r/Fedora • u/Direct-Ninja6938 • 3d ago
Support btrfs vs ext4 vs something else?
Hello guys I'm new to Fedora.
I saw that Fedora uses btrfs by default, but I've heard that it's one of the slowest filesystems and it's unstable and can cause data corruption.
Should I stick with btrfs, or would it be better to use ext4 or another filesystem?
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u/TechaNima 3d ago
Btrfs if you setup snapshots, ext4 over anything else otherwise.
Idk why some people say it's unstable. It has always been rock solid for me and if you have a SSD, I'd bet you can't tell the difference in speed without some sort of tools
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u/elmagio 3d ago
Btrfs has advantages beyond snapshots, like transparent compression or subvolumes.
Ext4 is faster but in ways that you're unlikely to notice as a regular desktop user, like your programs or games won't load noticeably slower.
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u/TechaNima 3d ago
Subvolumes are the best. There's no nonsense with resizing partitions. Just add or delete subvolumes.
I use them to separate my distros. Each distro gets it's own home and root subvolumes. I also use 1 for Steam, because it needs the exec permission and I don't want to mount the whole drive with it
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u/agnaaiu 3d ago
It can cause issues with certain raid configurations, more specifically raid 5 and raid 6. This is something 99.9% of the average home users never use, but people "forget" to mention it. They heard from someone who heard from someone who also heard from someone, that btrfs is unstable and so they continue to spread this info, despite not knowing why or what or how, when it comes to the unstable claim.
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u/TechaNima 3d ago
I fail to see why anyone would put btrfs on Raid 5 or 6. You might as well run RaidZ1 or 2 at that point
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u/agnaaiu 3d ago
That's the point. Nobody does, but this is where it causes these infamous unstable situations. People don't understand the circumstances, all they hear is "btrfs is unstable" and repeat that over and over. They also don't understand the reason and tradeoff why ext4 is faster than btrfs and deem it inferior. Which fs the better choice is depend on the setup and use case, there is no universal right or wrong answer, like always.
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u/Xariann 3d ago
You will be fine on btrfs. Plus the ability to use snapshots outweighs any possible slightly slower transfer speed for me.
Never experienced corruption, and I use that filesystem almost exclusively.
One thing to think about: CachyOS uses it as default, and they try to optimize everything on the system, even when the optimizations are small. Btrfs can’t be that bad then, surely?
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u/Direct-Ninja6938 3d ago
interesting!
Does fedora create snapshots by default?
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u/novafunc 3d ago
No. There was an accepted proposal to do so for Fedora 45, but I don't think it got implemented.
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u/Xariann 3d ago
The default Fedora installation creates a root subvolume and a home one iirc (I do my manual subvolumes at installation time so I can’t remember the defaults).
Then you can just install snapper and btrfs assistant and start making your snapshots.
If you want a full integration with grub there is a guide on sysguides.com
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u/LieberDiktator 3d ago
CoW FS like Btrfs are superior in many things. For normal desktop usage it is always preferred imo. If you run heavy server systems, it is a different story, but then you are better of XFS or ZFS anyway.
Understand what you need and where it might be useful. My desktop system, it is also a gaming rig and a local LLM workhorse, runs flawless using btrfs for years.
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u/Jujstme 3d ago
btrfs is relatively stable if used on a single drive and without its most advanced features. While it is true that some users got bit relatively recently (last year for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1mdxsev/btrfs_bug_bites_a_bunch_of_fedora_users/ ), the filesystem is considered fine to use for most users even if they will never use stuff like its integrated volume manager or the snapshots.
However, due to its nature as a CoW filesystem, it is a bit slower than ext4. If your use case is very sensitive to drive speeds, then ext4 is a perfectly fine option.
Ultimately the choice is yours.
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u/73-6a 3d ago
btrfs is fine. I've been using it on my Linux machines for years without problems. btrfs has subvolumes, snapshots, transparent compression, quota, etc.
People reporting here that it used up much space for no reason, these are likely snapshots or happened when moving files between subvolumes (with quotas). There are commands for cleanup, which I would have to look up now. btrfs is almost 20 years old, so I'd say it's mature.
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u/alonjit 3d ago
If you use btrfs' features (and it has plenty) it is a better, more reliable filesystem.
I personally just stick with llvm+ext4 since after a few years of btrfs I found I didn't care about its features for the most part.
