4 ms·

I thought btrfs was being phased out in linux distros?

by ehutch79 9y ago

jlgaddis 9y ago
Just RHEL. Certainly not OpenSUSE.
- rantanplan 9y ago
  Just RHEL. The biggest(or 2nd biggest) contributor to the Linux kernel.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    And smallest contributor to btrfs
akerro 9y ago
It was nothing more than a political move.
georgyo 9y ago
The smallest btrfs contributer, redhat, phased out support. They were the only ones to do so.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  What has been the reaction from the rest of the "team" ? "doesnt matter" ?
  - fleetfox 9y ago
    SUSE uses btrfs as default and they posted this https://www.suse.com/communities/blog/butter-bei-die-fische/ https://www.suse.com/communities/blog/butter-bei-die-fische/ as response
- jo909 9y ago
  Just to clarify, redhat never offered full support for btrfs, it was only a technology preview that they did not continue. So it was never "supported" in their commercial support agreement and not intended for production usage.
cookiecaper 9y ago
Ubuntu ships ZFS with their kernels. While this isn't an explicit thing, it strongly implies that Canonical doesn't have full confidence in btrfs. As others have stated, Red Hat explicitly pulled engineering resources off btrfs. ZFS just blows btrfs out of the water, there is really no comparison. As painful as it is to say, after all these years, btrfs still really feels like a rough draft of a modern filesystem. That's no insult to the people who've done amazing work on btrfs over the years, it's just calling a spade a spade. Something was just missing in its development; maybe it was vision, cohesion, whatever it was at an organizational level, something stopped btrfs from really coming together as a first-class enterprise-ready FS. We should recognize that and let it go, as Canonical and Red Hat have gradually been doing.
- Fnoord 9y ago
  Is it possible to run ZFS on Windows?
  - cookiecaper 9y ago
    Not to belittle the effort of the authors of this project, but when it's so easy to spin up a VM and feed the device through to it, it almost feels like we're past the point of needing native drivers for foreign filesystems. btrfs will surely work much better on a virtualized Linux kernel than through a buggy reimplementation of such a complex FS in Windows' driver platform.
- fooker 9y ago
  >ZFS just blows btrfs out of the water, there is really no comparison. Also ties up an unreasonably large amount of memory for filesystem operations. That is probably not okay with most people using a personal computer,
  - 2trill2spill 9y ago
    > Also ties up an unreasonably large amount of memory for filesystem operations. That is probably not okay with most people using a personal computer. This is only really true when using features like deduplication, otherwise ZFS works fine on machines with only a couple gigs of RAM.
DCKing 9y ago
Ugh RHEL stopping commercial btrfs support in their long term support kernels [1] does not equate to btrfs "being phased out in linux distros". It's just Red Hat, and Red Hat was never a major btrfs promoter. It's also just commercial support, all Red Hat, Canonical and SUSE kernels will continue to be able to use it. I'm not a btrfs fan myself (quite the opposite) but the gross way in which this minor Red Hat move is being exaggerated as the end of btrfs makes me think something's up. People are willing to spread the FUD a little too easily. Fact is that btrfs is still one of the top two most advanced filesystems in the world, part of the kernel, and SUSE for one is all in on it. [1] They have legitimate reasons: it's a big chunk of code to maintain backports for and not at all popular in RHEL deployments.
- xelxebar 9y ago
  Would you mind sharing your reasons for being a btrfs anti-fan? I decided to go with btrfs on my work and personal computers a couple years back and haven't really had to battle it. Just curious of your thoughts more than anything.
  - DCKing 9y ago
    I got bitten quite hard by some edge cases in the combination of btrfs, LUKS and snapper in desktop usage. It was both btrfs and the tooling around it as well as my ignorance. It's not a very interesting story.

I thought btrfs was being phased out in linux distros?

jlgaddis 9y ago

Just RHEL. Certainly not OpenSUSE.

rantanplan 9y ago
Just RHEL. The biggest(or 2nd biggest) contributor to the Linux kernel.
- kuschku 9y ago
  And smallest contributor to btrfs

akerro 9y ago

It was nothing more than a political move.

georgyo 9y ago

The smallest btrfs contributer, redhat, phased out support. They were the only ones to do so.

agumonkey 9y ago
What has been the reaction from the rest of the "team" ? "doesnt matter" ?
- fleetfox 9y ago
  SUSE uses btrfs as default and they posted this https://www.suse.com/communities/blog/butter-bei-die-fische/ https://www.suse.com/communities/blog/butter-bei-die-fische/ as response
jo909 9y ago
Just to clarify, redhat never offered full support for btrfs, it was only a technology preview that they did not continue. So it was never "supported" in their commercial support agreement and not intended for production usage.

cookiecaper 9y ago

Ubuntu ships ZFS with their kernels. While this isn't an explicit thing, it strongly implies that Canonical doesn't have full confidence in btrfs. As others have stated, Red Hat explicitly pulled engineering resources off btrfs. ZFS just blows btrfs out of the water, there is really no comparison. As painful as it is to say, after all these years, btrfs still really feels like a rough draft of a modern filesystem. That's no insult to the people who've done amazing work on btrfs over the years, it's just calling a spade a spade. Something was just missing in its development; maybe it was vision, cohesion, whatever it was at an organizational level, something stopped btrfs from really coming together as a first-class enterprise-ready FS. We should recognize that and let it go, as Canonical and Red Hat have gradually been doing.

Fnoord 9y ago
Is it possible to run ZFS on Windows?
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  Not to belittle the effort of the authors of this project, but when it's so easy to spin up a VM and feed the device through to it, it almost feels like we're past the point of needing native drivers for foreign filesystems. btrfs will surely work much better on a virtualized Linux kernel than through a buggy reimplementation of such a complex FS in Windows' driver platform.
fooker 9y ago
>ZFS just blows btrfs out of the water, there is really no comparison. Also ties up an unreasonably large amount of memory for filesystem operations. That is probably not okay with most people using a personal computer,
- 2trill2spill 9y ago
  > Also ties up an unreasonably large amount of memory for filesystem operations. That is probably not okay with most people using a personal computer. This is only really true when using features like deduplication, otherwise ZFS works fine on machines with only a couple gigs of RAM.

DCKing 9y ago

Ugh RHEL stopping commercial btrfs support in their long term support kernels [1] does not equate to btrfs "being phased out in linux distros". It's just Red Hat, and Red Hat was never a major btrfs promoter. It's also just commercial support, all Red Hat, Canonical and SUSE kernels will continue to be able to use it. I'm not a btrfs fan myself (quite the opposite) but the gross way in which this minor Red Hat move is being exaggerated as the end of btrfs makes me think something's up. People are willing to spread the FUD a little too easily. Fact is that btrfs is still one of the top two most advanced filesystems in the world, part of the kernel, and SUSE for one is all in on it. [1] They have legitimate reasons: it's a big chunk of code to maintain backports for and not at all popular in RHEL deployments.

xelxebar 9y ago
Would you mind sharing your reasons for being a btrfs anti-fan? I decided to go with btrfs on my work and personal computers a couple years back and haven't really had to battle it. Just curious of your thoughts more than anything.
- DCKing 9y ago
  I got bitten quite hard by some edge cases in the combination of btrfs, LUKS and snapper in desktop usage. It was both btrfs and the tooling around it as well as my ignorance. It's not a very interesting story.