There's A Proposal To Switch Fedora 33 On The Desktop To Using Btrfs

[pal666]

The developer stated that btrfs has too many data loss bugs, the context doesn't change that. Which is exactly why I'm hesitant to agree that it should become the default file system.

that's because you are imbecile. first, the developer stated that "we have", not "btrfs has". second, everyone knows raid56 is unstable, it's written on status page(btw, people smarter than you will use it to select default fs instead of cherry-picking random out-of-context mail quote when btrfs dev is asking to make it default), that's what he was referring to. so, don't use raid56(you can't use it with ext4 anyway, so it's not a regression), be smart, be like fedora

[Space Heater]

that's because you are imbecile.

Calm down and take your medication.

Also the quote was not about raid 5 or 6, but about btrfs in general. Of course reading isn't one of your strong points, unlike your ability to post multiple times in an enraged state.

[Space Heater]

pal666 all you do is get enraged and name call, nowhere in the post I linked was raid5 or 6 referenced. You're just some unstable individual on phoronix that people laugh at.

[Almindor]

Filesystem has zero effect on the desktop experience, you bloody idiot.

I'll have to save this quote for the ages. Tell that to Mac OS users using pretty much anything that hammers lots of small files!

[waxhead]

I want in on this too....

curfew - if you really believe that a filesystem has zero effect on the desktop experience (which is using a computer experience) then you are not really that bright. Desktops reads and modify files, and a filesystem can have a great impact on the performance of that - just about anyone understands this and Almindor explained it all with a single sentence....

As for you Space Heater : You spread incorrect information. i do follow the BTRFS mailing list, and use BTRFS quite a bit myself for both desktop and server use so I do have some experience with it. Don't get too hung up in how pal666 addresses you and look at the message instead.

You have to compare apples with apples first and foremost so let's look at the most common filesystems.
Ext4: Working on (the last time I checked) metadata checksums, does not do data checksumming.
XFS: With fileformat V5 does metadata checksums, does not do data checksumming.
BTRFS on the other hand does metadata+data checksumming and can repair using a duplicate copy (if configured)

So if you start out with a feature set comparable to Ext4 or XFS e.g. just a plain fileystem without transparent compression, snapshots, subvolumes, etc... then you do have to understand that you are initially opting for a more robust filesystem out of the box.
So from my experience.... if you are sane and stick with LTS kernels:
BTRFS with single metadata is less reliable than XFS/Ext4. BTRFS with duplicate metadata is significantly more reliable than XFS/Ext4. In any case BTRFS can detect silent data corruption - XFS and Ext4 can not.
If you follow the mailing list you will see that there is nearly none horror stories anymore of dataloss for people that stay with stable features and stick with LTS kernels. Sure there are a few in between, but that is people that layer BTRFS on top of any other exotic configuration such as bcache, lvm, dm-crypt etc...

There are some drawbacks of course, BTRFS is NOT the fastest filesystem especially for sync heavy loads. Even curfew can test this (and learn something) by running for example a large update with apt/aptitude on a Debian system with or without 'eatmydata' in front of the command line.
What people use BTRFS for is precisely reliability and while I myself got bitten by the nasty corruption bug in kernel 5.2 (which is NOT LTS by the way) I was still able to extract most of my files, confidently knowing that they where ok thanks to data checksums without having to resort to backups.

If any of you have a large backup on ext4 / xfs or any other filesystem for that matter and doubt the reliability of BTRFS then I encourage you to do a practical exercise on your data. Checksum your archive with:

find . -type f -exec sha1sum {} \; > checksums_files

and some months or perhaps years later...

sha1sum -c checksums_files | grep ":FAILED" > checksums_filesfailed

All my data as well as my backups (backups are important for any filesystem) is on BTRFS these days... I moved from ext4 layered on top of mdraid6 to btrfs raid1. There is a simple reason for it, and that it is the two command lines above. So test your filesystems before claiming it's not reliable.

[Volta]

I can ask the same things about Wayland, yet you're advocating that piece of software very much.

Yes, because I'm using it and experience is much smoother than with X. Are you using btrfs?

[aksdb]

If you follow the mailing list you will see that there is nearly none horror stories anymore of dataloss for people that stay with stable features and stick with LTS kernels. Sure there are a few in between, but that is people that layer BTRFS on top of any other exotic configuration such as bcache, lvm, dm-crypt etc...

If you consider "dm-crypt" to be exotic, then please step away from the computer. BTRFS has no encryption support (yet?), so without dm-crypt, you have your data lying around plain on a disk. Do you really run any piece of hardware these days productively without having your disk encrypted? SSDs cannot be safely wiped (since you don't know which cells will actually be written) so if you don't encrypt from the start, you risk leaking data once you exchange or throw away your SSD.
It's *slightly* less bad with HDDs, but even there ... if the controller breaks and you just exchange it, someone willing enough can still extract your data.

If there is a risk that BTRFS goes boom on dm-crypt, then sorry ... ext4 (or whatever) is the better choice for a desktop then.

Also if I ever have to recover any ext4 partition, I can pull up whatever rescue disk I have and get going. With btrfs I have to be extra careful that the kernel and utils match closely to what the actual system has. That makes any rescue operation unnecessary risky and complicated.

All that together makes BTRFS too wonky for me.

[waxhead]

My point is of course that once you layer btrfs on top of other systems regardless if it's dm-crypt or whatever it is a "exotic" setup. Perhaps the word exotic was not quite the appropriate one.

i would much rather know that the files I recover is good instead of relying on something that can't guarantee me that the files I recover are ok without having to resort to manually running checksums. And let's face it... Most files that are in use such as your web browser profile for example change so quickly that manually running a checksum before and after each time you use your browser is not practical. With BTRFS I know that if I can extract my profile without errors I can use it safely without having to go back to an old backup.

And again if you stick with an LTS kernel I don't buy your argument that is difficult to find a matching kernel and progs version. Besides newer kernels and progs should always support older filefilesystems.

[JustinTurdeau]

BTRFS has no encryption support (yet?), so without dm-crypt, you have your data lying around plain on a disk. Do you really run any piece of hardware these days productively without having your disk encrypted?

Full disk encryption has always been a misfeature. It's designed for brainlets who aren't capable of managing things at the proper, granular level.

You can save yourself a lot of pointless overhead and other BS by just encrypting at the file/directory level instead. Why would any knowledgeable person encrypt /usr just to complicate and slow down their boot process?

>Oh no, someone might see my top secret /usr/bin/ls implementation!!

[profoundWHALE]

I find it funny that I'm accused of being a ZFS shill. I've put ZFS on one system and it was a 2013 chromebook.

I mainly run EXT4 or bcachefs, including running bcachefs on /

Hopefully the btrfs shills don't get burned like I did and lose terabytes of data. Luckily I had a physical backup of the most important stuff due to paranoia.

Every time I hear someone say "BTRFS is good now!", all I hear is the boy who cried wolf.