Another Major Distro Chooses BTRFS

[ajgringo619]

Didn't think it would be Fedora joining openSUSE...
https://9to5linux.com/fedora-33-beta-re ... -linux-5-8

[motoryzen]

Didn't think it would be Fedora joining openSUSE...
https://9to5linux.com/fedora-33-beta-re ... -linux-5-8

--I remember Wendell from Level1techs ( probably closer to back when he was with Tek Syndicate many suns ago) talking about xfs but more coherently..BTRFS and how it's superior to EXT4, but I don't recall any details. So far the only thing I understand about BTRFS vs EXT4 is that BTRFS supports file, volume, and drive sizes much larger than EXT4, but I don't see in a close enough part of my lifetime needing BTRFS anytime soon since my max file sizes end up being not even 45 GBs...and that's a fully loaded cgi bluray movie ...before handbrake-ing it. Copy-on-write, which is a part of BTRFS, is basically greek to me unfortunately --

[ajgringo619]

For the average user, EXT4 works just fine. My main reason for using BTRFS is its nearly-instantaneous snapshots, which Timeshift works very well with. It's not as mature as EXT3/4, but it's definitely come a long way.

[Kadaitcha Man]

For the average user, EXT4 works just fine. My main reason for using BTRFS is its nearly-instantaneous snapshots, which Timeshift works very well with. It's not as mature as EXT3/4, but it's definitely come a long way.

Do you use it for the root fs?

[Portreve]

Stability is to me always pretty high on the priority list. When it comes to such things as file systems, it is paramount.

Not saying anything against BTRFS, but I prefer the generational maturation and stability of EXT.

[ajgringo619]

Stability is to me always pretty high on the priority list. When it comes to such things as file systems, it is paramount.

Not saying anything against BTRFS, but I prefer the generational maturation and stability of EXT.

Agreed. I just thought that the Mint devs, especially since they started pushing Timeshift, would have considered it, at least for root; who knows - maybe they did.

[Portreve]

Stability is to me always pretty high on the priority list. When it comes to such things as file systems, it is paramount.

Not saying anything against BTRFS, but I prefer the generational maturation and stability of EXT.

Agreed. I just thought that the Mint devs, especially since they started pushing Timeshift, would have considered it, at least for root; who knows - maybe they did.

I know that Pjotr had originally cautioned against using BTRFS in his article on optimizing ones LM or Ubuntu installation for SSD on the basis that it caused too many writes. IIRC, he's since said it may be acceptable. However, I would prefer him to comment because he knows far more about this matter than I.

[antikythera]

It surprises me more that it's taken so long for Fedora to switch to btrfs as the default for at least root. Presumably the folks at Red Hat want Fedora users to act as guinea pigs so they can iron out any issues before switching RHEL to the FS as well. Even though Fedora is not officially a Red Hat project and has not been for many years now they still have some say as to how it's run and provide limited Personnel work hours to the Fedora Project.

It has been an option for quite some time via manual partitioning though. If you want to find out just how long, search the Fedora Dungeon for posts by stevea. He wrote some guides to using it with Fedora 20 if I recall correctly.

I'm not convinced by btrfs though for home users, it's overly complicated for very little gain and requires some maintenance by the end user from time to time whereas Ext4 can be left alone. I have tried living with it on one machine for 6 months via OpenSUSE default install. When the excrement did hit the fan I couldn't actually get the snapshot to restore despite following instructions to the letter.

Sure Timeshift works with the btrfs snapshot feature but so what? If the storage medium packs up, then you lose your snapshots too just like any other form of internal file system backup. To that end it's no better than Windows System Restore which should also not be relied on alone.

I'll stick with Ext4 and backing up to an external device using rsync.

As for why Ubuntu and therefore Mint have not adopted it yet:

Is btrfs stable? - https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php ... _stable.3F

[Pjotr]

As for why Ubuntu and therefore Mint have not adopted it yet:

Is btrfs stable? - https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php ... _stable.3F

Indeed. Thanks, but no, thanks.

BTRFS is probably not as mature as EXT4 yet, and also it might (under certain circumstances) cause more write actions than EXT4 does. Which you may want to avoid on SSD's.

[ajgringo619]

Is btrfs stable? - https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php ... _stable.3F

Wish I knew when this paragraph was written; wikis are notorious for leaving out this simple piece of information.

[ajgringo619]

Sure Timeshift works with the btrfs snapshot feature but so what? If the storage medium packs up, then you lose your snapshots too just like any other form of internal file system backup. To that end it's no better than Windows System Restore which should also not be relied on alone.

Timeshift is supposed to be only a system restore utility, not for complete disaster relief. I think this is one of Timeshift's biggest misconceptions - that it's designed to recover from a catastrophic hardware failure. While it might be able to do that, that's not its main purpose.

[Hoser Rob]

Ineresting then that Red Hat ... Fedora users are merely Red Hat beta testers whether they know it or not ... only seems nto support ext3:

https://access.redhat.com/documentation ... -part-mkfs

And I think they only supported ext2 until fairly recently.

[ajgringo619]

Ineresting then that Red Hat ... Fedora users are merely Red Hat beta testers whether they know it or not ... only seems nto support ext3:

https://access.redhat.com/documentation ... -part-mkfs

And I think they only supported ext2 until fairly recently.

Agreed on Fedora users, but your RHEL link is referencing a really old version (on v8 now).

After further investigation, RHEL 8.2 uses XFS as the default filesystem!

[SilFox]

Well it maybe has purpose on server systems, but, for desktop users, BTRFS = bloated totally redundant file system, which makes Your OS main purpose to create backups, and backups of backups, and so on ...
It remainds me of ZFS ...

[Pjotr]

for desktop users, BTRFS = bloated totally redundant file system, which makes Your OS main purpose to create backups, and backups of backups, and so on ...

Well put, sir!

[antikythera]

Sure Timeshift works with the btrfs snapshot feature but so what? If the storage medium packs up, then you lose your snapshots too just like any other form of internal file system backup. To that end it's no better than Windows System Restore which should also not be relied on alone.

Timeshift is supposed to be only a system restore utility, not for complete disaster relief. I think this is one of Timeshift's biggest misconceptions - that it's designed to recover from a catastrophic hardware failure. While it might be able to do that, that's not its main purpose.

I'm under no illusions that is the main purpose of Timeshift but it does work quite well for that purpose too

One advantage btrfs does have are the size of the snapshots compared to rsync. Regardless I still wouldn't keep any snapshots on a single drive alone because even snapshots get corrupted. I never have and never will.

[ddog241]

Well it maybe has purpose on server systems, but, for desktop users, BTRFS = bloated totally redundant file system, which makes Your OS main purpose to create backups, and backups of backups, and so on ...
It remainds me of ZFS ...

but you need a backup of the backup of the backup of the backup.

[SilFox]

No, I do not.
I only need 1, manually created. (B4 any upd/upgr)

[MartyMint]

Not saying anything against BTRFS, but I prefer the generational maturation and stability of EXT.

I'm with you on that.

My business depends on a somewhat dull, but rock-solid OS and file system.

[exploder]

I think I will stick with ext4 until the performance issues get resolved. Plenty of people are enjoying BTRFS but I am taking a conservative approach for now.