Ubuntu 23.10 Restores ZFS File-System Support In Its Installer

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu 23.10 Restores ZFS File-System Support In Its Installer

When Canonical rolled out their new Flutter-based Ubuntu Linux desktop installer it lacked support for ZFS root file-system installations. Canonical has been quiet about their (Open)ZFS intentions after years of offering it as an Ubuntu install option with their prior installer, but for Ubuntu 23.10 this support is being restored...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-23.10-ZFS-Install

[timofonic]

They should invest in bcachefs instead.

As much as I like ZFS features and reliability, it's a dead end.

[Barley9432]

They should invest in bcachefs instead.

As much as I like ZFS features and reliability, it's a dead end.

In what world is ZFS a dead end? It's constantly receiving investment and has consistent development. Just look at the 2.2 release coming soon and the load of features planned for 2.3.

[cen1]

Calling ZFS a dead end, the nerve of some people..

[skeevy420]

There's also been some Zsys work done over the past few months, though it's all maintenance.

timofonic I humbly disagree about it being a dead end. I think it's the best way forward. It's open source while not being limited by the GPL so it's can be used on multiple operating systems while most Linux file systems are limited to just Linux or Linux in a VM.

As great as I think bcachefs is, I still think ZFS is better. Cross-platform, being a universal format, is almost always better in my book.

Because I know how people will take that GPL comment -- It's no different that AMDGPU using the MIT license so it can be cross platform and not limited by the GPL. While both the GPL and Linux are great, not everyone wants to vendor lock their driver to GPL/Linux so it's fortunate that the kernel has licensing backdoors, I mean, exceptions. Sucks that they won't grant an OpenZFS or CDDL exception, but I get it...the licenses have totally different ownership models.

[mangeek]

OK, that's nice, but can they let me be a little more flexible with the graphical partitioning/FS layout?

Like, I want to be able to start with 'use the whole disk, and encrypt it', but then make edits before it goes ahead. I wanna choose F2FS or btrfs too.

I guess the text-based server installer does this, but that just frustrates me more, because it means the core functionality is in there somewhere, I just can't get at it in 'mouse mode'.

[darkbasic]

Unless they improve zsys that's pointless.

[Veto]

LUKS + BTRFS instead please

[darcagn]

This is great news. Ubuntu's inclusion of ZFS makes it a wonderful liveCD to install Gentoo root-on-ZFS.

[Luke_Wolf]

There's also been some Zsys work done over the past few months, though it's all maintenance.

timofonic I humbly disagree about it being a dead end. I think it's the best way forward. It's open source while not being limited by the GPL so it's can be used on multiple operating systems while most Linux file systems are limited to just Linux or Linux in a VM.

As great as I think bcachefs is, I still think ZFS is better. Cross-platform, being a universal format, is almost always better in my book.

Because I know how people will take that GPL comment -- It's no different that AMDGPU using the MIT license so it can be cross platform and not limited by the GPL. While both the GPL and Linux are great, not everyone wants to vendor lock their driver to GPL/Linux so it's fortunate that the kernel has licensing backdoors, I mean, exceptions. Sucks that they won't grant an OpenZFS or CDDL exception, but I get it...the licenses have totally different ownership models.

As much as I usually disagree with timofonic, no no, he's got a point.

Unless Oracle decides someday that it's suddenly worth relicensing to something that is compatible with the GPL which can thus be merged into Linux, or FreeBSD finally manages to take off in a big way it is 100% a dead end. "Oh but it's compatible between Linux, FreeBSD, and OpenIndiana" really isn't a selling point. If it was compatible with Windows it might be, but it's not. It's very very far from being a "cross platform universal format" and before you start trying to point to this https://github.com/openzfsonwindows/openzfs it's not even close to being in a stable state and only has a couple people working on it.