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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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What file systems are you using on your devices and why? (en.wikipedia.org)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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 months ago

Btrfs on my Linux desktops and laptops, ZFS on my server, APFS on my Apple devices I guess

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

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

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

I've got Btrfs on my desktop for the OS drive cuz that was what Fedora recommended when I was installing it. It took a bit of effort to get snapshots working properly, but other than that, I've had no issues with it at all over the past year. I've got an exFAT drive and an NTFS drive in there that are kind of leftovers from using Windows. I've been thinking about reformatting the exFAT drive to ext4 or something, since all it really does is store games, and having the ability to symlink to it would be nice.

I've got a TrueNAS machine as well and that uses ZFS for pretty much everything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Random thoughts, no particular order

I think btrfs was the default the last time I installed Bazzite, but I don't really know anything about it so I switched it to ext4. I understand the snapshot ability is nice with rolling release distros, though.

It'd been ages since I'd used FAT32 for anything until I made a Debian live USB when I was setting up my pi-hole on an old Core2Duo recently. It would only boot on FAT32 for reasons I probably once knew. 😆

NTFS was an improvement over the FATs what with the journaling, security, file streams, etc. I use it wherever I still use Windows (work).

Most of my general purpose USB flash drives use exFAT. I like not having to worry about eject/unmount.

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