this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
167 points (97.7% liked)

Linux

48331 readers
1236 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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
(page 5) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] rem26_art@fedia.io 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.

[–] sgibson5150@slrpnk.net 1 points 3 months ago (4 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.

[–] Psyhackological@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Sure.

Bazzite defaults to btrfs and yeah this distro with rolling back changes is on another level.

Well you probably used it if you had any brand new USB as it's the default. I'm trying to flash my USBs for now with exFAT or NTFS...

NTFS is like Windows - the necessity when nothing else will work.

Wait what. exFAT can make you not to worry about eject/umount?

[–] sgibson5150@slrpnk.net 1 points 3 months ago

I mainly started using exFAT on flash drives (even on new ones) since it is interoperable between Windows, Linux, and Intel Mac. To be clear, I never don't unmount the drive properly under normal conditions, but I remember reading around the time it was introduced that the Windows implementation guaranteed the buffers were flushed after every write (meaning no unwritten data remains when the activity indicator on the drive stops blinking) but now I can't find any evidence that was ever the case. Wouldn't be the first time I got bad info from the Internet. 🤷‍♂️

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›