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What are the pros and cons of btrfs? (lemm.ee)

submitted 5 days ago by Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee to c/linux@programming.dev

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I recently started using Fedora with btrfs, which I think was the default on install. So far all I've noticed is that backups and restores are really fast and easy.

Are there any important things to be aware of, like speed, drive lifespan or energy efficiency?

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[–] OmegaLemmy@discuss.online 0 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Pros: it has tools associated with it like snapper that help with keeping system functional

Cons: will eat space of your root drive, and you shouldn't use it for your /home

[–] lonesomeCat@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

shouldn't use it for your /home

Why?

[–] OmegaLemmy@discuss.online 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

will eat the space of your home drive even more because you constantly change your home drive and btrfs snapshots grow to be gigabytes in size as a result

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

To be more precise, you don't really want to use the snapshotting in the home-directory. You can still use btrfs itself and for example, openSUSE sets it up so the home-directory is in a btrfs subvolume that's excluded from snapshots.
At the very least, you'd want the snapshots in the home-directory to be independent from the rest of the OS, so that you don't end up rolling back what you've worked on when you want to roll back a faulty OS update.

Well, and you also just want proper backups of your home-directory, so the snapshots are not as useful...

[–] RedSnt@feddit.dk 3 points 4 days ago

This is how I understand subvolumes, that unless specified otherwise, they're excluded from snapshots taken of parent folders, so by making /home a subvolume is less about taking snapshots of that folder, and more about ensuring that taking snapshots of / doesn't include /home.