Subj : Re: Windows vs Linux
To   : 2twisty
From : boraxman
Date : Sun Apr 24 2022 19:46:16

 2t>  cl> I have never played around with BTRFS and have thought about it.  Is 
 2t>  cl> very difficult to get setup initially?  And afterwards is it as stabl
 2t>  cl> as just using the old ext4?  
 2t> 
 2t> Its been a few years since I plaed witg BTRFS.  Back then, there were
 2t> some known issues with its RAID5/6 implementation that could result in
 2t> data loss.  Don't know if that's still a thing.  But their RAID10
 2t> implementation was pretty good.
 2t> 
 2t> I don't recommend BTRFS unless you are doing redundancy -- one of the key
 2t> benefis of BTRFS is protection against bitrot.
 2t> 
 2t> That all said, I use ZFS now -- MUCH more mature than BTRFS, and it is
 2t> available for Linux systems now (used to be a BSD only thing).  ZFS has
 2t> all the plusses of BTRFS, and is even more aggressive about protecting
 2t> data than BTRFS is.
 2t> 
 2t> BTRFS is easier to set up than ZFS, but IMO, ZFS is the vastly superior
 2t> of the two.
 2t> 
There are some distinct advantages to btrfs.  It uses less resources and is better on older hardware.  It is far, far more flexible, you can add, remove drives on a whim, and change raid level, all while the filesystem is online.  It is built into the kernel, unlike ZFS, and can be mounted and unmounted like any other filesystem, it doesn't need the use of a specific tool like zfs.  Also, being able to create copy-on-write copies of any file or directory to anywhere on the same drive is useful.

ZFS is better when managing big data, but for home home systems, where you may just be using a couple of different drives, where things are less planned and more adhoc, btrfs just fits in better.

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