You know, ZFS, ButterFS (btrfs…its actually “better” right?), and I’m sure more.

I think I have ext4 on my home computer I installed ubuntu on 5 years ago. How does the choice of file system play a role? Is that old hat now? Surely something like ext4 has its place.

I see a lot of talk around filesystems but Ive never found a great resource that distiguishes them at a level that assumes I dont know much. Can anyone give some insight on how file systems work and why these new filesystems, that appear to be highlights and selling points in most distros, are better than older ones?

Edit: and since we are talking about filesystems, it might be nice to describe or mention how concepts like RAID or LUKS are related.

  • Papamousse
    10•8 months ago

    After using ext4 for yyyeeeaaaarrrrrsss, when I upgraded my MX21 to MX23 I used btrfs, with subvolumes, especially for easy backup/snapshot/timeshift.

    Just at install, super easy, create a small ext4 boot partition on the SSD, then a big LUKS partition, format with btrfs, create subvolumes for / /home /var /swap and that’s it. No hassle with sizing correctly.

    btrfs seems pretty stable. I see no diff in performance compared to ext4 because my application are not that dependant to FS speed, and with SSD anyway?

    oh yeah, built-in compression too!