Recommed a file system

[NickStone]

When installing Manjaro Linux on my aging Dell desktop, one of the options presented to me was that of a file system. It gave me the option of choosing a file system which I selected Ext4 but only because I'm now used to that file system. I cannot remember the full list it offered but BTRFS was in the list along with Ext2/3 and RaiserFS.

Just curious to know what (in your opinion) is the better file system available for a Linux system.

[dmeyer]

Stick to Ext4! No matter what anybody tells you, stick to Ext4! Its stable, has good data recovery tools and is blazingly fast. There really is no reason to deviate away from it.

Btrfs = Next-gen linux file system. Its fairly stable and has some data recovery tools but performance generally lacks and its not really ready for general use. SUSE and Oracle are supporting so maybe it is ready? I still would keep my trust in the bulletproof Ext4. Very actively developed but yet feature complete. Btrfs does offer some seriously cool features though and can have some use to you but I don't think you will use them if you are asking about file systems in the first place.

XFS = Pretty awesome all round but showing its age and not as good as Ext4. Definitely the second best stock linux file system. Still quite active. Really low overhead.

Ext2/3 = Old. Stable and reliable but no need to use them at all. Ext4 is better in every regard. Ext2 is not a journalling system which is really really bad. Just maintained, no development.

ReiserFS = Mindblowingly brilliant for certain workloads but generally shows its age and not as actively maintained. I would not recommend it. I don't really think its maintained or developed anymore.

Reiser4 = One of the best file systems ever that met an early fall from grace and will never really be quite there. AVOID as it needs special kernels and isn't 100% stable. If development stayed strong and the main architect didn't go to prison then I think it would be the best file system around. Really only 1 guy working on it anymore.

JFS = IBM's original journalling file system. Old, slow, and should be avoided. Hardly maintained at all.

ZFS = Brilliant file system but needs work to use on Linux. Also a real memory hog. I consider this to be the only real contender apart from Ext4 for best file system at the moment. Only some distros support it out of the box.

Disclaimer: These are my opinions based on my personal experience and some benchmarks I've seen. I've tried all of these file systems including ZFS and Reiser4. See Phoronix for some pretty good benchmarks.

[dequire]

Stick to Ext4! No matter what anybody tells you, stick to Ext4! Its stable, has good data recovery tools and is blazingly fast. There really is no reason to deviate away from it.

Btrfs = Next-gen linux file system. Its fairly stable and has some data recovery tools but performance generally lacks and its not really ready for general use. SUSE and Oracle are supporting so maybe it is ready? I still would keep my trust in the bulletproof Ext4. Very actively developed but yet feature complete. Btrfs does offer some seriously cool features though and can have some use to you but I don't think you will use them if you are asking about file systems in the first place.

XFS = Pretty awesome all round but showing its age and not as good as Ext4. Definitely the second best stock linux file system. Still quite active. Really low overhead.

Ext2/3 = Old. Stable and reliable but no need to use them at all. Ext4 is better in every regard. Ext2 is not a journalling system which is really really bad. Just maintained, no development.

ReiserFS = Mindblowingly brilliant for certain workloads but generally shows its age and not as actively maintained. I would not recommend it. I don't really think its maintained or developed anymore.

Reiser4 = One of the best file systems ever that met an early fall from grace and will never really be quite there. AVOID as it needs special kernels and isn't 100% stable. If development stayed strong and the main architect didn't go to prison then I think it would be the best file system around. Really only 1 guy working on it anymore.

JFS = IBM's original journalling file system. Old, slow, and should be avoided. Hardly maintained at all.

ZFS = Brilliant file system but needs work to use on Linux. Also a real memory hog. I consider this to be the only real contender apart from Ext4 for best file system at the moment. Only some distros support it out of the box.

Disclaimer: These are my opinions based on my personal experience and some benchmarks I've seen. I've tried all of these file systems including ZFS and Reiser4. See Phoronix for some pretty good benchmarks.

What an excellent summary. Thank you for that detailed answer, as I'm sure Google will bring people here to this thread.

[NickStone]

Yes thank you dmeyer. Think I'll stick to Ext4 then

[dibl]

Very well stated, dmeyer -- I totally agree!

[james147]

Btrfs = Next-gen linux file system. Its fairly stable and has some data recovery tools but performance generally lacks and its not really ready for general use. SUSE and Oracle are supporting so maybe it is ready?

I disagree, I have been using btrfs on my desktop laptop and home server for over a year now have have had no problems of late (a few early on but not any more).

Even have my system snapshotted hourly so I can always recover from a bad change or update without having to lose more then an hour of work and it barely takes up any extra space! (my root fs on my desktops root fs grew to about 50GB after 4 months of snapshotting the system every hour not to bad since I update it every day so packages change quite allot).

This might be of intrest.

Note: you can convert a ext4/3/2 filesystems to btrfs as well as convert it back again (but this way you will lose all changes made after you converted it to btrfs, ie it restores it to how it was before you converted it)

[dmeyer]

I disagree, I have been using btrfs on my desktop laptop and home server for over a year now have have had no problems of late (a few early on but not any more).

