On 1/20/25 12:35 AM, Robin Laing wrote:
... I have lost data with LVM's and btrfs at different times in the past and have to regain my trust. ... The Btrfs file system received numerous updates from the upstream in Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions 6.0 through 6.6 and 7.0 through 7.4. It will remain available in Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions 6 and 7, however there will be no further updates to this feature, and it has been fully removed in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. ...
What is the current default file system in Fedora (40 and 41)?
What is the current default file system in Red Hat Enterprise?
On 1/20/25 1:04 PM, home user via users wrote:
On 1/20/25 12:35 AM, Robin Laing wrote:
... I have lost data with LVM's and btrfs at different times in the past and have to regain my trust. ... The Btrfs file system received numerous updates from the upstream in Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions 6.0 through 6.6 and 7.0 through 7.4. It will remain available in Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions 6 and 7, however there will be no further updates to this feature, and it has been fully removed in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. ...
What is the current default file system in Fedora (40 and 41)?
Depends. Fedora server uses XFS, oters use btrfs
What is the current default file system in Red Hat Enterprise?
On 1/20/25 11:09 AM, Robert McBroom via users wrote:
On 1/20/25 1:04 PM, home user via users wrote:
On 1/20/25 12:35 AM, Robin Laing wrote:
... I have lost data with LVM's and btrfs at different times in the past and have to regain my trust. ... The Btrfs file system received numerous updates from the upstream in Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions 6.0 through 6.6 and 7.0 through 7.4. It will remain available in Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions 6 and 7, however there will be no further updates to this feature, and it has been fully removed in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. ...
What is the current default file system in Fedora (40 and 41)?
Depends. Fedora server uses XFS, oters use btrfs
What is the current default file system in Red Hat Enterprise?
Thank-you Robert. I use the workstation. The default is btrfs.
For Red Hat Enterprise, all I've found on the internet is negative (it does not use...), and nothing more recent that version 8. But it's currently at 9. What is the default file system in Red Hat Enterprise 9?
On Mon, 20 Jan 2025 at 19:20, home user via users < users@lists.fedoraproject.org> wrote:
For Red Hat Enterprise, all I've found on the internet is negative (it does not use...), and nothing more recent that version 8. But it's currently at 9. What is the default file system in Red Hat Enterprise 9?
I genuinely don't mean this as snark, but is there any reason you haven't just STFW-ed [1] this?
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=rhel+9+default+file+system&atb=v443...
https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_linux/9/html-sin...
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines#gettinghelp
On 1/20/25 12:25 PM, Will McDonald wrote:
On Mon, 20 Jan 2025 at 19:20, home user via users <users@lists.fedoraproject.org mailto:users@lists.fedoraproject.org> wrote:
For Red Hat Enterprise, all I've found on the internet is negative (it does not use...), and nothing more recent that version 8. But it's currently at 9. What is the default file system in Red Hat Enterprise 9?
I genuinely don't mean this as snark, but is there any reason you haven't just STFW-ed [1] this?
I'm trying to plan for a new workstation. Robin's post brought questions to mind. I did search the web. It did not come up with those.
So Red Hat has abandoned btrfs, XFS is the default. Fedora is upstream for RHEL, so... * Why is btrfs still default for Fedora? * What are Fedora's plans for future default file system?
On Mon, 2025-01-20 at 13:18 -0700, home user via users wrote:
So Red Hat has abandoned btrfs, XFS is the default. Fedora is upstream for RHEL, so...
- Why is btrfs still default for Fedora?
IIRC Fedora adopted BTRFS as the standard for Workstation *after* RedHat had decided not to use it for RHEL. For my own part, I switched to BTRFS back around F37 if not earlier and have been happy with it.
poc
On Mon, Jan 20, 2025 at 6:28 PM Patrick O'Callaghan pocallaghan@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, 2025-01-20 at 13:18 -0700, home user via users wrote:
So Red Hat has abandoned btrfs, XFS is the default. Fedora is upstream for RHEL, so...
- Why is btrfs still default for Fedora?
I'm not party to RHEL's reasoning, but do have years of experience with XFS on servers with a robust backup system. For important files we had checksum files or used archives with some protection from bitrot. When we had problems with an XFS filesystem and the disk appeared to be healthy (per S.M.A.R.T or vendor tools) we just loaded backups and were good to go.
I think Fedora's user profile is weighted towards individual users. Most users are unlikely to have robust ways to detect bitrot. Even if they are careful with backups, they may discover that the backup of a corrupt file is also corrupt. Using btrfs on Fedora provides important real-world experience with btrfs which may improve btrfs or may inform future filesystems. The advantages of btrfs are not "free" -- btrfs requires maintenance and is not properly supported by legacy tools (df).
I do use XFS on my backup drives.
On 1/20/25 3:37 PM, George N. White III wrote:
filesystems. The advantages of btrfs are not "free" -- btrfs requires maintenance and is not properly supported by legacy tools (df).
