Once you vote, I made the poll single entry) maybe you want to say why or what you think of one over the other, or if you have a mix of computers/file systems. Even though Calamares installer may not yet support all of the file systems, you can use the command line to create some of the file systems. e.g.
I use btrfs and even the developer of ext4 thinks it is where Linux is heading. Yet, there are those who still think it is too young and unstable.
Let’s have a healthy polite discussion on file systems.
I’m a total noob, so I’m using ext4 for system partition and xfs for home and other partitions. I’ve read that xfs has some beneffits over ext4. Also, I’m aware that btrfs is much better, but I’m not ready for it… I’ll keep learning in order to be able to use all of its advantages, otherwise, I guess is the same to use ext4.
Spent years on ext4, no problems to speak of really. But I decided to finally dip my toes in a bit more and I just did a clean install with Btrfs.
Edit: I meant to add for my laptop, I’m really only interested in filesystems that are supported by the kernel by default. Anything involving extra steps and/or AUR packages and custom kernels and I’m just afraid I’ll mess it up
Backups and CoW, are why I use btrfs. I remember being on ext4 using Timeshift but it only supports rsync–so slow.
These days the system is more refined with Dalto’s Btrfs Assistant. Now I may send the snapshots also to an local device (formatted in Btrfs). So now I can boot up into a snapshot. That’s what I was expecting from ext4, but could not find the combination to do that.
I don’t use Timeshift, so I don’t have those problems.
I used to use it a couple of years ago, but I discovered that in my use case, snapshots were just a waste of space, and that it is more fun to fix problems yourself anyway. It’s a bit how newbies reinstall their OS every time they mess up the desktop theme or whatever.
I was surprised the poll was ‘single entry’, as I rarely mange that IRL! I have builds that are all ext4, some that are f2fs+ext4, and several with btrfs or ext4 WITH zfs for the data drives. I may go ALL zfs in the end, but like others I’m hoping that zfs-assistant might show up to help! Not quite sure if my coding is up to attempting to that myself! (OK - probably not).
So far - ext4 has never been a bad choice, but btrfs has settled a LOT recently, and with the assistant becomes a viable system with enabled features, IMO.
I made several attempts with Btrfs in the last 2 years, but did not do what I wanted (keyword: 2nd installed kernel). Now I’m back to the tried and true .
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Nah, get ExFAT for Windoze, much more versatile.
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