Sent out and already merged today for the Linux 7.0 kernel are the EXT4 file-system updates.

One of the changes for EXT4 in this next kernel version that stands out for me is improving write performance when dealing with concurrent direct I/O writes to multiple files. This performance improvement comes by deferring the splitting of unwritten extents to I/O completion.

EXT4 in Linux 7.0 also now avoids unnecessary cache invalidation in the extent status cache, avoids unnecessary forced ordered writes when appending to a file with delayed allocation, and a variety of bug fixes.