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OpenSUSE May Be First Major Distro To Adopt Btrfs By Default

Posted by timothy on from the slippery dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The openSUSE Linux distribution looks like it may be the first major Linux distribution to ship the Btrfs file-system by default. The openSUSE 13.1 release is due out in November and is still using EXT4 by default, but after that the developers are looking at having openSUSE using Btrfs by default on new installations. The Btrfs features to be enabled would be the ones the developers feel are data-safe."

13 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. It'll be news once they do it by Strawser · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not really that interesting that they're "considering" it. Linux produces an endless litany of RSNs that never come to fruition. I've basically become numb to predictions about the future of the system. Everyone's been planning to do everything RSN for a decade and a half.

    --
    The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
    1. Re:It'll be news once they do it by icebike · · Score: 4, Interesting

      On the other hand, OpenSuse, and SuSE before them, have a track record of adopting newer file systems as the default.
      They also demote some filesystems as the default, (while still making them available for the user to set as the default.).
      (I still use reiserfs on some systems, it may not be massively scale-able, but its pretty bullet proof).

      But more to the point, I can't really understand your point about RSNs, since Btrfs is already available in OpenSuse and several other Distros for the last several releases.

      Further, on Opensuse at least, the user can set any of the choices as the default for any new partitions, or as the system default at install time. The available choices include Btrfs, XFS and Reiserfs, and three versions of Ext.

      Its not that something is promised and not delivered. Its more akin to having the default web browser set to Chrome or Firefox.

      There is no broken promises here. Simply a failure to understand that the choice has been there for years.

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      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
  2. Pronunciation question... by Beardydog · · Score: 4, Funny

    Should I be calling it "Butterface"? Because I am calling it "Butterface."

    1. Re:Pronunciation question... by swaq · · Score: 3, Informative

      BetterFS and ButterFS are both correct. http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/167-amanda-mcpherson/22449-a-conversation-with-chris-mason-on-btrfs-the-next-generation-file-system-for-linux

  3. Re:Who uses the defaults? by nine-times · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Desktop/laptop operating systems should be able to be installed casually without any thought.

  4. exciting. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've gotten 4 machines running "native zfs for linux" using the stable ppa for ubuntu server 12.04.

    It has been a truly mixed bag. Like a bag full of with crashed machines. At least the data has survived each time.

    I am genuinely excited at the idea of BTRFs becoming production ready.

    1. Re:exciting. by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 4, Informative

      Like a bag full of with crashed machines

      You probably ran out of memory. No, seriously, don't try it on a machine with less than 3GB of RAM. It's not optimized for that use case yet (version 0.6.2 is current - 1.0 will be 'ready').

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  5. No surprise by willoughby · · Score: 4, Informative

    I remember when SuSE was one of the only distros, perhaps the only one, which used reiserfs as the default filesystem. No, there's no punchline. This was when you could buy it in a box (including the little chamelon pin) off the shelf at CompUSA. SuSE has always had a fascination with new filesystems.

    1. Re:No surprise by ebno-10db · · Score: 4, Funny

      I remember when SuSE was one of the only distros, perhaps the only one, which used reiserfs as the default filesystem.

      Big mistake - it almost killed SuSE.

  6. Re:DON'T INSTALL OPENSUSE 13.1 by Bill+Dimm · · Score: 4, Informative

    According to the summary, OpenSUSE 13.1 is not the one that will default to btrfs, so I don't know why you are saying not to install 13.1.

    The openSUSE 13.1 release is due out in November and is still using EXT4 by default, but after that the developers are looking at having openSUSE using Btrfs by default on new installations.

  7. Re:We're what 5 generations beyond NTFS now?! by inhuman_4 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Phoronix Benchmarks will give you an idea of the perfomance differences. Btrfs is usually middle of the pack, so nothing to write home about. The big deal with btrfs is the new features like COW, snapshots, filesystem compression, etc. If you are looking for more performance btrfs is not going to impress. If you are looking for better RAID perfomance, snapshots, compression, etc. Then btrfs is going to be huge for linux. It is probably the closest linux will get to having a ZFS clone.

  8. Re:DON'T INSTALL OPENSUSE 13.1 by icebike · · Score: 3, Interesting

    there are too many bugs in btrfs for it to be installed in production:
    https://bugzilla.kernel.org/buglist.cgi?component=btrfs

    Well, hold on a second here...

    Your list shows 196 bugs with only 36 still un-fixed.
    Yet EXT4 shows 214 bugs with still 34 still un-fixed.

    Yet Ext4 seems to by adopted by world plus dog.

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    Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
  9. Re:We're what 5 generations beyond NTFS now?! by petteyg359 · · Score: 3, Funny

    I question the use case, The hardware was defiantly desktop grade

    Was the hardware told that it absolutely must stop being desktop grade? I see no other reason for it to express defiance.