Fedora Cloud 35 Looking To Use The Btrfs File-System By Default

Fedora Workstation has been defaulting to the Btrfs file-system since F33 while other editions of Fedora Linux have continued using their defaults. With Fedora Cloud 35, this cloud spin of Fedora is now also looking to migrate to Btrfs.

The plan is for the Fedora Cloud 35 release later this year to use Btrfs by default in order to allow using advanced file-system features more readily. This Fedora Cloud change proposal is backed by Fedora developers as well as stakeholders from the likes of Facebook and Amazon.

The change proposal reads, "Fedora Cloud Edition will switch to using Btrfs for its images. The configuration for the Cloud Edition will match the setup used on the desktop variants, as this has been very well-tested with production deployments across multiple Fedora Linux releases now. This includes the same subvolume layout that is used on the desktop variants as introduced in Fedora Linux 33, as well as transparent Zstd compression as introduced in Fedora Linux 34."

Among the sought after benefits of using Btrfs for Fedora Cloud is the copy-on-write enhancements in conjunction with the DNF package manager handling, transparent file-system compression, reflinks and snapshots support, greater data integrity, improved system responsiveness, online shrink and grow support, and supporting more complex storage configurations in an easier manner.