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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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What file systems are you using on your devices and why? (en.wikipedia.org)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I want to learn more about file systems from the practical point of view so I know what to expect, how to approach them and what experience positive or negative you had / have.

I found this wikipedia's comparison but I want your hands-on views.

For now my mental list is

NTFS - for some reason TVs on USB love these and also Windows + Linux can read and write this
Ext4 - solid fs with journaling but Linux specific
Btrfs - some modern fs with snapshot capability, Linux specific
xfs - servers really like these as they are performant, Linux specific
FAT32 - limited but recognizable everywhere
exFAT - like FAT32 but less recognizable and less limited

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Been running BTRFS since 2010. Ext2/3/4 before that.

Using it for CoW, de-duplication, compression. My home file server has had a long-lived array of mis-matched devices. Started at 4x2TB, through 6x4TB and now 2x18+4TB. I just move up a size whenever a disk fails.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That's sound fantastic! Interesting that you didn't mentiona anything about snapshots. Have you had some isshes with BTRFS since then?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Well, snapshots, too. I just consider them to be a special case of de-duplication.

I had an issue when I ran out of space during conversion between RAID profiles a few years back. I didn't lose any data, but I couldn't get the array to mount (and stay) read-write.

[–] possiblylinux127 -2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Btrfs isn't stable in big configurations. The big issue is that resilvering takes a long time and hurts performance. ZFS is the right answer.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Linus says no.

I'm sure it's great and all, but the hassle of having a filesystem that's not in the kernel is a no-starter for me. Maybe one of those fancy NAS-distros that are based on some *BSD.

[–] possiblylinux127 0 points 3 months ago

Linux works fine with ZFS. I wouldn't use it as your boot device but for big storage it is very reliable and stable. It also can take advantage of ram with Arc and has optional special disks. (Metadata disk, slog and cache as an example)