MX Linux Forum

Hi have have installed MX Linux new on my notebook. but on a ext4 partition.
is bfrs better?
i am at the beginning. i can install MX-Linux new on a bfrs partion.
thanks

https://www.easeus.com/resource/btrfs-v ... 0by%20ext4.

sisqonrw wrote: Sat Feb 24, 2024 12:57 pm Hi have have installed MX Linux new on my notebook. but on a ext4 partition.
is bfrs better?
i am at the beginning. i can install MX-Linux new on a bfrs partion.
thanks

The real question is "better for what?" If you aren't sure what a copy-on-write file system is or why you may want one, stick with ext4.

Charlie Brown wrote: Sat Feb 24, 2024 1:09 pm https://www.easeus.com/resource/btrfs-v ... 0by%20ext4.

Charlie, that source is a marketing snow job for EaseUS, and a poor source for actionable information.

figueroa wrote: Sat Feb 24, 2024 1:52 pm Charlie, that source is a marketing snow job for EaseUS, and a poor source for actionable information.

Perhaps Ars Technica is a more reputable source.

That link (source) is not a special recommendation by me, just for general info, randomly found.

I just cannot help but always read "butterface", this thread has gotten me the giggles

BTRFS isn't per-se better, it's a different more feature-rich option. Its biggest feature is the ability to create file-system-level snapshots. With a tool like Timeshift you can create for example hourly snapshots of your whole filesystem. They are fully deduplicated, so snapshots won't take up space as long as the files don't change. The next thing is that it's copy-on-write, so every change gets written out as a new file, then the old file gets removed (or rather unlinked). This also removes the immediate the need of a journal so it has none. I've found a niche use of COW on SMR HDDs that perform MUCH better under BTRFS than on any other filesystem. There are more features like compression or flexible RAID options.

EXT4 on the other hand is the old "trusted" Linux filesystem that should always do its job, but has no fancy features. It's a little faster than BTRFS from my experience (when reading in huge file trees e.g. for a snyc job), but that's it.

MadMax wrote: Sat Feb 24, 2024 2:23 pm EXT4 on the other hand is the old "trusted" Linux filesystem that should always do its job, but has no fancy features. It's a little faster than BTRFS from my experience (when reading in huge file trees e.g. for a snyc job), but that's it.

To this ext4 should be allowed to say "I am mightily abused."

ext4 may not only by faster than btrfs, but it also offers metadata journaling, fragmentation resistance through extents, metadata checksumming, resizeability, backwards compatibility with ext2 and ext3, transparent encryption, Y2038 problem datetime fixes, and it can operate cleanly on top of a volume management layer like LVM.

No fancy features, indeed.

The "What is bfrs?" question hit me today too (watched a dual-boot mx-linux) so in a quest for answers I ended up going down the damnedest bunny trail I'd ever been on. I then wondered what RAID was (nothing I need) and while I was at it, what the heck is Reiser used for. Holy cow. This ended up learning about a murder and a 23 page letter sent to the Linux mail list explaining the inventor's position on the project as well as his regrets for committing murder and advocacy for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in elementary school. I ended up deciding to use ext4 as MXLinux suggested but for the life of me, after the Reiser document I completely forgot what I briefly learned about bfsr except that it wouldn't be something I need.

MXNewFan wrote: Sat Feb 24, 2024 5:27 pm while I was at it, what the heck is Reiser used for. Holy cow.

ReiserFS is being taken out of the Linux kernel entirely in 2025, so it's honestly nothing you should be paying any attention to whatsoever unless you have a genuine interest in the history of file systems.

Yeah, I learned about that today but thanks for letting me know. As far as file systems, I'd never given them much thought aside from what an OS preferred. The history on this one was out-of-the-park. But also it sparked curiosity and interest file systems having learned they have far more capability than just acting like a stencil to imprint data in a particular way. I can think of some major applications made possible by certain architecture.

MXNewFan wrote: Sat Feb 24, 2024 6:35 pm But also it sparked curiosity and interest file systems having learned they have far more capability than just acting like a stencil to imprint data in a particular way. I can think of some major applications made possible by certain architecture.

At the end of the day, all a file system really needs to do is serve as an abstraction between your software and your data. While it's true that some file systems have specific advantages and disadvantages in certain use cases, ext4 is for the most part a pretty decent general purpose FS. If there were something drastically wrong with ext4, a lot of people would be impacted by it, and that just doesn't happen very often.

This leads us back to my original question. Is btrfs better than ext4? Better for what? It's certainly not more widely adopted than ext4 and doesn't have as much technical support behind it as ext4. So I have to assume OP asked the question because the presence of a choice created the fallacy of believing that choice has an obviously right or wrong answer.

