The main benefit of ext3 over ext2 is that it supports "journaling", which allows for easier recovery of files in the event of corruption or fragmentation. However, it performs poorly against ReiserFS or JFS in this regard. The only major advantage that ext3 has versus these other file systems is that it is backwards-compatible with ext2 tools, which were created before ReiserFS was, or before JFS was available for Linux.
ext2, ext3, ReiserFS, are some native file systems
Not all Linux partitions are ext3. It just happens to be the most popular file system. ext3 was created especially for Linux, so it is free from any patent issues involved with some other file systems.
There are programs you can download that will read Linux file systems. Common file systems are ext2 and ext3.
The Linux ext3 file system is the default system in many linux derivatives. It allows for journalling, which the ext2 system did not. It also allows in-situ upgrades without asking for a backup first.
ext3.
Linux systems have access to a wide range of filesystems, however most Linux distributions default to ext3 or ext4. In the future it is our hope that the "standard" Linux filesystem will be btrfs.Linux supports many different file systems, including ext, ext3, ext4, ReiserFS, Reiser4, JFS, btrfs, and XFS.
No ext2, ext3, ext4, zfs file systems has 255 bytes filename limit and has no pathname limits
By default it should be using the ext3 file system, but you have a choice of several, including ext2, reiserfs, etc. Newer versions of Ubuntu tend to install as ext4 file systems, however if you've upgraded from an older version then you'll keep your original file system.
Some popular disk file systems would be: FAT (FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, exFAT), NTFS, HFS and HFS+, HPFS, EXT2, EXT3, ISO 9660, ODS-5, and UDF. For a complete list of File Systems, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_file_systems
It matters what file systems you or your distributor build the Linux Kernel to support. Generally EXT2, EXT3, and EXT4 are the defaults. EXT4 is recommend for modern Linux installs. Many other files systems are be supported if built into the kernel FAT (12, 16, and 32), XFS, NTFS (using fuse), and etc.
You would have to create a partiotion using fdisk or some other partition program. then you can format it for ext3 file system sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda1
Quite simply, because Windows hasn't been programmed to recognise ext-type filesystems. Out of the box, Windows won't be able to identify ext3 and ext2 filesystems, and will probably consider them corrupted. Fortunately, you can install a driver for ext2 and ext3 filesystems into most versions of Windows. It's called ext2 IFS, and is linked below. With this driver installed, you can mount most ext-type partitions as ext2. (NOTE: ext3 is technically not supported. This means that using ext2 IFS will disable journaling, as that's the main difference between ext2 and ext3)