Even have my system snapshotted hourly so I can always recover from a bad change or update without having to lose more then an hour of work and it barely takes up any extra space! (my root fs on my desktops root fs grew to about 50GB after 4 months of snapshotting the system every hour not to bad since I update it every day so packages change quite allot).

This might be of intrest.

Note: you can convert a ext4/3/2 filesystems to btrfs as well as convert it back again (but this way you will lose all changes made after you converted it to btrfs, ie it restores it to how it was before you converted it)

Well fairly stable implies exactly that. Its unlikely to break under normal use and I'm sure you could get away with it for your root partition. I still feel performance lacks a little and the realtive immaturity of the fsck worries me a tad but I'm sure you'd be just fine with btrfs. I still have a btrfs partition that I mess around with ocassionally. I've never had any issues with it and love the snapshot functionality.

BTW you must try Snapper! I know its an openSUSE (Please don't judge; they are not an evil distro as many think) tool but they have packages for other distros and its probably the best tool to play with btrfs features out there. Seriously, Snapper is kickass: https://build.opensuse.org/project/s...tems%3Asnapper

[james147]

Well fairly stable implies exactly that. Its unlikely to break under normal use and I'm sure you could get away with it for your root partition. I still feel performance lacks a little and the realtive immaturity of the fsck worries me a tad but I'm sure you'd be just fine with btrfs. I still have a btrfs partition that I mess around with ocassionally. I've never had any issues with it and love the snapshot functionality.

This is why I have back ups of all my important data, mostly somewhere on the internet (github, google drive, google+ for photos). I like to think of my systems as disposable, I would not lose much if I destroyed one by accident (or lost or set on fire or anything else).

Well, at least for my desktop and laptop, my server could be lost, but I would lose a lot of data in the process (mostly recoverable or unimportant, but it would be an annoyance to lose as it would take along time to require).

But I do think it is about ready for general use, and I think some distros are considering using it as default in their next few releases so also think this.

BTW you must try Snapper! I know its an openSUSE (Please don't judge; they are not an evil distro as many think) tool but they have packages for other distros and its probably the best tool to play with btrfs features out there. Seriously, Snapper is kickass: https://build.opensuse.org/project/s...tems%3Asnapper

If we cared which distro software originated from then linux would be a very different place looked at similar tools before (i think including snapper) but decided non of them did what I wanted to do at the time. Things have probably changed now so I should really look into it again, my current snapshot script is awfully dodgy

[dmeyer]

This is why I have back ups of all my important data, mostly somewhere on the internet (github, google drive, google+ for photos). I like to think of my systems as disposable, I would not lose much if I destroyed one by accident (or lost or set on fire or anything else).

Well, at least for my desktop and laptop, my server could be lost, but I would lose a lot of data in the process (mostly recoverable or unimportant, but it would be an annoyance to lose as it would take along time to require).

A man with a good back-up policy. I approve. I'm also fanatical about back-ups. Might I recommend owncloud. Its quite brilliant.

But I do think it is about ready for general use, and I think some distros are considering using it as default in their next few releases so also think this.

The faster we get mass adoption the faster we'll get all the bugs squashed and performance parity. To be honest I'm giving it till Kernel 3.10 before I make the big switch

If we cared which distro software originated from then linux would be a very different place looked at similar tools before (i think including snapper) but decided non of them did what I wanted to do at the time. Things have probably changed now so I should really look into it again, my current snapshot script is awfully dodgy

I wish that were entirely true but people just hear the name openSUSE and its pitchfork time. It's a brilliant distro with a great community which doesn't deserve the stigma attached to it. Its always worth trying out.

Snapper has evolved nicely over the last year.

[james147]

A man with a good back-up policy. I approve. I'm also fanatical about back-ups. Might I recommend owncloud. Its quite brilliant.

To be honest, most of it was not so much due to wanting an online backup (it is a nice bonus) but cloud storage is a very nice way to sync a desktop and laptop (and any other computer). I could be better with local backups though... have been meaning to sort out a proper backup system for my server for a while, but never seem to find the time.

I wish that were entirely true but people just hear the name openSUSE and its pitchfork time. It's a brilliant distro with a great community which doesn't deserve the stigma attached to it. Its always worth trying out.

Personally i hate it as a distro (at least a couple years ago when I tried it out), yast pissed me off by overwriting configs I had manually changed. And yum is just horrible (I have a dislike for rpm based package managers in general now mostly due to redhat). But that doesn't mean they cannot develop good tools.

To be honest I am starting to think the same about apt-get... it is slow, complicated and a general pain to use, though this is mostly because I have been using pacman for so long now love how it is one tool to handle packages rather then about 10 (apt-get, dpkg, apt-file, apt-cache, do-release-upgrade...) it seems every time deb based distros need a new functionality they develop a new tool rather then adding to the existing tools. I also find building packages for pacman easier then trying to build debs (again, makepkg vs all the different tools needed to build a deb)

[oshunluvr]

I have been using (and so has dibl) BTRFS as my only FS for two years or more. Although I disagree with dmeyer's characterization of BTRFS as "not ready for use" when you add in the caveat (referencing the enhanced features) "but I don't think you will use them if you are asking about file systems" as he did about it, I have to say his review was spot-on for a novice.

I could write several pages about the wonderful things I'm doing with BTRFS, but most of the advantages are lost on a single drive laptop system anyway.