The ext3 or third extended filesystem is a journaled file system that is commonly used by the Linux kernel. It is the default file system for many popular Linux distributions. Stephen Tweedie first revealed that he was working on extending ext2 in Journaling the Linux ext2fs Filesystem in a 1998 paper and later in a February 1999 kernel mailing list posting, and the filesystem was merged with the mainline Linux kernel in November 2001 from 2.4.15 onward. This project is mainly to read EXT2/3 information. The extension is currently in alpha phase but will be released soon (eta within 2/3 weeks)