Jaunty Jackalope: ext4

April is just around the corner, and that means that it's almost time for the next release of Ubuntu. This time it'll be Ubuntu 9.04, code-named Jaunty Jackalope. Worth upgrading to? I was just about to write a shor post on that until I realized I already did something similar last year. So upgrade or not as you will. As for me, I'll probably get around to it in May, June, or July, depending on the circumstances.

What's to expect for Jaunty? Possibly the most significant change is the introduction of ext4, the successor to the ext3. ext4 is notable for its larger disk capacity, up to 1 exabyte now, with file sizes up to 16 terabytes. In addition, it breaks the 32,000-subdirectory limit present in ext3. I doubt I'll be breaking those figures anytime soon, but I suppose the large database people will be excited about this. In any case, ext4 is backwards-compatible with ext3, so no problem there. More on ext4.