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Ask HN: Why isn't BTRFS the default FS in home-oriented Linux distributions?

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Ask HN: Why isn't BTRFS the default FS in home-oriented Linux distributions?

#1

Post by develatio »

I have been looking how BTRFS has been progressing. It supports CoW, snapshots, data deduplication, compression, data integrity, (...), a list of features that are unavailable in EXT4 (the current default FS in most home-oriented Linux distributions).

For granted, EXT4 keeps being faster than BTRFS in most synthetic benchmarks, which makes it a better choice for servers, but this difference in speed isn't noticeable in domestic workloads; domestic users would greatly benefit from the features offered by BTRFS. For example, Linux Mint has Timeshift, a backup solution that uses BTRFS volumes to make system snapshots.

This leads me to my question: Why haven't we switched to BTRFS as the default FS for home-oriented distributions? What features / reasons are holding us to keep using EXT4 as the default FS?

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't BTRFS the default FS in home-oriented Linux distributions?

#3

Post by xkfiebfifbek »

transfire wrote: post #2

I’ve heard it lacks maturity and of a few cases of data corruption. Those cases are no doubt outdated now, but I haven’t heard any news to sway me that BTRFS is ready for prime time. Ditto for ZFS btw.

this.

that said, lots of people do. arch and gentoo default install instructions suggest it just fine, telling you the pros and cons over ext4

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't BTRFS the default FS in home-oriented Linux distributions?

#4

Post by LeoSolaris »

transfire wrote: post #2

I’ve heard it lacks maturity and of a few cases of data corruption. Those cases are no doubt outdated now, but I haven’t heard any news to sway me that BTRFS is ready for prime time. Ditto for ZFS btw.

ZFS is stable and solid. It's hold up is licensing. ZFS isn't licensed in a way that can be included in the Linux kernel distribution.

Plus, my understanding is that Linus Torvalds has a dislike of ZFS because it came from Sun Microsystems.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't BTRFS the default FS in home-oriented Linux distributions?

#5

Post by theandrewbailey »

transfire wrote: post #2

I’ve heard it lacks maturity and of a few cases of data corruption. Those cases are no doubt outdated now, but I haven’t heard any news to sway me that BTRFS is ready for prime time. Ditto for ZFS btw.

Facebook was deploying BTRFS 5 years ago.[0] I haven't heard that they've changed or had any data corruption issues. In fact, they've integrated zstd compression into BTRFS.

[0] https://engineering.fb.com/2018/10/30/open-source/linux/

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't BTRFS the default FS in home-oriented Linux distributions?

#8

Post by mvanbaak »

transfire wrote: post #2

I’ve heard it lacks maturity and of a few cases of data corruption. Those cases are no doubt outdated now, but I haven’t heard any news to sway me that BTRFS is ready for prime time. Ditto for ZFS btw.

> Ditto for ZFS btw

This is untrue. ZFS is ready for prime time. The problem here is that it is licensed under a license that is not compatible with the GPL, so it will never be imported into the kernel. Because it's an external module, most distros dont offer it in their installer etc.

If you want zfs, you can either install it during install in expert mode, or go BSD where it is a first class FS

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't BTRFS the default FS in home-oriented Linux distributions?

#9

Post by doodlesdev »

nvarsj wrote: post #6

It already is. OpenSUSE and Fedora both use brtfs by default now. It’s by far the most sensible fs for modern desktop usage and a killer feature of Linux.

Ubuntu Lunar Lobster now also uses BTRFS instead of ZFS by default with the new Flutter-based installer. It's also the suggested FS for Arch and Gentoo.
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