Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS To Have Official Support For ZFS File System (dustinkirkland.com)

Posted by timothy on from the options-are-good dept.

LichtSpektren writes: Ubuntu developer Dustin Kirkland has posted on his blog that Canonical plans to officially support the ZFS file system for the next Ubuntu LTS release, 16.04 "Xenial Xerus." The file system, which originates in Solaris UNIX, is renowned for its feature set (Kirkland touts "snapshots, copy-on-write cloning, continuous integrity checking against data corruption, automatic repair, efficient data compression") and its stability. "You'll find zfs.ko automatically built and installed on your Ubuntu systems. No more DKMS-built modules!" N.B. ext4 will still be the default file system due to the unresolved licensing conflict between Linux's GPLv2 and ZFS's CDDL.

5 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. For home users, basically meaningless. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All file systems are approximately the same for most day to day users. I would be interested in knowing which is fastest at read/writes.

    1. Re:For home users, basically meaningless. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      All file systems are approximately the same for most day to day users. I would be interested in knowing which is fastest at read/writes.

      And that's meaningless without specifying the hardware you're doing the comparison on, your access pattern(s), file system layout, data distribution within the file system, and other factors.

    2. Re: For home users, basically meaningless. by Zeromous · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If you are using ZFS, you need to have the offline backup.

      So many things can go wrong with ZFS due to failures beyond your control. You use ZFS so you don't have to restore, and keep an offline backup for when ZFS is fucked.

      If you can't afford to offline your ZFS data, ZFS is not for you.

      --
      ---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
  2. Like a train wreck in reverse by BaronM · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Every time I see news about ZFS and Linux, it's a little bit less of a mess. Eventually, I expect that all of the major distributions will go this route and sidestep the licensing issue by providing distro-supported modules that are installed by user request, sort of like the way that Nvidia drivers are provided.

  3. Re:Too little, too late... by LichtSpektren · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I used the wrong tool for the job, therefore it sucks.