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BTRFS for Linux gaming?
(lemy.lol)
I'm using EndeavourOS with ext4 file system for daily usage and a dual bootable Windows for gaming. What I want to have right now is getting rid of Windows completely.
When I tried it before, I had to try multiple tweaks for a game and find which one worked on Linux. Therefore, I want to take a snapshot with BTRFS and try it until I find the right configuration.
While I have quite a bit of experience with Linux, I've never used BTRFS. Do you think it's worth it?
I thought about keeping the games on the ext4 system, but I hate splitting the disk. I'm thinking of keeping the games in a non-snapshot volume.
UPDATE: I just re-installed EndeavourOS with BTRFS + snapper + BTRFS Assistant :)
Is the compression opt-in or is it enabled by default?
You have to enable compression in fstab.
Ah okay, cool. It's that easy? Does it compress all existing data after that or is it only for new data?
What would I have to do to compress existing data?
It is only for new data.
For example, you would have to defragment your filesystem again with
btrfs filesystem defragment -r -v -czstd /. Wherezstdis an algorithm and/, a root path. With this command, the default compression level will be used, which is level 3.Be careful, defragmenting the btrfs file system will/can duplicate the data.
As for a mount point, if you decided to use zstd algorithm with level 1 compression, just add the
compress=zstd:1orcompress-force=zstd:1to the mount options (fstab or while mounting manually)Reading the manpage (btrfs-filesystem), duplication can happen on some odd kernel versions, so no danger.
Edit: that was my interpretation of breaking up reflinks of cow data anyway. Seems there's more.
If I know correctly, defrag will always duplicate the reflink files.
https://btrfs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Defragmentation.html
Well, compression doubled my available space. ;-)
So I set up my system with btrfs in the last days and I converted two external drives (from ext4) (mainly game) and run defrag and balance, because it was mentioned in a guide to compress the existing files. Was that a bad idea? Didn't read anything about duplicates.
It is fine. You can use the duperemove tool (or bees) to find and remove duplicates.
https://btrfs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Deduplication.html
So it is out-of-band deduplication and has to be done manually.
Also, by default cp and most file managers use a reflink copy (data blocks are copied only when modified)