Is btrfs better? The answer is that the MX install defaults to ext4 for good reasons and you shouldn't worry about it too much until you're ready to ask a more specific question.

sisqonrw wrote: Sat Feb 24, 2024 12:57 pm Hi have have installed MX Linux new on my notebook. but on a ext4 partition.
is bfrs better?
i am at the beginning. i can install MX-Linux new on a bfrs partion.
thanks

The installer doesn't have support for bfrs, and I believe bfrs support isn't even in the kernel.

MXNewFan wrote: Sat Feb 24, 2024 5:27 pm The "What is bfrs?" question hit me today too ...

Brominated flame retardants

DukeComposed wrote: Sat Feb 24, 2024 6:09 pmReiserFS is being taken out of the Linux kernel entirely in 2025, so it's honestly nothing you should be paying any attention to whatsoever unless you have a genuine interest in the history of file systems.

ReiserFS support was removed from the installer 2 years ago, back when they first marked it as deprecated.

AK-47 wrote: Sat Feb 24, 2024 6:59 pm ReiserFS support was removed from the installer 2 years ago, back when they first marked it as deprecated.

Good.

Reiser (maybe FS but I doubt it) is on my well preserved old KNOPPIX usb and maybe on an old Manjaro. From what Reiser wrote in his letter it needed new direction & to be overhauled.

backup with timeshift prefer bfrs partition.
is bfrs new?
does it have support for some years?

sisqonrw wrote: Mon Feb 26, 2024 3:56 pm backup with timeshift prefer bfrs partition.
is bfrs new?
does it have support for some years?

Timeshift supports numerous file systems through rsync. There is a btrfs-only feature in Timeshift, but only because btrfs has an integrated snapshot mechanism. This is unrelated to Timeshift. Timeshift works without btrfs snapshots, and btrfs snapshots work without Timeshift.

btrfs is well over a decade old at this point. It landed in the Linux kernel in 2009 and it's still not entirely baked. And "support" is kind of a broad term, you'll have to be more specific. You can always write to the btrfs-users mailing list, but corporate sponsorship of btrfs had been drying up for years. It's been removed as the default file system for a number of distros that once touted it as the next big thing. It was added to RHEL 6 and 7 as an experimental feature, and is absent from RHEL 8 entirely. So "support" is a questionable way to put it. It's there in most kernels. You can run it. But no one says you have to.

OK thanks. which one do you avoid me?

sisqonrw wrote: Mon Feb 26, 2024 5:16 pm OK thanks. which one do you avoid me?

Beg pardon?

which one (ext3, ext4, brfs, etc.) can you suggest me?

sisqonrw wrote: Tue Feb 27, 2024 1:40 am which one (ext3, ext4, brfs, etc.) can you suggest me?

I suggest you stick with the default until you understand why you may have a need for something else. Almost everywhere, that's going to be ext4.

ok i use ext4.
do i understand correct that ext4 is not anymore in the kernel?

sisqonrw wrote: Tue Feb 27, 2024 5:02 am do i understand correct that ext4 is not anymore in the kernel?

No, that's not correct. The Linux kernel includes support for several file systems and ext4 is not going away any time soon. Not sure where you got the idea it was.

As a newbie to linux I've chosen BTRFS because of how easy it makes using Timeshift. Besides a broken MX Linux installer over a month ago, it's been a problem free experience.
I can't tell you if picking BTRFS over EXT4 means much performance wise though. But even making a swap file was fairly easy on BTRFS.

EDIT: Having read through the other posts in this thread I'll probably go with EXT4 when the next version of MX Linux releases. But I'm happy with my choice for now, even though I haven't needed to use Timeshift to roll my system back (yet). I do like it as a newbie feature, kinda like having support wheels on your bike as a kid.

Timeshift is easy to use in Ext4 so is a swap file and/or swap partition, Timeshift pick the options that suit you and yeah it is like having support wheels on your bike.

The big disadvantage of ext4 Timeshift is that taking a snapshot is pretty slow since it's using rsync and making heavy use of hardlinks. On a fast SSD it's ok, but I'd still recommend against hourly or boot snapshots in that scenario just because how much I/O they create.

As I posted earlier, both have advantages and disadvantages and btrfs finally is "ready" for everyday use on desktop systems in my opinion, so just try both and see which suits your preferences better.

When I read everything here, there is a lot to be said for btrfs. Then I reinstall everything with btrfs. Thanks

Personally I wish btrfs had followed the KISS principle. I didn't see much point including all those RAID modes and bunch of other stuff there when Linux has a good software RAID system and hardware RAID is probably even better anyway. Then perhaps btrfs wouldn't be such a perpetual experiment.

Now there's a new kid on the block with an incredibly stupid name, called bcachefs, which purports to be "The COW filesystem for Linux that won't eat your data". It is reportedly better than btrfs somehow. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt since it is still actually considered experimental though.