I see Sam Varghese has cast a critical eye on talk about btrfs in the upcoming version of Ubuntu.
I’m quite interested in this because I’m running btrfs on all my non-boot (and non-swap) partitions on my shiny new LFS-based laptop which is much cooler than all my friend’s laptops (who didn’t spend 3 weeks getting a decent console-only environment).
Grub2 and BTRFS
Setting up a system using btrfs is a bit of a chore right now, mainly because GRUB2 (1.98) doesn’t handle them properly. There’s a patch to use an older (and less correct) method to identify partitions that can work in an chrooted environment, but while that gets you going, it doesn’t keep you going.
Once your system is set up, you have to edit grub.cfg by hand – which sort of defeats the purpose of Grub2,
While this would be a big deal, this issue appears to be recognized by the Grub team, so I don’t expect it to continue. It is a concern right now, though.
BTRFS is reliable?
I’m under the general impression that btrfs is at least as reliable as ext4 was when that was rolled out in Ubuntu, so I don’t think this is a show stopper. I haven’t seen any problems, but then again that’s a very small data point indeed.
Shiney Shiney
The big question is I’m not quite sure why Ubuntu would even want to be targeting/considering/speculating on btrfs as the default in the next release.
First off, Ubuntu just went to ext4. Another filesystem-type change?
I’ve seen a few comments that raise the concern that Ubuntu might do to btrfs what some feel they did to PulseAudio – undermine it by introducing it to the “mainstream” before it was ready. I know I personally have a poor opinion of PulseAudio based only on initial exposure through Ubuntu. I won’t claim that’s Ubuntu’s fault – but I have certainly heard that argument put forward.
The bottom line, though – outside of usual Ubuntu-related sturm und drang is that there are some exciting possibilities with btrfs, and it’s likely going to be a filesystem of choice in the future.
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