The EFS file-system was used for non-ISO9660 CD-ROMs and disk partitions on SGI IRIX before IRIX 6.0 switched over to XFS. Inside the Linux kernel has been a read-only EFS file-system driver without a maintainer for 20+ years while for Linux 7.3 it's expected to be removed.

Last month I wrote about a situation of someone stepping up wanting to maintain the EFS file-system driver but had only contributed basic compiler/bug fixes for the driver code. The developer acknowledged to never having personally used an actual EFS file-system either.

That brought up the matter to upstream Linux kernel developers whether to let someone takeover this driver that is arguably of extremely niche use but who isn't personally using this driver or whether it's just time to remove this outdated, unmaintained driver. The Linux kernel developers are opting for the latter option.

Christian Brauner has queued up the removal of the EFS file-system driver into the vfs/vfs.git's vfs-7.3.efs Git branch. With it making it into the VFS realm in a branch tagged for Linux 7.3, it's in turn expected to be removed for this next kernel version later in the year.

Brauner commented on the patch removing it:

"The kernel EFS code has been unmaintained for over twenty years. It was superseded on IRIX around thirty years ago. I haven't seen an EFS filesystem in the wild since 1999. Userspace tools to read EFS filesystems exist, such as https://github.com/jkbenaim/efsextract

There's no benefit to keeping this filesystem in the kernel, and it only increases the maintenance burden for tree-wide changes."

Sounds like a good enough reason to lay this outdated SGX IRIX file-system driver to rest in 2026.