I still disagree with the "required maintenance" thing and "df" works well enough for almost all purposes.
(responding to Patrick, George, and Samuel)
Thank-you for your responses.
I'm almost certain that I'll want a dual-boot system on the new workstation: Fedora + one other t.b.d. Linux distribution. In that situation, does it matter which file system I'll use? Also, am I correct in assuming that file system choice do not affect the choice of hardware?
Am I the only one sensing a business inconsistency in what Fedora and Redhat are doing? Since Fedora is the upstream for RHEL, and RHEL forks off Fedora, I would think that they would have the same default file system unless Red Hat wants to switch to btrfs as a default within the next couple of versions. I do know that btrfs is only Fedora's default; they do support other choices. (On my current workstation, I'm using ext4.)
On 1/20/25 8:49 PM, home user via users wrote:
I'm almost certain that I'll want a dual-boot system on the new workstation: Fedora + one other t.b.d. Linux distribution. In that situation, does it matter which file system I'll use? Also, am I correct in assuming that file system choice do not affect the choice of hardware?
It doesn't matter as any distro should support all the common filesystems. It also doesn't affect the hardware choice.
Am I the only one sensing a business inconsistency in what Fedora and Redhat are doing? Since Fedora is the upstream for RHEL, and RHEL forks off Fedora, I would think that they would have the same default file system unless Red Hat wants to switch to btrfs as a default within the next couple of versions. I do know that btrfs is only Fedora's default; they do support other choices. (On my current workstation, I'm using ext4.)
There's no lockin for the filesystem. Even Fedora server uses a different default than Fedora workstation. But either way, you can select whichever filesystem you want at installation. But I must say that I am loving the subvolume options of btrfs for multiple reasons.
Fedora may be the "upstream" of RHEL, but again there's no requirement that they follow Fedora's configuration. There are many changes made on the road from Fedora to RHEL.
On Jan 20, 2025, at 23:50, home user via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
Am I the only one sensing a business inconsistency in what Fedora and Redhat are doing? Since Fedora is the upstream for RHEL, and RHEL forks off Fedora, I would think that they would have the same default file system unless Red Hat wants to switch to btrfs as a default within the next couple of versions. I do know that btrfs is only Fedora's default; they do support other choices. (On my current workstation, I'm using ext4.)
RHEL’s focus on the Server/container side matches up with the filesystem choice for Fedora Server, which is XFS.
For what it’s worth, when Fedora decided to default to btrfs on Fedora Workstation, there was a lot of discussion on various Fedora lists about it. Red Hat’s kernel / filesystem group does not have much expertise in btrfs and is quite focused on XFS development, so they prefer XFS as the default. Red Hat wants to focus on stability and performance. Red Hat needs to backport XFS fixes into their LTS kernel. On the other hand, Fedora maintainers are interested in new features and they aren’t backporting support for every release, Fedora uses the latest kernels so all fixes come from upstream.
I’m sure once bcachefs becomes more stable, we’ll start seeing Fedora use it too. It’s just how a cutting edge distro differs from an enterprise Linux distribution.
(responding to both Samuel and Jonathan)
(Samuel)
There's no lockin for the filesystem. Even Fedora server uses a different default than Fedora workstation. But either way, you can select whichever filesystem you want at installation. But I must say that I am loving the subvolume options of btrfs for multiple reasons.
Thank-you, Samuel. For me, the key is that a hard disk drive and a solid-state drive can each work equally well, and any make-model can work equally well, regardless of which distribution and which file systems I choose.
Fedora may be the "upstream" of RHEL, but again there's no requirement that they follow Fedora's configuration. There are many changes made on the road from Fedora to RHEL.
I understand. Jonathan's response and George's earlier response do enlighten the business logic behind the difference between Fedora's default and Red Hat's default.
(Jonathan)
RHEL’s focus on the Server/container side matches up with the filesystem choice for Fedora Server, which is XFS.
For what it’s worth, when Fedora decided to default to btrfs on Fedora Workstation, there was a lot of discussion on various Fedora lists about it. Red Hat’s kernel / filesystem group does not have much expertise in btrfs and is quite focused on XFS development, so they prefer XFS as the default. Red Hat wants to focus on stability and performance. Red Hat needs to backport XFS fixes into their LTS kernel. On the other hand, Fedora maintainers are interested in new features and they aren’t backporting support for every release, Fedora uses the latest kernels so all fixes come from upstream.
I’m sure once bcachefs becomes more stable, we’ll start seeing Fedora use it too. It’s just how a cutting edge distro differs from an enterprise Linux distribution.
Based on what's been said, in my mind, Red Hat's focus on servers/containers vs. Fedora's focus on individual users (and workstations) explains the difference in their file system defaults. Fedora having different defaults for workstation and server also argues that way. The inconsistency is faded in my mind.
I looked up bcachefs. Seems like it's got a way to go.