The plan is to stop journaling altogether? Isn’t that kind of a huge change, or am I missing something?
this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2026
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No. The ext4 default mode is ordered, not journaled. The metadata is still journaled though.
I don't see any discussion on the kernel mailing list, though I've never gone looking for anything in there before.
Isn’t that kind of a huge change
Sortof... but almost nobody is actually using data=journal, as the default is ordered.
I do think it's important to keep it as an option though, so I disagree with removing it entirely. I suppose it could be forked into a separate module by someone who wants to maintain the journal support. I wonder if ext3's journaling will still be supported?
Sounds like a big one to me. But I think it's also fair to say ext4 isn't really good for journaled data storage, especially compared to the competitors.
Reading through the phoronix comments, its default mode journals file metadata only instead of all writes.
Can someone ELI5 it for me on what does this mean on a technical standpoint?