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
Ext4 bc of its speed for games and my main files. Btrfs on the root for compression
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I tried exFAT for my USB stick but car sterio cannot read it.
Yeah that’s weird when I read about exFAT it seemed like same compability but no FAT32’s limitations but in practice that wasn’t the case.
Pretty much all ext4 except for a few Windows installs on NTFS.
Ext4 on every Linux device.
Ah i dont have any other kind of devices (android on mobile, but there I have no choices on fs)
Why not btrfs? Don’t know, been using what has kept working flawlessly for me for the last 20+ years, no need to replace ext4.
Xfs is solid Commenting b/c I’m disappointed no one else recommends
I use it in my work but ZFS seems interesting alternative.
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Many different file systems are successfully used in production on a large scale that aren’t EXT4.
Are you sure this is the only good FS? I know it’s solid and stable and used for many years as default Linux’s FS but I disagree that’s the only good one.
Every photocopy machine I’ve come across that accept USB sticks do not support exFAT, so what I would do with my USB stick is to split it into two partitions, one FAT32 and the rest exFAT.
Btrfs for the compression and snapshots
Most of my drives are EXT4, but I started using BTRFS a couple years ago and will be using it on all new installs from now on. I really like being able to make snapshots and compression reduces the install size quite a bit.
Btrfs, for the compression and CoW. I’ve been using it since a couple years. It seems stable for my use. I need to fully wrap my head around how snapshots work, though.
You mentioned CoW. I’m really taking advantage of this because I have multiple Wine prefixes that have lots of duplicate data. I want to give every application it’s own prefix, and my underlying file system allows me to duplicate the blocks so the prefixes are basically free where before it’s several hundred megabytes just to make a new prefix.
My regular computer is ext4.
I assume my raspberry pi is ext4, but I’ve never checked what DietPi runs as default. It works fine.
My 720xd is ext4 on the OS drives, but the storage drives are ZFS with dual parity.
Ext4 for everything when possible, because its reliable and proven. I’m looking towards Btrfs for my next system drive, as it is mature now and has good features. But I would use Ext4 for everything else still. For interoperability that doesn’t understand Ext4 it would be NTFS when supported, otherwise fallback to FAT32.
That’s the entirety of my knowledge and what I use when I have to format it myself. :D
I respect your reliable and proven comment. I really love the features of BTRFS and that’s why I use it, but I also really care about my data. I have secondary installations that use EXT4 and work very well.
BTRFS on Linux (including the SD card in my Steam Deck, dunno what the root storage on that uses). NTFS on Windows (BTRFS driver for Windows isn’t quite as stable as I’d like it to be). ZFS on a NAS because that’s how it came set up and so far the zRAID hasn’t failed me yet. FAT32 for UEFI boot partitions and recovery USB drives.
XFS at work because apparently ext4 isn’t “mature enough”. Not by choice.
No idea what Android uses, probably ext4 with some software on top?
Ext4 cause that’s the default and I’m lazy.
Based
That’s a valid reason too. However sometimes btrfs has become the default ;)
Not in Mint.
Yeah I think Ubuntu and Debian based distro prefers it for stability reasons. Fedora I think switched to btrfs by default.
