The Linux kernel supports a myriad of filesystem types, the most popular of which are: ext2, ext3, Reiserfs and XFS.

Currently, ext2 is the only one supported by Debian out of the box.

The ext3 filesystem is the next generation of the Extended Filesystem, and allows for larger filesystems and files, as well as improving performance.

The Reiserfs and XFS filesystems allow for improved performance when using large filesystems, and are suited to specific applications where data concurrency is important, such as filesystems which contain high volume databases.