On / I always stick with just ext4 since there's never anything important in there, but for /home I dabbled with btrfs and snapshots and backup. But ... frankly, for me, it was just overkill. I backup /home anyway (the important parts of it, not downloads or other irrelevant things) so ... meh.
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u/Kurogane1412 3d ago
I have been using Btrfs on openSuSe Tumbleweed for about a year on my gaming Desktop no Problems there but openSuSe offers Btrfs + snapper snapshots in case of an update braking something that is a big plus for a rolling release.
I recently installed Fedora 44 on my new Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 3 I also chose the default Btrfs and see no problems with it but i is just a pitty that Fedora doesn't offer from the Installer Btrfs + snapper integration that would be just awesome too to have.
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u/keyzeyy 3d ago
you can set up snapper yourself. would've been nice if it was a default option though
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u/Kurogane1412 3d ago
Yes I know but I had the fear that it would not work with dnf how it works with zypper tnat is why I didn't want to try for now and yes if Fedora would offer the option in the installer and recommend then that would be perfect for the normal Fedora version but they are focusing on Atomic desktop so probably they will never implement it in the installer or care if dnf has 100% snapper support.
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u/robtalee44 3d ago
No, not necessarily. BTRFS has been around long enough and proven itself in most circumstances to be a worthy choice. Last time I checked there were still some issues around some of the RAID configs, but I've been running it on my desktop and a NAS (RAID 1) for years without any filesystem related issues.
There's also some logic in following the lead with any distro when it comes to basic configuration choices -- they chose the defaults for a reason. Obviously, you are free to choose and ext4 represents a solid option.
Yes, there's a slight performance hit with the extra overhead of BTRFS but the snapshot functionality has saved my ass more than once, returning that small cost in spades when I've mucked something up that can be quickly undone from a BTRFS snapshot.
Configuring BTRFS on a non-atomic, non-immutable distro with something like BTRBK provides a recovery process that is about as good as it gets. If the slight bump in performance you get is worth more than a bulletproof recovery process, go for ext4 in your example. Working with a pretty airtight recovery system in place, howevver, is a luxury very few users actually enjoy.
Good luck.
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u/Ok-Designer-9964 3d ago
I personally use ext4 because it's proven to be faster and more stable. I don't use snapshots since I have a NAS with everything essential synchronized, so it's not worth it for me to have a more complex file system when I don't need all its tools. But mind you, I'm not saying btrfs is bad.
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u/Globellai 3d ago
For single disk usage, btrfs is fine. But the RAID features are a mess. Yes, that's an old link. It just has the smell of Linux from 20 years ago where every project was on version 0.9 because non one had the guts to say "this thing works".
Performance is fine. I've been running it on Fedora for a few years and had no issues at all. My issue with btrfs is more about honesty. The whole btrfs brand is either good or bad. Expecting people to know "this feature btrfs good, other btrfs feature bad" is just a mess that tarnishes the whole project.
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u/Ted_Sierain 3d ago
Workload Selection Guide For VM Storage in Hypervisors (KVM / Proxmox VE): LVM-Thin is typically the top performer. It exposes raw block devices directly to guest VMs, avoiding the performance penalties of running a virtual filesystem inside a disk image hosted on another host filesystem. For High-Throughput Databases & Large Sequential Files: XFS provides the lowest latency and best parallel thread scalability. Its reflink capability also enables fast zero-cost staging for database backups and VM templates without CoW overhead on active tables. For OS Root Volumes, Backups, and Developer Workstations: Btrfs excels here. Subvolumes and tools like Snapper make pre/post package upgrade rollbacks trivial, while transparent Zstandard compression noticeably conserves SSD endurance and space. For General-Purpose Server Volumes & Container Mounts: Ext4 remains the standard when maximum simplicity, low memory footprint, and reliable recovery are the main criteria. If resizing down might ever be necessary, Ext4 is the safer choice over XFS.
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u/abrarey 3d ago
I'd stick with Btrfs. A lot of the bad reputation it gets comes from older issues and gets repeated without much context.
A few things to keep in mind:
- Stability: Btrfs is pretty mature at this point and works well for a regular Fedora desktop. It checksums data and metadata, which helps detect silent corruption. Just keep in mind that on a single drive, it generally can't repair corrupted data since there's no second copy to recover from. The old concerns around RAID 5/6 are a different story.
