Fedora Btrfs Activity Continues - New Options To Control Discard, Compression

[Charlie68]

Anche SUSE / OpenSUSE che ha btrfs come predefinito per root non lo utilizza per impostazione predefinita nella partizione home (dove si trovano i dati utente).

This is false ! openSUSE by default sets / home as a Btrfs subvolume.
I don't want to continue this sterile discussion of file systems, Btrfs has its pros and cons like all file systems.
Everyone is free to use whatever they want and distributions to default to the file system they deem best for their users.
The rest is just a fanboy talk ...

[starshipeleven]

This is false ! openSUSE by default sets / home as a Btrfs subvolume.

Umm, only if you select that you don't want a dedicated home partition during installation.

Also wtf is going on with the italian translation? I didn't post in italian.

Btrfs has its pros and cons like all file systems.

And knowing them well enough is crucial for making the right choice. I don't see why you are so offended.

[gregzeng]

Trying to learn from the comments here. BTRFS is considered unreliable, generally, compared to other file systems. The discussion tested various forms of reliability, to use instead of BTRFS, or using RAID1, along with BTRFS.
The two incompatible RPM-based systems seem to champion BTRFS, with tentative choices: openSUSE & Fedora. When I checked various public databases, it seemed impossible which operating systems had defaults pointed at BTRFS. Many summaries & discussions showing on Doctor Google comment that BTRFS will be the file system of the future, to replace EXT4.
Searching further BTRFS seems very difficult for Windows to Read-Write, if at all. No mention is made about Apple's access to BTRFS files. This contrasts sharply with EXT4, which has "Linux Reader 4.6.1.exe" for Windows operating systems.
BTRFS does have its Windows program, but I have yet to test this: "WinBtrfs v1.7.3".

[Charlie68]

Umm, only if you select that you don't want a dedicated home partition during installation.

Also wtf is going on with the italian translation? I didn't post in italian.

And knowing them well enough is crucial for making the right choice. I don't see why you are so offended.

I'm not offended, but every time there is a post on Btrfs it always reads the same. Who is for and who is against, I repeat Btrfs is a file system and like everyone has its pros and cons that are well documented, what I instead read here and not only on Btrfs are the usual fanboy holy wars.

Umm, only if you select that you don't want a dedicated home partition during installation.

which is the default!

[starshipeleven]

BTRFS is considered unreliable, generally, compared to other file systems.

it's more complex than that, because btrfs has many features and is still under heavy development.

btrfs has many features, some are stable/reliable, some are not. If you are using only stable features AND you are using kernel ver 5.4 or later, then it is reliable.
If you are using other features and/or using kernels older than ver 5.4, then it's less reliable. Especially on Ubuntu, for some reason.

The discussion tested various forms of reliability, to use instead of BTRFS, or using RAID1, along with BTRFS.

in most of the posts (and all my posts) when someone is talking of btrfs and RAID he means using the btrfs own RAID feature, not make a RAID with motherboard chipset or RAID card, nor make a software RAID on Linux with mdadm.

Searching further BTRFS seems very difficult for Windows to Read-Write, if at all. No mention is made about Apple's access to BTRFS files. This contrasts sharply with EXT4, which has "Linux Reader 4.6.1.exe" for Windows operating systems.

ext4 drivers for windows have always been flaky and unstable, unless you have specific experience with the "Linux Reader 4.6.1.exe" I'm skeptical that it is better than the bunch.

That said, afaik there is a opensource btrfs driver for Windows https://github.com/maharmstone/btrfs and a bootloader that allows windows to boot from a btrfs partition. I don't know how good it is.

Apple access to btrfs is a non-issue imho, there is no good reason to buy Apple computers.

[starshipeleven]

I repeat Btrfs is a file system and like everyone has its pros and cons that are well documented

not really, there is a lot of people that overestimate it or underestimate it.

which is the default!

On Leap or Tumbleweed? Because last time I installed Leap (around 6 months ago) it was defaulting to split partitions and use XFS for home, and that's also the default for SUSE.
Btw, just checked, there are Leap 15 tutorials where the screenshots clearly show it will do a XFS home partition by default https://www.linuxtechi.com/opensuse-...e-screenshots/

[rleigh]

it's more complex than that, because btrfs has many features and is still under heavy development.

No, it really doesn't, and it's not that complex at all.

Btrfs has allegedly been under "heavy development" for over 13 years at this point. How long exactly should it continue to be under "heavy development" before it's ready for production use? Oh, sorry, I forgot that it was production ready right now. Yeah, right.

