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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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What's with all these hip filesystems and how are they different? (lm.paradisus.day)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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You know, ZFS, ButterFS (btrfs...its actually "better" right?), and I'm sure more.

I think I have ext4 on my home computer I installed ubuntu on 5 years ago. How does the choice of file system play a role? Is that old hat now? Surely something like ext4 has its place.

I see a lot of talk around filesystems but Ive never found a great resource that distiguishes them at a level that assumes I dont know much. Can anyone give some insight on how file systems work and why these new filesystems, that appear to be highlights and selling points in most distros, are better than older ones?

Edit: and since we are talking about filesystems, it might be nice to describe or mention how concepts like RAID or LUKS are related.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Using Btrfs you can do some pretty cool snapshotting: It's basically like system restore of Windows but MUCH faster and pretty seamless. Even if you annihilate the whole operating system you can restore the snapshot and voila, have fun! It also has compression which can save some wear on SSDs and of course give you some more free(tm) storage space, which is cool [actual benefits depend on workload*]

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

This is twelve years old, but it nicely illustrates what BTRFS (and ZFS on other OS) can do … https://youtu.be/9H7e6BcI5Fo?t=206

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

ZFS also has snapshotting too FWIW.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

ZFS has almost everything ever conceived for filesystems lol it's a whole ass volume manager and filesystem into one

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I wasn't cool enough to figure out how to "just boot into a snapshot" when I tried btrfs a while ago. I mean I did figure it out (maybe?) but somehow the read/write rights where messed up and the snapshot couldn't actually boot/I wasn't able to log in +___+ Just reinstalled the system eith good old ext4. It sounds really cool, though ...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Fedora out of the box just works

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Well, sounds like a setup or distro issue. It should work without problems on Debian/Ubuntu/Mint. Linux Mint even really supports it as a setup-less default with TimeShift

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Do you know how I could split my default /var/home/user into /var/home/user/.var, /var/home/user/Torrents and the rest?

Think that would be great for use with btrbk, when I find out how to use that.

Damn BTRFS and btrbk need an easy GUI, I have the feeling its great for backups

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

There's no GUI, but following the wiki pages on BTRFS subvolumes you should be able to make a subvolume for those with like 2 simple commands (take a look at the man page for BTRFS subvolumes as well)