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On “BetrFS: An in-kernel file system that uses Bε trees to organize on-disk storage”
This isn't completely fair, although most of it is. Some of the reasons for modifying Linux are performance enhancements to the filesystem layer that only make sense with a Bε-tree filesystem (and are not possible without patching Linux). They cover this in the hour-long talk at MS research linked elsewhere in this thread.1 (Yes, it's long, but it's a pretty good presentation.) E.g., they describe modifying the page cache to write-through small modifications to file data, rather than dirtying the entire page and writing it back later (a form of write amplification). 1: link to this video