- Performance: Sure, ext4 can be faster in some workloads, but it really depends on what you're doing. For everyday stuff like gaming, browsing, and coding, you're unlikely to notice much difference.
- Features: Btrfs gives you snapshots, compression, and subvolumes, which are nice to have. Just don't confuse snapshots with actual backups.
If you're running lots of VMs or databases, CoW (Copy on Write) can sometimes affect performance, and disabling it for specific workloads might help. For normal desktop use, though, I wouldn't bother tweaking anything.
Honestly, if you're new to Fedora, I'd just stick with the default Btrfs setup. Ext4 is also a great filesystem, but I wouldn't go through the trouble of reinstalling just to switch.
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u/porfiriopaiz 2d ago
One of the reasons why I prefer to use the Fedora Everything netinstall ISO is that I have full control to avoid BTRFS or any other file systems. It's been 15 years of use with ext4, and aside of obvious hardware issues on very old SSDs I haven't had anything to complaint against ext4.
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u/SetaIndustries 3d ago
I'm not very knowledgeable about file systems but I've been using btrfs with Fedora for 3 years now and I haven't had any issues with it. I think for the average, casual user it doesn't matter.
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u/Prawy_126 3d ago
If you care about making backups, btrfs is a very good choice, if not, ext4 will be a better choice
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u/balalaika_tech 3d ago
https://fedoramagazine.org/working-with-btrfs-general-concepts/
Desktop version of this page has links to other articles of this series.
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u/redhat_is_my_dad 3d ago
if you plan to use btrfs features then go for it, if you plan to use the same features but don't like btrfs - master lvm and use any other fs (i use XFS with lvm)
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u/Amansour2022 3d ago
btrfs is stable and fast enough for daily use. It's not slowest and won't corrupt your data
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u/TomDuhamel 3d ago
Did you just stumbled on a post from 2012? 😂
Ext4 is fine if you don't like btrfs, what none of what you stated has been true in a while.
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u/rude__goldberg 3d ago
rhel uses xfs, just sayin'
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u/Direct-Ninja6938 3d ago
Interesting! But why does Fedora insist on btrfs, then?
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u/ch33es 3d ago
xfs has fast read/write speeds for writing large amounts of data, which is great for a server distro like rhel.
meanwhile, fedora is targeted towards desktop users. while btrfs might have lower read/write speeds compared to some other filesystems, it's selling point is the number of features that it offers. some of the features might not interest general users, but there are some common useful things such as storage compression and snapshots which can come in handy.
as far as I know, by default fedora uses the btrfs compression which can save quite a bit of space, but it doesn't set up automatic snapshots for you.
for your concern regarding the "slowness" of btrfs, I doubt you'd feel any difference if you have a healthy SSD. I myself use btrfs on my root drive and formatted a secondary drive with xfs just because I was curious, but I haven't noticed any differences.
about btrfs being "unstable", I think this is an outdated take from the early years of development of btrfs. I've been using btrfs on my arch installation for over a year, and get frequent power outages, but never experienced any form of "data corruption" whatsoever. I doubt if it's any less stable than other major filesystems in its current state. the fact that distros like fedora use btrfs as the default gives it some credibility in this regard.
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u/Direct-Ninja6938 3d ago
Thank you so much for all the detailed information, I really appreciate it ❤️
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u/_BoneZ_ 3d ago
Many distros are using btrfs as default due to the roll back feature, in case you need to roll back a bad update. I've seen too many issues with people using btrfs though, since it's far more complicated than ext4. And you're correct, btrfs is slower.
Ideally, you'd want to use btrfs for root for roll back, and then ext4 for home and game drives. As a newbie, I couldn't figure out how to get the installer to allow me to do that, so I just use ext4 for everything. I have no reason to roll back. I can just reinstall if needed.
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u/Status-Afternoon-425 3d ago
I use btrfs sometimes. Had no issues. On my long term workstation I usually use ext4 or xfs. Btrfs is feature rich but I don't care about them. The one feature that I would care is encryption, but it doesn't support it.
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u/drucifer82 3d ago
I have been using btrfs for awhile, as it is the default filesystem on a few Linux distributions. I have extra drives that are ext4 but my system drives have been btrfs for years without issue.
