Question

What benefits does the FUSE filesystem offer?

Answer 1

1.) FUSE stands for file system in user space. FUSE device driver is a general purpose filesystem which loads as a kernel module and interacts with the user with the well defined API through virtual device. So unlike traditional file system which were implemented in the Kernel, FUSE allows the filesystems to be implemented in the
user program. User Program not need to be run by root privileges if it doesn't need to access protected data or devices and can implement virtual file system in much more effcient way than traditional file system.

2.) FUSE is not a filesystem, its actually a code that allows the file system to be implemented as processes rather than kernel modules.

3.) FUSE filesystem is more robust than the traditional filesystem as it won't go away due to process crashing or process killed by someone by mistake. And also if FUSE filesystem
driver crashes then all you will see the I/O error regarding accessing file system so it doesn't panic the kernel.

4.) FUSE filesystem can be programmed very quickly . Due to FUSE binding for many scripting languages , FUSE filesystem can be written very efficiently in very
less number of lines of code.

5.) As there is no need of Administrator intervention so FUSE filesystem can be deployed very quickly.

6.) FUSE filesystem provides the API for user interaction which are saner, debuggers and profilers works better.

7.) FUSE fileSystem provides a many more libraries providing functionality like advanced data structure, encryption etc.

8.) In FUSE filesystem it is very easy to test user space code , debug it , run it again whenever any test fails.

9.) FUSE allows the user to install and run wide variety of virtual filesystem types. for ex. sshfs, GlusterFS, BlogFS,mysqlfs, AVFS, CVSFS