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

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

#21

Post by dymk »

mvanbaak wrote: post #8
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 Those cases are no doubt outdated now, but I haven’t heard any news to sway me that BTRFS is ready for prime time.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

apt install zfs works just fine though? I’ve set it up in Debian many times in minutes, am I missing something?

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

#22

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

chungy wrote: post #19
whitefang wrote: post #18

I would love to learn why ZFS and BTRFS are competing to a common-ish goal?

ZFS came first and Oracle started btrfs to try to clone it, before they acquired Sun anyway. btrfs has never really matured. It has only a fraction of the features of ZFS and generally a lot more unstable.

> before they acquired Sun anyway.

This is the one that really burns me. There was a moment there where Oracle could have re-licensed ZFS, gotten it merged directly into linux, and had the best file system for their Linux distro. They even did it for dtrace! Instead, whether it was because they were so attached to their own pet project or other reasons, they just did nothing and now we get to live with the consequences forever because they don't own all the copyrights on OpenZFS so they can't even change the license on it now if they wanted. (Strictly, they could relicense their own Solaris code for ZFS, but that would be quite an effort to rework and leave us with two incompatible implementations.)

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

#23

Post by stametseater »

xcdzvyn wrote: post #16
LeoSolaris wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What problem did Linus have with Sun? Oracle I understand, but Sun? Was it something to do with UNIX?

I haven't heard of him objecting to the Sun origins of ZFS, but he has warned people away from ZFS on the grounds of Oracle's litigious reputation:

> And honestly, there is no way I can merge any of the ZFS efforts until I get an official letter from Oracle that is signed by their main legal counsel or preferably by Larry Ellison himself that says that yes, it's ok to do so and treat the end result as GPL'd.

> Other people think it can be ok to merge ZFS code into the kernel and that the module interface makes it ok, and that's their decision. But considering Oracle's litigious nature, and the questions over licensing, there's no way I can feel safe in ever doing so.

> And I'm not at all interested in some "ZFS shim layer" thing either that some people seem to think would isolate the two projects. That adds no value to our side, and given Oracle's interface copyright suits (see Java), I don't think it's any real licensing win either.

> Don't use ZFS. It's that simple. It was always more of a buzzword than anything else, I feel, and the licensing issues just make it a non-starter for me.

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

#25

Post by oehtXRwMkIs »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #7

I lost data with Btrfs, whereas ext4 has been rock solid for many years. No thanks.

I personally switched to btrfs years ago due to it being (anecdotally) more resilient to power outages and forced reboots. With ext4 it would sometimes result in corruption but btrfs so far has been rock solid. Not a big deal of course but 0 corruption per year is proportionally infinitely better than 1.

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

#26

Post by xtracto »

znpy wrote: post #14

1 - increased complexity, makes troubleshooting harder 2 - higher risk of losing data 3 - harder to explain and understand vs ext4. 4 - has more special needs. in some cases you need way more free storage for rebalancing stuff around... you don't need that for ex4. --- now ext4 is surely worse than btrfs... but for the average home user btrfs is more of a problem than a solution, probably.

Personally I prefer ReiserFS, it has always been a killer file system in my view.

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

#27

Post by pantalaimon »

doodlesdev wrote: post #9
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.

ZFS was never the default in Ubuntu

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

#29

Post by zokier »

dymk wrote: post #21
mvanbaak wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

apt install zfs works just fine though? I’ve set it up in Debian many times in minutes, am I missing something?

On debian zfs is available only as dkms, and from contrib repo insted of main

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

#30

Post by stametseater »

znpy wrote: post #11
selfhoster11 wrote: post #7

I lost data with Btrfs, whereas ext4 has been rock solid for many years. No thanks.

i had many friends who were very vocal about btrfs. most of them lost their data at one point, with btrfs, due to data corruption.

I've only heard of BTRFS corrupting data in RAID configurations, but for a single disk laptop setup it seems perfect to me. Automatic snapshotting has already saved my ass several times.
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