OpenZFS 2.1.8 Released With Linux 6.1~6.2 Compatibility Updates, Bug Fixes

[phoronix]

Phoronix: OpenZFS 2.1.8 Released With Linux 6.1~6.2 Compatibility Updates, Bug Fixes

While the much anticipated OpenZFS 3.0 hasn't yet materialized as it was originally hoped for in 2022, OpenZFS 2.x continues on maturing nicely with fixes and other updates to this open-source ZFS file-system implementation currently supported on FreeBSD and Linux systems...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/OpenZFS-2.1.8-Released

[staalmannen]

I am curious to know what people think about using OpenZFS as root system. How does it compare to BTRFS? I am quite curios to try Chimera Linux (musl libc, LLVM/Clang system compiler with libc++ and FreeBSD userland tools), which include OpenZFS out-of-the-box.

I just wonder if I should try and go "all in" and also try to set it up on ZFS

[evert_mouw]

I am curious to know what people think about using OpenZFS as root system. How does it compare to BTRFS? I am quite curios to try Chimera Linux (musl libc, LLVM/Clang system compiler with libc++ and FreeBSD userland tools), which include OpenZFS out-of-the-box.

I just wonder if I should try and go "all in" and also try to set it up on ZFS

I dunno... It is and stays a foreign filesystem in Linuxland. I would choose ZFS over Btrfs any day for my personal data (with much satisfaction ATM), but for boot/system partitions... Sure Chimera offers ZFS support, but what if your installation breaks? What about repair tools? If you don't care about those (just do a reinstall) then maybe it's worth considering, but why? ZFS encryption?

[Volta]

I am curious to know what people think about using OpenZFS as root system. How does it compare to BTRFS? I am quite curios to try Chimera Linux (musl libc, LLVM/Clang system compiler with libc++ and FreeBSD userland tools), which include OpenZFS out-of-the-box.

I just wonder if I should try and go "all in" and also try to set it up on ZFS

You have to keep in mind it may sometimes break with manual kernel update. Otherwise it should be fine, but I prefer faster and less bloated file systems.

[Leinad]

I am curious to know what people think about using OpenZFS as root system. How does it compare to BTRFS? I am quite curios to try Chimera Linux (musl libc, LLVM/Clang system compiler with libc++ and FreeBSD userland tools), which include OpenZFS out-of-the-box.

I just wonder if I should try and go "all in" and also try to set it up on ZFS

I cant compare raw features, but btrfs has great integration in openSUSE, ZFS probably only in openSolaris. openSUSE btrfs supports root, it is included in kernel without any compilation needed, creates snapshot after every zypper install, these snapshot can be booted from grub if any bad upgrade happens, it does regular cleaning of old snapshots, supports quota for not overflowing disk with snapshots, default installation is optimized for no-cow on data partitions for performance increase for databases and virtual machines, KDE (and maybe others) supports using of reflinks to save space.

I heard about integration of ZFS in openSolaris, where you had tool similar to Mac's timeshift, but I don't think it was ported elsewhere.

[jorgepl]

I cant compare raw features, but btrfs has great integration in openSUSE, ZFS probably only in openSolaris. openSUSE btrfs supports root, it is included in kernel without any compilation needed, creates snapshot after every zypper install, these snapshot can be booted from grub if any bad upgrade happens, it does regular cleaning of old snapshots, supports quota for not overflowing disk with snapshots, default installation is optimized for no-cow on data partitions for performance increase for databases and virtual machines, KDE (and maybe others) supports using of reflinks to save space.

I heard about integration of ZFS in openSolaris, where you had tool similar to Mac's timeshift, but I don't think it was ported elsewhere.

Ubuntu ships with ZFS out of the box

[aksdb]

I am curious to know what people think about using OpenZFS as root system. How does it compare to BTRFS? I am quite curios to try Chimera Linux (musl libc, LLVM/Clang system compiler with libc++ and FreeBSD userland tools), which include OpenZFS out-of-the-box.

I just wonder if I should try and go "all in" and also try to set it up on ZFS

My this years christmas holiday project was converting my servers and desktops to root-on-ZFS. So far I am happy. I prefer the mount point management in comparison to btrfs (where I have to manually mount each individual subvol to its desired location ... which sucks hard on a rescue system to prepare a chroot). I generally like the zfs tooling much more than btrfs. Oh and I have native encryption so I don't need more layers (luks).

However I use a kernel repo for arch (from CachyOS) that ships kernel and ZFS modules combined, to make sure I don't accidentally update to a version that suddenly won't boot. I use ZFSBootMenu to have a ZFS-aware bootloader that allows me to easily revert to a snapshot (before booting). And I prepared a SystemRescueCD with OpenZFS included so I can easily access my data on a borked machine.

So ... I think it's very manageable.

[Leinad]

Ubuntu ships with ZFS out of the box

Ubuntu supports ZFS less and less, they probably going to abandon it: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/01/...support-status

[skeevy420]

I am curious to know what people think about using OpenZFS as root system. How does it compare to BTRFS? I am quite curios to try Chimera Linux (musl libc, LLVM/Clang system compiler with libc++ and FreeBSD userland tools), which include OpenZFS out-of-the-box.

I just wonder if I should try and go "all in" and also try to set it up on ZFS

I use an OpenZFS root on CachyOS and it's just fine. While OpenZFS doesn't have the integration levels you'd find with OpenSUSE/BTRFS or Solaris/ZFS, it still works perfectly fine as a root OS. Note that a lot of that exists on Linux, they just aren't installed by default at the distribution level anywhere.

Because of the way that OpenZFS works you can do a lot of things that you can't do on other file systems. For example, my Wine and Proton datasets are stored with case insensitivity and LZ4 compression while my games are stored with case insensitivity and Zstd:19 compression. That gives me the best of both worlds. Games are basically read only outside of updates so they get hardcore compression, prefixes have a lot of read/write so they get fast compression, and both prefixes and game modding prefer case insensitivity. Due to of how you can create and destroy datasets using different settings you're able to try out a lot of scenarios whereas with something like BTRFS you don't have that flexibility.

Just make sure you pick a distribution like CachyOS that makes it a point to ship compiled ZFS modules with every kernel and to occasionally compile it with upcoming compatibility patches (like their current Linux 6.2 kernel with the HDR patches and a ZFS module).

[skeevy420]

I dunno... It is and stays a foreign filesystem in Linuxland. I would choose ZFS over Btrfs any day for my personal data (with much satisfaction ATM), but for boot/system partitions... Sure Chimera offers ZFS support, but what if your installation breaks? What about repair tools? If you don't care about those (just do a reinstall) then maybe it's worth considering, but why? ZFS encryption?

You can configure PAM so that when you log in it mounts and decrypts your users' home volumes. That's a neat thing to do with ZFS encryption -- leave every home volume unmounted and encrypted unless the user logs in.