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What file systems are you using on your devices and why?

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
drwho ,
@drwho@beehaw.org avatar

Servers - btrfs. Fewer layers of abstraction, easier to manipulate.

Laptops - ext4. I don’t do anything weird with the onboard storage, plus it supports fscrypt.

Flash drives - exFAT. I usually need to access them on multiple platforms and exFAT is about as cross-platform as VFAT (but supports bigger files).

veer66 ,
@veer66@vivaldi.net avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    theroff ,

    It is fast. It’s the recommended filesystem for MinIO and default for RHEL 7 and above. XFS and ext4 are often recommended for databases if no other filesystem-level features (like snapshots) are needed. XFS has slightly more features than ext4 like CoW and reflink support.

    Andromxda ,
    @Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    Btrfs on my Linux desktops and laptops, ZFS on my server, APFS on my Apple devices I guess

    Mwa , (edited )
    @Mwa@thelemmy.club avatar

    NTFS Usally for windows,ext4 for linux,btrfs to install linuz on,vfat/fat32 for cross platform compatibility

    Presi300 ,
    @Presi300@lemmy.world avatar

    EXT4 on PC, ZFS on my server and APFS on my mac

    gianni ,

    I’m pretty much all BTRFS at this point

    Psyhackological OP ,
    @Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

    Me too, but why in your case?

    gianni ,

    Filesystem compression is dope.

    lnxtx ,
    @lnxtx@feddit.nl avatar

    Depends. Slower desktop machines XFS.
    Standard desktop XFS, if it has a smaller SSD, Btrfs.
    Home server ext4/XFS + ZFS. Generic servers at work ext4/XFS, backup/storage servers ZFS.
    Database server, experiment with ZFS with compression enabled - ratio 2:1, but encountered problems (probably a bad HBA model), standard ext4/XFS.
    Hosts with virtualization, small server - XFS, big server - ZFS (technically a ZVOL).

    VinesNFluff ,
    @VinesNFluff@pawb.social avatar

    Btrfs main boot drive Xfs main storage drive exFAT external “archive” drive (easy to connect to Windows machines if ever I need my backup in someone else’s windows machine in an emergency and such)

    Psyhackological OP ,
    @Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

    So you went for exFAT when you want to throw some data onto external drive? I think you could also got away with NTFS in your case.

    VinesNFluff ,
    @VinesNFluff@pawb.social avatar

    Idk, exFAT is meant to be compatible with more stuff than NTFS. If I ever decide to hook this HDD up to a console or smartTV to play the videos I have on it, it is guaranteed to work.

    ghjones ,

    A combination of XFS and ZFS. I work in high performance computing (academic). While I love the reliability of ZFS for data archival and peace of mind that results provably haven’t suffered bitrot, sometimes I just need a 10 TB temp file(s) with fast mostly-sequential R/W. Appropriate selection of file systems lets me have both.

    ghjones ,

    As an aside, I’ve been watching bcachefs with some interest, as it seems to be getting faster with every kernel release, building on the data integrity guarantees of ZFS while pushing performance boundaries and being GPL compatible (i.e. in tree). Kent Overstreet et al. have done a fantastic job with this FS.

    31337 ,

    ZFS on TrueNAS SCALE (enables RAID-like functionality, along with many other features).

    Ext4 or NTFS on everything else, simply because it’s default and I don’t use any advanced features.

    Psyhackological OP ,
    @Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

    Nice! What hardware are you using with ZFS on TrueNAS SCALE?

    Yeah simplicity beats everything when you only use basic features.

    31337 , (edited )

    Old dual-core Pentium, lol (Haswell I think, or something from around that time), 16GB RAM. 5 16TB SATA hard disks.

    data1701d ,
    @data1701d@startrek.website avatar

    NTFS support is pretty solid on Linux these days, but just so you know, never use it as a root partition.

    I have generally used ext4. There’s ways to massage it to mount on Windows, as with btrfs. Ext4 is very likely what you should do if you’re installing Linux for the first time, as it has had decades of testing and is rather battle-tested

    I recently did my first btrfs install. For now, I’ve had no issues. Of course, some could happen, but I’ve generally heard btrfs is fine these days. One of its cool things is native compression support, although I forgot to enable it when I did that install.

    I’ve never used XFS.

    FAT32 should be rarely used these days due to file size limits and file name limits. The only place where it should still be used is for your EFI partition.

    Now exFAT really isn’t that unrecognizable. It’s supported by pretty much every operating system these days. It’s definitely not for root partitions, but should be your default for flash drives and portable hard drives.

    On another note, I recently tried Bcachefs on Debian Testing on a random old Chromebook. It is still in development, and not all distros support it yet, but I liked what I saw from my limited experience. It also supports snapshots, and unlike btrfs, has native encryption. For now, just ignore it, but like many in this post have said, keep an eye out for it.

    As for ZFS, I’ve never tried it. The main caveat is due to licensing incompatibility, it is not in the standard Linux kernel and you have to do some special stuff.

    Psyhackological OP ,
    @Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

    Great answer thanks for this!

