🧮 Ext2 (Second Extended File System) is a legacy Linux file system introduced in 1993 as a major upgrade over the original Extended File System (ext). It was designed to be simple, reliable, and efficient—making it the default file system for many early Linux distributions like Debian and Red Hat.

🧠 Key Features

• No journaling: Unlike Ext3 or Ext4, Ext2 doesn’t log changes before writing them—this improves performance but increases risk during crashes
• Inode-based structure: Uses inodes to store metadata about files (permissions, timestamps, etc.)
• Block groups: Organizes disk space into clusters to reduce fragmentation and improve access speed
• POSIX-compliant permissions: Supports Unix-style access control and ACLs

📐 Technical Specs

🧪 Why It Was Popular

• Lightweight: Ideal for flash drives and SD cards due to fewer write operations
• Stable and mature: Ext2 was widely adopted and well-supported
• Compatible: Ext3 and Ext4 were designed to be backward-compatible with Ext2

⚠️ Modern Relevance

While Ext2 is largely obsolete in favor of Ext4, it’s still used in niche cases:

• Embedded systems
• Recovery tools
• Flash-based storage (where journaling isn’t ideal)