Btrfs : Anecdotal thoughts?

[u/HigherOctive]

I'm dual-booting Linux Mint Cinnamon 22.3 with Windows 11 Pro. It's easy enough for me to change things up, so I wonder if making the change from EXT4 to Btrfs is worth the effort.

If anybody is using the Btrfs file system with their Linux, how are things going?

[u/acejavelin69]

Been using BTRFS for years and it's fine... Best part is the Timeshift uses exponentially less space. If you do a clean install in Mint and set your root as BTRFS then it will create some minimal subvolumes automatically.

If you really want to go all in with BTRFS, I'd suggest switching to OpenSUSE which has it as it's default and tight integration with Snapper (a Timeshift-like snapshot alternative) and grub for simple rollbacks into previous snapshots.

If you have an existing Mint installation with ext4 filesystems, it's not really worth converting it though since you don't have a clearly defined reason for switching... My 2 cents worth, take it with a grain of salt.

[u/BertMacklenF8I → u/acejavelin69]

I’ve been thinking about making this EXACT switch for a variety of reasons but this has to be the number one reasons (Snapshop space)

Also great info on SUSE! Thanks for the info!

[u/mok000 → u/BertMacklenF8I]

If you want to stay in the Debian world, there’s Butterbian, not really a distro in the traditional sense but an iso and installer that creates a Debian installation based on BTRFS (done correctly, in contrast to Debian’s expert installer). It’s made by a guy named Drew who also has a nice YouTube channel where he does a lot of fun stuff with Debian. Check it out.

[u/BertMacklenF8I → u/mok000]

Trying it out on my Desktop for sure-Thanks!!

[u/computer-machine → u/BertMacklenF8I]

I'd switched from Mint to Tumbleweed at the start of 2018 because I'd just bought a Ryzen and needed a new kernel, wanted to give btrfs a try, wanted to give rolling a try, and KDE5 a fair shake.

[u/mok000]

If you care about efficiency, ext4 is one of the fastest filesystems, certainly faster than btrfs. I use both on various machines, both have their merits, but I would not try to fix something that works.

[u/HigherOctive → u/mok000]

That's kind of what I've gotten out of this, thank you.

[u/Ok_Emu2515]

I use Btrfs for the root partition and Ext4 partition for /home. I set up restore points using TimeShift, so I can roll back if anything goes wrong.

[u/fellipec]

I use it in a backup drive. Is a test I'm doing, because few years ago I tried to use it with Debian (was 9 or 10, don't remember now) and after 3 months got corrupted and I couldn't fix.

All the other drives I use is ext4

[u/computer-machine → u/fellipec]

I'd switched to btrfs from mdadm+XFS on Debian 9 (with kernel and btrfs-tools from Backports) in 2018 for Nextcloud, systems backups, Emby, and a few others, and even adding a disk or converting from btrfs-raid10 to btrfs-raid1 while using it hasn't led to any problems through now.

[u/fellipec → u/computer-machine]

Good for you. I had no luck

[u/nb264]

I use btrfs on / and /home, timeshift on / only ofc, it's godsend in regards of speed and space consumption. Have regular backups to NAS (which uses btrfs), boot from grub directly to snapshot, crazy stuff. I don't think I'd go back to ext4 again.

[u/mr-raider2]

I've used it for more than a decade. I'm not going back.

[u/computer-machine]

I have btrfs for OS on Tumbleweed, and have no plans on ever going back.

Automatic instantaneous snapshots before and after updates/installs, and rollbacks taking a few seconds and a reboot is a game changer.

Similarly, btrfs-raid1 on data disks on said desktop and Debian server make data corruption a non-thing, and 0-size instant snapshots make management different from the days rsyncing XFS, for sure.

[u/computer-machine → u/computer-machine]

Oh yeah, and automatic compression on write makes a difference.

[u/evirussss]

not mint user, but btrfs give me more less time to redo my system when something happens

[u/HigherOctive]

I know that there's more to it than this, but I've read that a comparison would be: EXT4=Fat32 and Btrfs=NTFS...

[u/TheRealCarrotty → u/HigherOctive]

Not really.

[u/skozombie → u/HigherOctive]

not really, I think that is a poor comparison if talking in terms of features.

EXT4 is journalling so it's far more robust than FAT32 for FS consistency, it's quite similar to NTFS in many ways.

BTRFS is just a next level FS that does a hell of a lot more than any Windows FS or EXT{1..4}.

[u/ZVyhVrtsfgzfs → u/HigherOctive]

Not at all.

I won't use btrfs, I mainly use ZFS, with a few EXT4 & XFS partitions.