I know EXT4 has been a long recommended filesystem that is stable and safe, but how does it compare to BTRFS, and would anyone recommend BTRFS for everyday general usage?

If you have a single disk system (like a laptop, or cut-down desktop), then there's nothing gained by going btrfs. btrfs is, besides being a file system, also a volume manager (like ZFS). That 'advantage' is cut right down with only 1 disk, and then the possible extra complexity may in fact weigh against it. Even with a few disks, the advantage may be moot, as the Linux mdadm utility will slice, dice, join, stripe and liquify (:-) the disks and ext4 is smart enough to be able to be extended over the underlying volumes. Conclusion - stick with ext4 until it becomes painful obvious that you're a fool not to use btrfs.

BTRFS is mostly stable now (no fsck utility yet however). EXT4 is obviously the choice for production machines. I've used BTRFS for awhile now and have been satisfied. But if you do not plan on using its extra features like cloning, subvolumes, and snapshots, just use EXT4.

Watch for when the major distributions start to suggest BTRFS as the default file system. That will probably be happening within the next year or two for the like of Fedora or Ubuntu, for instance.

As for why use BTRFS, it supports features like snapshots, on the fly compression, and improvements in speed and space utilizations in many scenarios. There is a lot of information out there about the pros and cons on various tech sites that goes into depth- just do a bit of a search to find them.

And it is (still) certainly worth it even for one disk.
Snaps before an update are potential life-savers. Also handy for point-in-time backups - take a snap, backup at convenience.
Easy, (almost) zero cost, but you need to remember to delete old ones. Guess how I found out about that one ...

Not ready for production tho' IMHO.

With the kernel that comes with Slackware, you can not use the seed feature on an LVM, Luks, or anything that gets a virtual mount through a loop device. This goes for 2.6.38 and 39. I do not know about 3.0.

That being said, it works great under all setups for general use in situations where you could deal with data loss. This includes using non seed file systems on LVM, Luks, or loop devices. I haven't personally lost data using it, but I don't trust it yet with my archives.

BTRFS can be really nice if you want to start developing your own OS as well. The snap shot feature can let you install a complete system then snap shot it to several other locations and make your modifications there. I suppose you could do the same thing with a virtual machine at the cost of the possible speed issues associated with virtual machines... additionally, I think the concept allows for an instant chroot environment. Any changes would go with in that snap shot without any additional space required for the original files unless modified. But I'm not an expert on the possibilities.


BE WARNED: you can not use it like a regular file system. It is not designed for partitions less than 1gig. Seriously... a partion of 1 gig will only store about 500MB without balancing and 700MB afterwards. This has to do with something of how it's storing its inodes and b-tree data. If you intend to use it for things like /var and /tmp, it's best to make them sub volumes of your root and hope that they will add quotas... there is conflicting information on the wiki and I don't think it's implemented in the 2.6.38 kernel

On that note, your OS should be installed on a subvolume of the root btrfs file system. This takes extra concideration for installing slackware.

I think for now I'll stick to EXT4 until BTRFS becomes more tried and true.

I may test it virtualized to see how well it does though against EXT4 and ReiserFS.

Not to venture off topic but has any word come back on Reiser4's development after Hans' imprisonment?

According to some sources Reiser4 was being considered finally for inclusion in the main kernel, but so far it hasn't made it in. I wouldn't hold my breath in it being included anytime soon.

Back on topic: I just use JFS .

I've also used JFS for many years without issue. At the moment I have an ext4 based install, but that was just as an experiment to get some familiarity with it.
Though interesting, btrfs is still way to new to trust my data to.

Filesystems don't lose data, users lose data.

If it's not worth backing up properly, don't complain about losing it.

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Having a solid backup regime doesn't negate the need for reliable, proven filesystems.
Trust to your backups if you will, but I'll trust to a reliable and proven filesystem and my backups.

Another note. You may have issues with it if you like to use grub. It's much easier to get it to work with lilo as long as you have a separate /boot partition that's ext234... I don't think this is required in the 38 or 39 kernel... but it's all around easier to deal with a /boot partition that's 'normal'

I refuse to use JFS after a few "incidents".

I've seen the benchmarks of Reiser4 at Phoronix and they did seem very promising in performance.

Hopefully one day we'll see it in the partitioning script and see how useful it really is.

I wonder if or when Slack will make btrfs the default fs?
Has Alien Bob opined on this?

Alien Bob has opined on dredging up 3+ year old threads.