this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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I want to learn more about file systems from the practical point of view so I know what to expect, how to approach them and what experience positive or negative you had / have.

I found this wikipedia's comparison but I want your hands-on views.

For now my mental list is

  • NTFS - for some reason TVs on USB love these and also Windows + Linux can read and write this
  • Ext4 - solid fs with journaling but Linux specific
  • Btrfs - some modern fs with snapshot capability, Linux specific
  • xfs - servers really like these as they are performant, Linux specific
  • FAT32 - limited but recognizable everywhere
  • exFAT - like FAT32 but less recognizable and less limited
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

How well a file system recovers from crashes or corruption.
fall guys

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Btrfs, but if I'd start from scratch today I'd go for bcachefs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

ext4 on everything except external drives where I put NTFS.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

So you have a dual boot or Windows machines I'm guessing for any of these

  1. Microsoft Office
  2. Gaming
  3. Adobe
[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I don't dual boot, I just have some other Windows machines that I use rarely for Windows-only software that require an external connection, like Odin for Samsung devices.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)
  • Ext4 main computer
  • NTFS for hard drives and stuff that need to be shared with other people using Windows
  • BTRFS for the NAS
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Interesting choice for NAS, why not the others that seem like better alternatives?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Well, as far as I know, BTRFS and ZFS are the recommended file systems for NAS's. They have self-healing capabilities so I can be slightly more sure that my data does not get corrupted over time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Is self-healing process automated or you need to somehow enable it so it happens from time to time?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You have to run a so-called scrub command that checks for errors and tries to repair them. You can automate to run it every month or so

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

In a cronjob or something alike?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Btrfs because it sounded cool when I first read about it and worked fine so far :3

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah it sounds "better" FS. Do you use snapshots?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Yep, got Timeshift hooked up to make a snapshot each time I update my system and I can boot into them via GRUB. Haven't needed that so far, thankfully, but it's there just in case.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

dual boot NixOS and FreeBSD on a single drive, ext4 on Nix and ZFS on FreeBSD. each partition has its own boot, swap and root, all encrypted

btw, OP wrote that FAT32 is limited, isn't it the default fs for the boot partition? can other fs like ext2/3 be used?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

I use BTRFS on my Artix system, Ext4 on my Librem 5, Ext4 on my Devuan laptop and Ext4 on my Pinebook Pro. Basically when given the choice in the installer I choose BTRFS but if the installer doesn't let me pick I don't care enough to manually partition. I have had no negative experiences with any file system luckily so I just roll with whatever.

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