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.

  • the_third@feddit.de
    5·
    1 year ago

    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?

    Yes.

    how would that work during the installation process? or is it done after installation?

    That depends on your distro. What do you plan to achieve with the separate subvolumes?

    • cally [he/they]@pawb.socialEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      I already have a partition layout in btrfs where I have a /home and a /root partition, since when I installed I didn’t know about btrfs subvolumes. I use Void Linux and I think it’s after installation, since I don’t remeber having a subvolumes step during the installation.

      I’ll make sure to remind about btrfs subvolumes in case I reinstall. There’s a btrfs program that has a subvolume argument, so I’m guessing that’s what I could use.

      usage: btrfs [global]  [...]  []

...
Command groups:
  subvolume         manage subvolumes: create, delete, list, etc