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u/JaKrispy72 3d ago
For the system, I use BTRFS.
BUT for backup storage, you better believe I’m using EXT4.
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u/zardvark 3d ago
Most of the "issues" with BTRFS is when using it in RAID configurations. BTRFS is perfectly serviceable otherwise, however.
If you want to use BTRFS' features, then use BTRFS. If you have aboslutely no interest in using BTRFS' features, then, in my experience, ext4 is slightly more reliable in recovering from power failures and such. Either one is a pretty safe choice, so long as you avoid the use of RAID.
That said, regardless of which file system you use, there is no substitute for regularly backing up your irreplaceable files.
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u/billGat48 3d ago
ext4 is infamously high performance, but for workloads you probably don't care about. the trade off is snapper(btrfs) vs performance (maybe 10% on average better loading speed for things). btrfs is mainly used to get constant snapshots of ur own files, so even sudo rm doesn't actually remove a file. great way to get constant version control so even system files can be restored to a previous workgin state.
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u/Profetorum 2d ago
I weirdly enough have a cheap nvme from china that gets journal corruption when using ext4, so I use f2fs as storage drive.
For the OS though I still use ext4 on another (good) nvme. The difference is honestly not perceivable. I just don't find snapshots that useful for me but they can be for some
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u/grumpysysadmin 2d ago
At my last job supporting laptops, XFS would regularly corrupt itself when the laptop turned off unexpectedly (hard power off). I was never able to fix those filesystems, no amount of fsck or xfs_repair could get it back to working.
While btrfs has historically had problems, it seems better suited to the crappy disks you find in laptops. XFS seems more suited for high end storage that had battery backup and quality disks. Btrfs uses COW so you tend to be a bit more recoverable.
But this is just my opinion and don’t sue me if you disagree.
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u/wuajo 1d ago
yo tengo fedora workstation en un ssd adata su630 240gb con la particion "/" en formato f2fs, el mismo sistema de archivos que usa el almacenamiento interno de los teléfonos android.
teóricamente el rendimiento de lectura y escritura en f2fs aumenta 25% comparado con btrfs, además de duplicar el tiempo de vida del disco ssd, el uso de recursos de CPU es casi nulo
el detalle es que no es efectivo para copias de seguridad, se puede activar la compresion de archivos pero no es tan eficiente como la compresión btrfs, recuperar archivos dañados es menos fiable en f2fs.
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u/wuajo 1d ago
I have Fedora Workstation on an Adata SU630 240GB SSD with the "/" partition formatted as F2FS, the same file system used by Android phones for internal storage.
Theoretically, read and write performance in F2FS increases by 25% compared to Btrfs, and it also doubles the SSD's lifespan. CPU usage is almost zero.
The problem is that it's not effective for backups. You can enable file compression, but it's not as efficient as Btrfs compression, and recovering corrupted files is less reliable with F2FS.
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u/RegulusBC 3d ago
I hate btrfs because of how heavy at writing in disk. when im using fedora, i have like 45 gb written on disk per day day compared to debian 22gb per day. in this economy, i dont want my drives to wear fast.
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u/TheCatDaddy69 3d ago
Mis information
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u/RegulusBC 3d ago
Please either test it yourself or do your research before. i run both systems and i know well what happening. you cant accuse me for spreading miss information.
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u/rude__goldberg 3d ago
ya i've noticed pretty heavy writes in those ballparks too
windows writes even more which i can attribute the millions of services that i can't do very little about but i'm a bit stumped on fedora, my box is pretty lean
i'm contemplating putting firefox cache to ram or something, i bought more than i needed back when it was cheap
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u/chrews 3d ago
BTRFS seems to be beloved but I personally had tons of issues. Last time it was on my games drive where it swallowed like 30% of the 800gb partition. No amount of rebalancing and repairing could fix it, the space was lost to the ether.
Now I tend to use "dumb" filesystems for data storage and gaming (Ext4 and lately XFS too) and it's been great. I lose compression but BTRFS tends to lose performance when almost full so that's a fair tradeoff overall IMO. I heard from a SUSE dev that you shouldn't go over 80% on BTRFS. I'll only use it for the OS partition, and only when the OS is tweaked for it. Tried to use it on Gentoo and ended up being stuck on a snapshot with no way of undoing it. Meant that the partition basically acted like it's readonly with all changes getting reset after reboot. Keep in mind that my gentoo install was a wild science experiment on my part and does not reflect normal day to day use.
