this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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What's with all these hip filesystems and how are they different? (lm.paradisus.day)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by rutrum@lm.paradisus.day to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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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.

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[–] callyral@pawb.social 15 points 11 months ago (7 children)

related question, although i don't think it's big enough for a post of its own.

if i use btrfs subvolumes, does it mean that i can have one EFI partition and one root partition, and then subdivide the root partition using subvolumes? how would that work during the installation process? or is it done after installation?

[–] mhz@lemm.ee 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

One EFI + one ROOT partition is what I do on both my laptop and desktop for years, /home is a subvolume to my root partition. This setup suits my needs as I don't have to worry about how big should my root or home (gaming) partition should be.

I use Arch on my desktop and Opensuse on my laptop. They both have options to set up subvolumes from their installer, Debian does not, and I'm not sure about other distros, but you can always set that up after installation, just make your home partition the last one (after the root partition) so you can easily delete it after and grow the root partition without much blocks relocation.

[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I've never heard of sub volumes. What do they do for me? Why not just partition the disk or store everything on the one partition?

[–] mhz@lemm.ee 5 points 11 months ago

I like to think a subvolume is a directory on my filesystem that:

  • Acts as an independent filesystem.
  • Shares it's parent size (unless quotas are set in place)
  • Can be mounted/unmounted any time
  • Excluded from their parent partition's snapshots. (a /home subvolume is exluded from / snapshots).
  • Can be snapshot-ed independently.

This is by no mead a definition for BTRFS subvolume, but I hope you get the idea.

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