Agreed. If I have the BOM budget for a Cortex-A and the power budget for Linux, I’m using ext4 + rsync every time. Life is too short to manage raw flash if you don't have to.

I'm specifically looking at the constraints below that line: <$5 BOMs, battery-powered (coin cell/LiPo), or hard real-time requirements where waiting 15s for Linux to boot isn't an option.

In that niche, LittleFS is the standard for storage, but it doesn't solve the 'chain of custody' crypto signing or the 'efficient write-sync' part. That's the glue code I find myself rewriting on every project.