Btrfs File-System Updates For Linux 4.6

[uid313]

How much has Btrfs matured the past year(s)?

How does Btrfs compare against ZFS nowadays?

[pal666]

"not particularly exciting"? The fact that there are not many changes IS exciting. Because that begins to show stability.

in biology 'stability' means 'death'
for btrfs it means no online filesystem check for example

[pal666]

I'm curious, what is the advantage of using BTRFS over EXT4 or XFS on the root filesystem?

rollbacks

[pal666]

How does Btrfs compare against ZFS nowadays?

btrfs has modern superior desing, zfs has obsolete design
zfs for linux is separate product with zero userbase, which implies zero stability. btrfs for linux is used by default by some enterprise distros with support(not all features) and by facebook

[Turtleggjp]

rollbacks

This. I'm using BTRFS as my root filesystem now on several systems running Gentoo Linux. Before doing software updates, I make a snapshot of the subvolume used for my root filesystem, which I can then boot to from grub instead of my main subvolume if something goes wrong (subvol=backup instead of subvol=root on kernel command line). I can then keep around as many of these "backup" subvolumes as I have room for to rollback to any point in time if I want. I also use different subvolumes to try out different desktop environments (subvol=kde4, subvol=plasma, subvol=gnome, etc.) without them "cross contaminating" each other. It's like having as many different OS installations as you want all contained within one file system.

[starshipeleven]

btrfs has modern superior desing, zfs has obsolete design
zfs for linux is separate product with zero userbase, which implies zero stability. btrfs for linux is used by default by some enterprise distros with support(not all features) and by facebook

Add Netgear NASes to the btrfs list. They use btrfs.

also, zfs does have some userbase on linux, probably less than btrfs tho. And it will increase quite a bit when Ubuntu adds zfs support.

God I'll laugh when people's data will burn randomly when they used zfs on a non-ecc system. The more people use it, the more likely it becomes that someone will come crying about his data loss.

[dweigert]

I'm curious, what is the advantage of using BTRFS over EXT4 or XFS on the root filesystem? Or is it just because BTRFS is default for SLES?

When you have to patch multiple thousands of servers every quarter, being able to roll them back if something goes wrong is a huge benefit. Sometimes rebuilding and restoring from backups is not a productive use of time....

[pal666]

And it will increase quite a bit when Ubuntu adds zfs support.

not much, since ubuntu added btrfs support long ago

[starshipeleven]

not much, since ubuntu added btrfs support long ago

Yeah, but y'know, all the people saying "zfs is mature, btrfs is not" are salivating at that and you cannot deny this. There are quite a bit here and in other forums. While btrfs is still undeniably very meh.

btrfs will of course win in the long run, but zfs is going to see some more use in the short term.

[pal666]

all the people saying "zfs is mature, btrfs is not"

but zfs is not mature on linux, there are just many clueless people