Take any other filesystem you like. ext3, ext4, XFS, JFS, ZFS. Can you recall periods of instability, poor performance and irrecoverable dataloss spanning periods of multiple years. No, neither can I. There might have been the occasional bug uncovered which was fixed immediately, but that's it. Btrfs is at a whole other level of poor quality in both its design and its implementation. No other filesystem in Linux history has had such horrendous problems, nor a huge legion of fanboys bigging it up while the rest of us look on in despair. Seriously, after using it for years, rapidly identifying showstopping performance problems and running into regular issues with dataloss, I do wonder what planet people are on thinking this is a wise course of action when it patently is not.

Btrfs has been flawed from its inception. The design was half-baked, they started coding way too soon, and it's been a neverending catalogue of bug after bug after bug. I doubt it will ever be truly stable and performant and reliable.

That said, it's going to be entertaining to see the fallout from this. I mean, we already know it will be a disaster either from dataloss or best case the performance will be so poor people's systems will be barely usable due to thrashing.

[starshipeleven]

Take any other filesystem you like. ext3, ext4, XFS, JFS, ZFS. Can you recall periods of instability, poor performance and irrecoverable dataloss spanning periods of multiple years. No, neither can I. There might have been the occasional bug uncovered which was fixed immediately, but that's it.

How much experimental features of XFS did you enable lately? because they are working on CoW, and other cool stuff. I bet that you'd get some data loss if you do.

Also, isn't JFS mostly abandonware at this point? Afaik the maintainers put it in "life support mode" in 2010 or something and most distros don't even offer it as a secondary filesystem.

Btrfs is at a whole other level of poor quality in both its design and its implementation.

[citation needed]
The fact that they are taking their sweet ass time to get something done does not mean that it is poor quality. Just that it serves them well enough for what they are doing with it. Apparently none of the corporate overlords paying for its development gives a crap about RAID5/6, for example. Oracle just claims it's OK as long as you have an UPS, and that's the end of it.

No other filesystem in Linux history has had such horrendous problems,

Reiserfs has always been hot garbage. Change my mind.

after using it for years, rapidly identifying showstopping performance problems and running into regular issues with dataloss

As I mentioned above, dataloss is a problem only if you are using the features under development or unfinished (RAID5/6, compression when it was new, and so on), and/or are using an old kernel.

I've been using it in the last 2 years on kernel 5.x or later and it's holding well for my own use (massive RAID1 with mismatched drives, some OS drives with or without RAID1), detected flaky hardware and survived a lot of abuse.
Compression is great. I waited a year after it was introduced because I knew my chickens (and yes, there were bugs that caused data loss about that, now fixed), and now it's on by default on all my drives. I'm saving so. much. space. in my VM virtual disk backup drive because of that.

What I'm very unhappy with is the performance of the RAIDs, it's OK for a OS drive (especially if it is a SSD), but for my KVM server's disk array for VMs is a complete shitshow even in RAID10. Meanwhile both mdadm/XFS and ZFS without any form of cache let windows VMs run without any lag.
Plus some decisions like how they are currently handling the "loss of a drive" situation in an array, but that's not a bug, it's an actual choice they made and defend on mailing list.

we already know it will be a disaster either from dataloss or best case the performance will be so poor people's systems will be barely usable due to thrashing.

Nah, it will be fine, don't worry. It is good enough for a system drive, and Fedora is using a modern kernel and does not do stupid shit like using a non-LTS kernel in a LTS release of their distro (like Ubuntu), so they won't get constantly hammered by bugs that were fixed 3 years ago.

[aht0]

Trying to learn from the comments here. BTRFS is considered unreliable, generally, compared to other file systems. The discussion tested various forms of reliability, to use instead of BTRFS, or using RAID1, along with BTRFS.
The two incompatible RPM-based systems seem to champion BTRFS, with tentative choices: openSUSE & Fedora. When I checked various public databases, it seemed impossible which operating systems had defaults pointed at BTRFS. Many summaries & discussions showing on Doctor Google comment that BTRFS will be the file system of the future, to replace EXT4.
Searching further BTRFS seems very difficult for Windows to Read-Write, if at all. No mention is made about Apple's access to BTRFS files. This contrasts sharply with EXT4, which has "Linux Reader 4.6.1.exe" for Windows operating systems.
BTRFS does have its Windows program, but I have yet to test this: "WinBtrfs v1.7.3".

As I understand WinBtrfs is meant mostly for ReactOS.

Btrfs's RAID-1/10 setups should be ok, reliability-wise. It's at least how FB is employing it.

[starshipeleven]

As I understand WinBtrfs is meant mostly for ReactOS.

I didn't have that impression. In the readme there are lengthy paragraphs about Windows and WSL (the Windows's "Linux userspace")

Also in the "features" list there is stuff like

Windows 10 case-sensitive directory flag

and in the changelog I find

Added more fixes for booting from Btrfs on Windows 10

Now yes it is used/available in ReactOS, but this really looks like an independent project