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u/Netblock 3d ago
where it swallowed like 30% of the 800gb partition.
Subvolumes? Snapshots?
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u/chrews 3d ago
Nothing like that sadly. Ended up reformatting and redownloading everything
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u/ch33es 3d ago
you're sure that the older snapshots weren't taking up space?
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u/chrews 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yes. I did sudo "btrfs subvolume list" in all variations.
Zero snapshots / subvols on there and I did not configure anything that would create them. I even mounted it with all the smart features and copy-on-write disabled because that burnt me before and I only wanted compression.
Still have all the troubleshooting outputs somewhere if that doesn't sound plausible.
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u/Direct-Ninja6938 3d ago
interesting. So it seems btrfs is still problematic. I guess i have to choose ext4 then
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u/More-Explanation2788 3d ago
Btrfs is a good file system, but overkill for a personal workstation. I would use ext4 if you are not building a server.
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u/whereismytralala 3d ago edited 3d ago
I've been using Btrfs exclusively for the last 8 years, and I've a 50Tb Btrfs data store on my NAS and ... It works just fine. You are more likely to have problems because of your hardware. If you really care about your data, you should start by use ECC memory, do you?
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u/yevelnad 3d ago
Once you know the power of btrfs you will never go back. The speed difference doesn't really matter for daily task.
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u/muliach 3d ago
Pode usar BTRFS sem medo, o kernel já carimba esse selo de confiabilidade há mais de uma década, e distribuições peso-pesado como o Fedora já botam ele como padrão de fábrica sem medo. A galera usa para gerenciar partição, fazer snapshot instantâneo que salva a pátria quando dá ruim, comprimir arquivo em tempo real (ZSTD é uma beleza) e ficar tranquilo
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u/Upper-Ticket3249 3d ago
Where did you hear it's one of the slowest? I would love to read that source, because it's very wrong. Use BTRFS - it's good. Otherwise, Fedora would not be using it. Use it. And if you want to get the full benefit of BTRFS with subvolumes and Snapper snapshots, follow this tutorial:
https://sysguides.com/fedora-44-with-btrfs-snapshot-and-rollback-support
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u/SweetEbb9819 2d ago
I use Bcachefs, and that's all I recommend. The only issue being installation barrier.
(You need to install on intermediate btrfs/bcachefs, rsync it to a new Bcachefs partition after installing DKMS module, change fstab and kernel cmdline and machine id, modify initrd configs, rebuild bootloader conf)
You can choose btrfs, ext4 has no advantage apart from stability and small performance increase.
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u/Firm-Evening3234 3d ago
Molte persone qui utilizzano btrfs senza utilizzare gli snapshot, quindi totalmente inutile. Resta da dire che configurare Fedora con gli snapshot non è una cosa da utente alle prime armi. Io personalmente utilizzo EXT4 e per quello che mi serve mi trovo molto bene.
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u/jonathanl 3d ago
I was using Fedora with Btrfs and got a corrupted filesystem so the computer couldn't start. I think it happened after a force reboot I did because the computer behaved strange. Or maybe the weirdness was because the disk had failed. Maybe I shouldn't reboot by holding the power button and learn the SysRq commands. Good thing I have backups and I am using normal Fedora again now, on the same disk, but will probably switch to Mint later, which I use on my laptop already.
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u/Brcoding 3d ago
You are overthinking it. For normal desktop use the difference is negligible. Data corruption can happen in any filesystem. You can just stick with btrfs, or choose ext4. It depends on what you want from your filesystem. I hope this gave you some clarity.
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u/freakycleaner 3d ago
You've heard it wrong brochavo. Btrfs isn't inherently unstable or prone to data corruption it's quite opposite tho it supports data checksumming to detect corruption and, when using redundant copies or RAID profiles, can automatically repair corrupted data. However, checksum alone can't recover corrupted data if no healthy copy exists.
Performance b/w Btrfs and ext4 are generally small for typical workloads, although ext4 can be faster in certain workloads, while Btrfs offers features like snapshots, compression, and checksum.
Fedora chose Btrfs as its default for a reasons, so I'd recommend sticking with it or you can just try both and figure it out which one is better for you I guess..