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Just the other day I voiced [1] a concern on a ZFS thread about not enough modern filesystems [2] shipping as defaults (or being recommended as such), despite s

Just the other day I voiced [1] a concern on a ZFS thread about not enough modern filesystems [2] shipping as defaults (or being recommended as such), despite some of these filesystems having been around for many years. This is a promising move to the contrary. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16798244 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16798244 [2] in some loose, but recognizable definition of modern, featuring checksumming, CoW, deduplication, snapshots...

Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
I'm pretty sure the default is still UFS, but FreeBSD allows you to use ZFS as the root filesystem. I've been using this for a while and it's been incredibly solid. It's a first class feature that's supported by the bootloader and the GENERIC kernel. My experience with it has been uneventful, which is exactly how a filesystem should be.
- _emacsomancer_ 9y ago
  Doesn't TrueOS default to ZFS?
  - krylon 9y ago
    It did when it was still called PC-BSD. I don't think it has changed.
    - Crontab 9y ago
      It still is. From the homepage of the site: "TrueOS has been using OpenZFS as its exclusive file system for several years, ensuring advanced OpenZFS functionality is heavily tested and 100% production-ready."
  - JdeBP 9y ago
    It did even before FreeBSD did.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
In some ways I think we actually need simpler file systems more than fancier ones. Here's an exercise: create a USB flash drive that can be both read and written on any system it is plugged into, by any user, without using FAT. Can't be done. It's 2018 and FAT is still apparently the best we can do for universally usable filesystem. And don't go trying to pin this on Windows not supporting ext or something stupid like that, because an ext filesystem cannot by default be both read and written universally even on systems that have full ext support, because they bake in permissions and the default umask botches this simple use case. I realize this is sort of tangential to what you're saying, but I think a big problem we have in tech communities is that we focus too much on fancy interesting things and not enough on stuff that gets things done simply.
- bluedino 9y ago
  What’s wrong with FAT?
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
    It doesn't scale well and it is legally encumbered. I really would have thought that the open source community could have tackled this problem, but no one seems interested.
- yepguy 9y ago
  Have you tried UDF? http://duncanlock.net/blog/2013/05/13/using-udf-as-an-improved-filesystem-for-usb-flash-drives/ http://duncanlock.net/blog/2013/05/13/using-udf-as-an-improv...
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
    UDF has a lot of issues in actual implementation. For instance MacOS will only support UDF on an unpartitioned disk, while Windows will only support it on a partitioned one (IIRC was true for 7, may not be anymore). Additionally, since it has posix permissions, I expect it will have the same multi-user issue on posix systems that ext does, though I haven't tested this.

Mister_Snuggles 9y ago

I'm pretty sure the default is still UFS, but FreeBSD allows you to use ZFS as the root filesystem. I've been using this for a while and it's been incredibly solid. It's a first class feature that's supported by the bootloader and the GENERIC kernel. My experience with it has been uneventful, which is exactly how a filesystem should be.

_emacsomancer_ 9y ago
Doesn't TrueOS default to ZFS?
- krylon 9y ago
  It did when it was still called PC-BSD. I don't think it has changed.
  - Crontab 9y ago
    It still is. From the homepage of the site: "TrueOS has been using OpenZFS as its exclusive file system for several years, ensuring advanced OpenZFS functionality is heavily tested and 100% production-ready."
- JdeBP 9y ago
  It did even before FreeBSD did.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago

In some ways I think we actually need simpler file systems more than fancier ones. Here's an exercise: create a USB flash drive that can be both read and written on any system it is plugged into, by any user, without using FAT. Can't be done. It's 2018 and FAT is still apparently the best we can do for universally usable filesystem. And don't go trying to pin this on Windows not supporting ext or something stupid like that, because an ext filesystem cannot by default be both read and written universally even on systems that have full ext support, because they bake in permissions and the default umask botches this simple use case. I realize this is sort of tangential to what you're saying, but I think a big problem we have in tech communities is that we focus too much on fancy interesting things and not enough on stuff that gets things done simply.

bluedino 9y ago
What’s wrong with FAT?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
  It doesn't scale well and it is legally encumbered. I really would have thought that the open source community could have tackled this problem, but no one seems interested.
yepguy 9y ago
Have you tried UDF? http://duncanlock.net/blog/2013/05/13/using-udf-as-an-improved-filesystem-for-usb-flash-drives/ http://duncanlock.net/blog/2013/05/13/using-udf-as-an-improv...
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
  UDF has a lot of issues in actual implementation. For instance MacOS will only support UDF on an unpartitioned disk, while Windows will only support it on a partitioned one (IIRC was true for 7, may not be anymore). Additionally, since it has posix permissions, I expect it will have the same multi-user issue on posix systems that ext does, though I haven't tested this.