    I agree with everythinf but exFAT, some devices expect either FAT32 or NTFS. I had this issue when I wanted to play totally acquired big mkv movie through USB and because of that FAT32 wasn’t an option so I went with exFAT. Not visible but apperantly it liked NTFS. It was the LG TV, my parents have 2 and same issue on both.

    data1701d ,
    @data1701d@startrek.website avatar

    My pleasure. The LG problem is unfortunate. Most other devices tend to support exFAT, but LG is an exception, albeit a very big one due to its pervasiveness as a brand. I do have an LG TV, but an older one that’s getting annoying to the point it’s tempting to throw a Roku behind it. Also, do you have a laptop with HDMI? That could also be a solution.

    data1701d ,
    @data1701d@startrek.website avatar

    Also, for context, part of my exFAT leanings are that while NTFS is read-only on Mac, exFAT is read-write. I’d presume as I am, you’re not a frequent Mac user, but I’ve had situations in the past where I had to use one.

    Psyhackological OP ,
    @Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

    I saw it too. I dislike Mac but when I’m forced to be around them I’m trying to make them work as they should. The problem is for me they are more closed and hostile to this than Windows but that’s probably because I was a Windows user so much time.

    data1701d ,
    @data1701d@startrek.website avatar

    I have similar feelings about Mac, probably in part because of my former Windows use as well. On one hand, I like how Mac’s terminal and development workflow (e.g availability of gcc) are more natively Unix-like, but for that, there’s also limited OpenGL support and no Vulkan support. Meanwhile, making Windows more “Unix-y” is as simple as installed Cygwin, and fixing the menu is simple a matter of installing OpenShell. (Of course, having to contort Windows gets annoying after a while, thus why I use Linux these days.)

    Psyhackological OP ,
    @Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

    Yeah let’s skip the part that average Mac consumer that I know does not know terminal is. 😆 But it was a bizzare to me when someone could extract the zip archive from the GUI but I helped through terminal.

    data1701d ,
    @data1701d@startrek.website avatar

    Honestly, just strike out Mac. I one time opened the Windows Command Prompt in front of someone and they were like “DOS?” 😂

    Psyhackological OP ,
    @Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

    Do that on Linux, update your packages in the café and you can be banished from it as a hacker.

    data1701d ,
    @data1701d@startrek.website avatar

    Solution 1: Use Synaptic while in the cafe.

    Solution 2: If I’m going to get called a hacker (or cracker, if you’re some dude from the FSF), might as well earn it.

    Psyhackological OP ,
    @Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

    Ia Synapthic up-to-date?

    I joke about being hacker when I share my screen and run long Ansible playbooks.

    Psyhackological OP ,
    @Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

    Yeah it is like a solution but the most “native” and straight forward was formating to NTFS.

    Eyck_of_denesle ,

    Btrfs cause I’m limited on storage rn. So the compression saves me good amount of space.

    Psyhackological OP ,
    @Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

    Is there a way to tell how much space compresses? Would that be a game changer for instatlling games I wonder.

    Eyck_of_denesle ,

    Yes. You need to install compsize. Wouldn’t call it a game changer but i only have 256gb ssd so it’s a life saver for me.

    
<span style="color:#323232;">compsize -x /
</span>
    Psyhackological OP ,
    @Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

    Great, thank you!

    Takios ,
    @Takios@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    We use btrfs for the / partition and xfs for any data partitions. Has served us well, the snapshot feature saves us some valuable time when an update goes awry.

    Psyhackological OP ,
    @Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

    Why xfs let’s say over ext4? Just asking out of curosity.

    Takios ,
    @Takios@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    The main distribution we use has it like that by default and our (admittedly rudimentary) benchmarks haven’t shown much of a performance difference versus ext4 so we kept to the default.

    I_like_cats ,

    I am now all-in on bcachefs. I don’t like btrfs, cause you still sometimes read about people loosing their data. I know that might happen with bcachefs too since it’s early days still but fuck it. I like the risk.

    Filesystem level compression and encryption are so nice to have.

    bruhduh ,
    @bruhduh@lemmy.world avatar

    True true, I’m planning to go balls deep too since it have good raid capability

    CeeBee_Eh ,

    I don’t like btrfs, cause you still sometimes read about people loosing their data.

    That was only on RAID setups. So if you have only a singular disk, as opposed to an array, you’re fine. And that issue has been fixed for a while now anyways.

    I’ve been running btrfs on my laptop’s root partition for well over a year now and it’s fine.

    data1701d ,
    @data1701d@startrek.website avatar

    I get the feeling I’ll become a bcachefs fan for those reasons in the future (I tested it on a spare laptop as soon as 6.7 got into Debian Testing), but for now, I use a mix of ext4 and btrfs, as bcachefs-tools isn’t in Testing. It is trivial to apt-pin, but I try not to make FrankenDebian a regular thing. I have a feeling that they’ll iron it out and Bcachefs will be an option in Trixie by the tome it hits stable, if still with a /boot partition considering the slow state of Grub support.

    Psyhackological OP ,
    @Psyhackological@lemmy.ml avatar

    I think Linux users must have some touch of masochism. Also this might interest you: www.phoronix.com/review/linux-611-filesystemsBut me too, I’ve just installed Cosmic DE PopOS 24.04 for my main laptop.

    PublicLewdness ,
    @PublicLewdness@lemmy.ml avatar

    I use BTRFS on my Artix system, Ext4 on my Librem 5, Ext4 on my Devuan laptop and Ext4 on my Pinebook Pro. Basically when given the choice in the installer I choose BTRFS but if the installer doesn’t let me pick I don’t care enough to manually partition. I have had no negative experiences with any file system luckily so I just roll with whatever.

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