this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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Btrfs gets a bad rap sometimes but I have been using it for years and it works very well. It is able to take failing hardware and power outages and still has good performance.

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[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

For those without knowledge: Alternatives to BTRFS are what? EXT4 or NTFS?

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 6 points 2 years ago

Mostly ZFS, XFS and ext4

[–] Valon_Blue@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Correct, btrfs is a filesystem format.

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What are the alternatives to it? NTFS? EXT4? ExFAT? FAT32??

[–] sxan@midwest.social 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

xfs. ext4 doesn't have a comparable feature set, and nobody is going to use those others as their main filesystems on Linux. bcachefs will be a contender, once it's included in the kernel, or if you're the sort who compiles their own kernels.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

The only file-system that is somewhat comparable to btrfs is OpenZFS. Xfs isn't.

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Seems like zfs or btrfs?
At least I usually read about storage file system usually being ZFS by default.

[–] jelloeater85@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

ZFS has been around for a long time. Rock solid w RAID. See FreeNAS. ZFS was orig on BSD but AFAIK got ported to Linux a while back.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 years ago

It now TrueNAS and both freebsd and Linux use the same implementation (openzfs)

[–] sxan@midwest.social 2 points 2 years ago

Yeah, zfs is what I meant. Or yfs, as in "Y-use anything but btr-FS?"

[–] TCB13@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Yes BTRFS is really good and solid. Usually survives hardware failure much better than the EXT* crap. And sub volumes and snapshots, damn finally a modern filesystem.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 years ago

Agreed, I switched over from OpenZFS to btrfs and while it does lack some more advanced features, using btrfs for raid1 disk pools has been a very solid and hassle free experience.

[–] jelloeater85@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

I've used Proxmox in the past w it, worked okie. One crazy hypervisor, ton of features. I mostly stick w VMware, it just works. My uptime is measured in years.

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 years ago

Well I'll never get a uptime like they in proxmox cause I update.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 years ago

You can do the same thing with proxmox.

The benefit of proxmox is that it is libre and uses Linux components.

[–] beerclue@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

To be honest, I don't see a benefit for btrfs (or zfs). I prefer plain ext4 (no LVM). It's simpler and faster. I have no need for snapshots. Proxmox handles my vms and my working machines are just a collection of dot files... But that's just me. It's good that there are choices.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] beerclue@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

It's been a while since I looked at benchmarks (https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-5.14-File-Systems). It could be these days.

[–] Glarrf@midwest.social 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

My anecdotal experience with btrfs is that it constantly broke in raid 1, no problems with any other filesystems on the exact same hardware and setup. YMMV

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

How long ago was that? Modern btrfs is pretty stable.

[–] Glarrf@midwest.social 1 points 2 years ago

Last year, unraid, identical SSDs. I changed so many sata and power cables, so many settings.

[–] jelloeater85@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I love it for single drives, but for RAID, ZFS all the way.

[–] conrad82@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

ZFS also supports single drives, is there a reason to use btrfs instead?

[–] jelloeater85@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

IIRC it works with TimeShift, aka time machine for Linux.

[–] billygoat@catata.fish 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It has been a while since I looked at it but does proxmox support HA replication using btrfs? From what I remember only zfs worked with those features.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 years ago

I don't know as I don't use that feature

[–] amniote@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Its supposed to be called betterFS but Jim Salter keeps calling it butter FS. Doesn't really inspire confidence. At least it's gonna need.. a better name

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don't know who Jim is but I just call it butterfs

[–] amniote@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Jim Salter, the former mod of r/zfs ? Former Ars Technica ? Currently in the ' 2.5 Admins' podcast?

He's the hot knife of butter FS.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 years ago

Ok that still doesn't ring a bell but he seems important to you so that's good enough for me