IIRC ext3 was folded into the ext4 driver. If I was guessing, I would say that they preserved ext2 separately this long because it's a much simpler chunk of cod

IIRC ext3 was folded into the ext4 driver. If I was guessing, I would say that they preserved ext2 separately this long because it's a much simpler chunk of code to maintain. (And it's simple, known, stable code, while ext4 continues to undergo active feature development. Not sure how likely that angle is.)