9 ms·

Linux or FreeBSD developers are free to adopt ZFS as their primary file systems. But it appears that practical benefits are not really evident to most users.

by em500 1y ago

thyristan 1y ago
Lots of ZFS users are enthusiasts who heard about that one magic thing that does it all in one tidy box. Whereas usually you would have to known all the minutiae of LVM/mdadm/cryptsetup/nbd and mkfs.whatever to get to the same point. So while ZFS is the nicer-dicer of volume management and filesystems, the latter is your whole chef's knife set. And while you can dice with both, the user groups are not the same. And enthusiasts with the right usecases are very few. And for the thin-provisioned snapshotted subvolume usecase, btrfs is currently eating ZFS's lunch due to far better Linux integration. Think snapshots at every update, and having a/b boot to get back to a known-working config after an update. So widespread adoption through the distro route is out of the question.
- queenkjuul 1y ago
  Ubuntu's ZFS-on-root with zsys auto snapshots have been working excellently on my server for 5 years. It automatically takes snapshots on every update and adds entries to grub so rolling back to the last good state is just a reboot away.
- mustache_kimono 1y ago
  > And for the thin-provisioned snapshotted subvolume usecase, btrfs is currently eating ZFS's lunch due to far better Linux integration. Is this a technical argument? Or is this just more licensing nonsense? > Think snapshots at every update, and having a/b boot to get back to a known-working config after an update. I use ZFS and I have snapshots on every update? I have snapshots hourly, daily, weekly and monthly. I have triggered snapshots too, and ad hoc dynamic snapshots too. I wrote about it here: https://kimono-koans.github.io/opinionated-guide/ https://kimono-koans.github.io/opinionated-guide/
- throw0101b 1y ago
  > Think snapshots at every update, and having a/b boot to get back to a known-working config after an update. Solaris had this about a decade ago with beadm: * https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E53394_01/html/E54749/gpxnl.html https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E53394_01/html/E54749/gpxnl.html FreeBSD has had it for several years as well. If Linux lacks it that is a failure of Linux (distros) not ZFS.
wkat4242 1y ago
That's called marketing. Give it a snazzy name, like say "TimeMachine" and users will jump on it. Also, ZFS has a bad name within the Linux community due to some licensing stuff. I find that most BSD users don't really care about such legalese and most people I know that run FreeBSD are running ZFS on root. Which works amazingly well I might add. Especially with something like sanoid added to it, it basically does the same as timemachine on mac, a feature that users love. Albeit stored on the same drive (but with syncoid or just manually rolled zfs send/recv scripts you can do that on another location too).
- cherryteastain 1y ago
  > ZFS has a bad name within the Linux community due to some licensing stuff This is out of an abundance of caution. Canonical bundle ZFS in the Ubuntu kernel and no one sued them (yet).
  - wkat4242 1y ago
    True and I understand the caution considering Oracle is involved which are an awful company to do deal with (and their takeover of Sun was a disaster). But really, this is a concern for distros. Not for end users. Yet many of the Linux users I speak to are somehow worried about this. Most can't even describe the provisions of the GPL so I don't really know what that's about. Just something they picked up, I guess.
    - thyristan 1y ago
      Licensing concerns that prevent distros from using ZFS will sooner or later also have adverse effects on end users. Actually those effects are already there: The constant need to adapt a large patchset to the current kernel, meaning updates are a hassle. The lack of packaging in distributions, meaning updates are a hassle. And the lack of integration and related tooling, meaning many features can not be used (like a/b boots from snapshots after updates) easily, and installers won't know about ZFS so you have to install manually. None of this is a worry about being sued as an end user. But all of those are worries that you life will be harder with ZFS, and a lot harder as soon as the first lawsuits hit anyone, because all the current (small) efforts to keep it working will cease immediately.
m4rtink 1y ago
The ZFS license makes it impossible to include in upstream Linux kernel, which makes it much less usable as primary filesystem.
- ryao 1y ago
  Linux’s signed off policy makes that impossible. Linus Torvalds would need Larry Elison’s signed off before even considering it. Linus told me this by email around 2013 (if I recall correctly) when I emailed him to discuss user requests for upstream inclusion. He had no concerns about the license being different at the time.
Gud 1y ago
ZFS is a first class citizen in FreeBSD and has been for at least a decade(probably longer). Not at all like in most Linux distros.
toast0 1y ago
ZFS on FreeBSD is quite nice. System tools like freebsd-update integrate well. UFS continues to work as well, and may be more appropriate for some use cases where ZFS isn't a good fit, copy on write is sometimes very expensive. Afaik, the FreeBSD position is both ZFS and UFS are fully supported and neither is secondary to the other; the installer asks what you want from ZFS, UFS, Manual (with a menu based tool), or Shell and you do whatever; in that order, so maybe a slight preferance towards ZFS.
lotharcable 1y ago
OpenZFS exists and there is a port of it for Mac OS X. The problem is that it is still owned by Oracle. And Solaris ZFS is incompatible with OpenZFS. Not that people really use Solaris anymore. It is really unfortunate. Linux has adopted file systems from other operating systems before. It is just nobody trust Oracle.

