that comes out of the box with OS X, plus stuff
> I compile myself, plus Safari and Photoshop Elements, plus a few little
> shareware doodads that I could live without, just how painful can I
> expect it to be?

Photoshop Elements doesn't support installing on UFS.
http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?50@220.xdE9aFGdBBX.1@.1de72090

You may not care, but no Microsoft apps support UFS - some will work  
with it, but if you have problems the first thing they'll tell you to  
do is reinstall on HFS+. Many other large companies have similar  
reactions.

Classic apps don't understand UFS, and there are issues with resource  
forks vanishing.

Apple themselves downplay the importance of UFS support, as seen here:
http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/Darwin/GettingStarted/ 
PortingUNIX/additionalfeatures/Supported_F_ystem_Types.html

(original framed source:
http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/Darwin/GettingStarted/ 
PortingUNIX/additionalfeatures/index.html
)

Bryan