Problem :
I am looking for a way to do deduplication for my Virtual Machines, I found a project called OpenDudup. It looks promising, it says it needs fuse as a dependancy. After looking up what fuse is, it left me with another question.
What make a file system is user space different from a file system in kernel space?
Solution :
File systems in user space advantages:
- Easier development
- Nice user friendly package (FUSE) to give you a nice template. You have to worry only about getting the special parts of your file system to work.
- Usable by non-privileged users.
Disadvantages:
- Slower. Sometimes way way way slower.
- Not good if you want multiple users to use the same file system at the same time.
Sometimes FUSE is the only way to get things to work though, so you’re happy enough to live with the speed hit.