Linux or FreeBSD developers are free to adopt ZFS as their primary file systems. But it appears that practical benefits are not really evident to most users.

by em500 1y ago

Linux or FreeBSD developers are free to adopt ZFS as their primary file systems. But it appears that practical benefits are not really evident to most users.

thyristan 1y ago

Lots of ZFS users are enthusiasts who heard about that one magic thing that does it all in one tidy box. Whereas usually you would have to known all the minutiae of LVM/mdadm/cryptsetup/nbd and mkfs.whatever to get to the same point. So while ZFS is the nicer-dicer of volume management and filesystems, the latter is your whole chef's knife set. And while you can dice with both, the user groups are not the same. And enthusiasts with the right usecases are very few. And for the thin-provisioned snapshotted subvolume usecase, btrfs is currently eating ZFS's lunch due to far better Linux integration. Think snapshots at every update, and having a/b boot to get back to a known-working config after an update. So widespread adoption through the distro route is out of the question.

queenkjuul 1y ago
Ubuntu's ZFS-on-root with zsys auto snapshots have been working excellently on my server for 5 years. It automatically takes snapshots on every update and adds entries to grub so rolling back to the last good state is just a reboot away.
mustache_kimono 1y ago
> And for the thin-provisioned snapshotted subvolume usecase, btrfs is currently eating ZFS's lunch due to far better Linux integration. Is this a technical argument? Or is this just more licensing nonsense? > Think snapshots at every update, and having a/b boot to get back to a known-working config after an update. I use ZFS and I have snapshots on every update? I have snapshots hourly, daily, weekly and monthly. I have triggered snapshots too, and ad hoc dynamic snapshots too. I wrote about it here: https://kimono-koans.github.io/opinionated-guide/ https://kimono-koans.github.io/opinionated-guide/
throw0101b 1y ago
> Think snapshots at every update, and having a/b boot to get back to a known-working config after an update. Solaris had this about a decade ago with beadm: * https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E53394_01/html/E54749/gpxnl.html https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E53394_01/html/E54749/gpxnl.html FreeBSD has had it for several years as well. If Linux lacks it that is a failure of Linux (distros) not ZFS.

wkat4242 1y ago

That's called marketing. Give it a snazzy name, like say "TimeMachine" and users will jump on it. Also, ZFS has a bad name within the Linux community due to some licensing stuff. I find that most BSD users don't really care about such legalese and most people I know that run FreeBSD are running ZFS on root. Which works amazingly well I might add. Especially with something like sanoid added to it, it basically does the same as timemachine on mac, a feature that users love. Albeit stored on the same drive (but with syncoid or just manually rolled zfs send/recv scripts you can do that on another location too).

cherryteastain 1y ago
> ZFS has a bad name within the Linux community due to some licensing stuff This is out of an abundance of caution. Canonical bundle ZFS in the Ubuntu kernel and no one sued them (yet).
- wkat4242 1y ago
  True and I understand the caution considering Oracle is involved which are an awful company to do deal with (and their takeover of Sun was a disaster). But really, this is a concern for distros. Not for end users. Yet many of the Linux users I speak to are somehow worried about this. Most can't even describe the provisions of the GPL so I don't really know what that's about. Just something they picked up, I guess.
  - thyristan 1y ago
    Licensing concerns that prevent distros from using ZFS will sooner or later also have adverse effects on end users. Actually those effects are already there: The constant need to adapt a large patchset to the current kernel, meaning updates are a hassle. The lack of packaging in distributions, meaning updates are a hassle. And the lack of integration and related tooling, meaning many features can not be used (like a/b boots from snapshots after updates) easily, and installers won't know about ZFS so you have to install manually. None of this is a worry about being sued as an end user. But all of those are worries that you life will be harder with ZFS, and a lot harder as soon as the first lawsuits hit anyone, because all the current (small) efforts to keep it working will cease immediately.

m4rtink 1y ago

The ZFS license makes it impossible to include in upstream Linux kernel, which makes it much less usable as primary filesystem.

ryao 1y ago
Linux’s signed off policy makes that impossible. Linus Torvalds would need Larry Elison’s signed off before even considering it. Linus told me this by email around 2013 (if I recall correctly) when I emailed him to discuss user requests for upstream inclusion. He had no concerns about the license being different at the time.

Gud 1y ago

ZFS is a first class citizen in FreeBSD and has been for at least a decade(probably longer). Not at all like in most Linux distros.

toast0 1y ago

ZFS on FreeBSD is quite nice. System tools like freebsd-update integrate well. UFS continues to work as well, and may be more appropriate for some use cases where ZFS isn't a good fit, copy on write is sometimes very expensive. Afaik, the FreeBSD position is both ZFS and UFS are fully supported and neither is secondary to the other; the installer asks what you want from ZFS, UFS, Manual (with a menu based tool), or Shell and you do whatever; in that order, so maybe a slight preferance towards ZFS.

lotharcable 1y ago

OpenZFS exists and there is a port of it for Mac OS X. The problem is that it is still owned by Oracle. And Solaris ZFS is incompatible with OpenZFS. Not that people really use Solaris anymore. It is really unfortunate. Linux has adopted file systems from other operating systems before. It is just nobody trust Oracle.