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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
Shimitar ,

Ext4 on every Linux device.

Ah i dont have any other kind of devices (android on mobile, but there I have no choices on fs)

Why not btrfs? Don’t know, been using what has kept working flawlessly for me for the last 20+ years, no need to replace ext4.

ssm ,
@ssm@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

OpenBSD laptop: ffs2, vfat for efi system partition

OpenBSD server: ffs2

Linux phone running PmOS: ext2 boot partition, ext4 root partition

Void Linux VM: ext2

Alpine Linux VM: ext4

Steam Deck: ??? (too lazy to check, 9/10 chance it’s ext4)

loutr ,
@loutr@sh.itjust.works avatar

Yes the Steam deck FS is ext4.

Why ext2 on Void?

ssm ,
@ssm@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

I prefer not using journaling filesystems on flash memory, I haven’t had any major data integrity issues yet because of it. I would have made the Alpine fs ext2 as well, but I guess I missed it during install. I think you can just disable journaling in ext4 anyways, so if I care enough I’ll just do that.

soundconjurer ,
@soundconjurer@mstdn.social avatar

@Psyhackological
Work stations all run Ext4.
Main server: Ext4 on main partition, ZFS RAIDZ2 on the data.
Secondary server: BTRFS on main, BTRFS RAID1 on data.

If BTRFS could natively encrypt and had stable RAID6, I'd be using it probably on everything.

mayidar ,

I use Btrfs for my root partition to be able to rollback if something goes wrong after update. XFS: in all other cases, since I hate the lost+found directory on ext4. Although I don’t think there’s any significant difference between ext4 and xfs in performance and reliability.

cyborganism ,

I’m curious now about BTRFS.

How do you roll back in case of problems?

mayidar ,

discovery.endeavouros.com/…/02/

Basically, I just followed this tutorial for my EndeavourOS installations. It’s as easy as choosing an older entry in GRUB. Fedora offers something similar by default, and I think Tumbleweed does too.

Moreover I’m now playing with Arkane Linux (arkanelinux.org), immutable flavour of Arch, it features another magic with btrfs and rollbacks without snapshots and GRUB

Zikeji ,
@Zikeji@programming.dev avatar

Bookmarking Arkane. I’m a huge fan of Fedora Atomic but miss AUR.

cyborganism ,

Oh ok cool! I’m going to check it out.

I’m taking a lot of notes for my next install. Trying to build something solid with Kubuntu.

Kualk ,

Take snapshot. If problem occurs, manually change boot label to use snapshot label.

cmnybo ,

Most of my drives are EXT4, but I started using BTRFS a couple years ago and will be using it on all new installs from now on. I really like being able to make snapshots and compression reduces the install size quite a bit.

kbal ,
@kbal@fedia.io avatar

ext4, but the btrfs activity visible in the kernel changelog has slowed down recently after a long period of many bug fixes, so maybe I'll give it a try next time.

thingsiplay ,

same

nickiam2 ,

I use ext4 for all boot drives and root filesystems. Anything really important goes on a ZFS array. And for my Linux isos, I use a drive with ext4 + snapraid. The parity drive has xfs because ext4 has a 16tb file size limit.

Got rid of anything NTFS as it was unreliable and slow on Linux.

doubletwist ,

XFS on my server VMs and my laptops and desktops.

ZFS on my file server. I’d use it on my laptops and desktops too (and have done when I was using Xubuntu) but I’ve switched toFedora which doesn’t come with a way to easily install with ZFS and I don’t feel like jumping through hoops to get it done. And I can’t stand btrfs. I don’t know what it is about it, but I just don’t like it.

kittenroar ,

Just ext4 on my Linux things; I got scared away from btrfs because of some file loss horror stories

possiblylinux127 ,

Ext4 is prone to corruption as it doesn’t have much error detection. Whatever you do don’t lose power.

ulkesh ,
@ulkesh@beehaw.org avatar

Btrfs, because I’ve heard good things.

possiblylinux127 ,

It is very hard to corrupt

savvywolf ,
@savvywolf@pawb.social avatar

I’ve been basically using btrfs on a lot of my disks because of the features it has.

Before I switched to a borg based system, my backups partition used btrfs for compression.

My main OS disk is btrfs so I can use timeshift snapshots, which are really worth checking out if you tinker with your system a lot.

I have two more btrfs partitions software raid0’d together for my steam library, nix store and other big but loosable things.

And my main home folder uses btrfs because I think the checksumming thing it does is more reliable for error detection, and cow is more fault tollerant on power failure?

… And I now fell like I’m one of those people with an over engineered storage solution. I just never get rid of old ssds or hard disks!

eager_eagle ,
@eager_eagle@lemmy.world avatar

F2FS, because solid state and speed

PoopMonster ,

Whatever my installation CD had as default 😂. I’m guessing ext4?

lemmyvore ,

Depends on the distro, some have started to offer btrfs by default.

shotgun_crab ,

Btrfs for the compression and snapshots

rem26_art ,
@rem26_art@fedia.io avatar

I've got Btrfs on my desktop for the OS drive cuz that was what Fedora recommended when I was installing it. It took a bit of effort to get snapshots working properly, but other than that, I've had no issues with it at all over the past year. I've got an exFAT drive and an NTFS drive in there that are kind of leftovers from using Windows. I've been thinking about reformatting the exFAT drive to ext4 or something, since all it really does is store games, and having the ability to symlink to it would be nice.

I've got a TrueNAS machine as well and that uses ZFS for pretty much everything.

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