Is there a stable Linux distro using btrfs?

Question

I'm a big fan of ZFS on FreeBSD (I've been using it on my home server since before it got stable; bleeding edge, baby!) and I'd like to try out btrfs to see how that's evolving.

Since it's still largely in development, none of the usual mainstream distros have btrfs as an option. I haven't used Linux in a bunch of years, so I don't really know what my best options are for giving btrfs a try.

Requirements:

• easy to install
• btrfs supported without requiring me to rebuild the kernel

Thanks!

Answer 1

openSUSE 11.3 has btrfs support, and is pretty awesome.

Btrfs has been developed to become the next generation default Linux file system. openSUSE is the first distribution that lets you choose Btrfs in the installer.

The installer will warn you that Btrfs is still experimental, so be cautious of using it on production system. You also have to remember to setup a separate /boot partition as the boot loader will not boot from a Btrfs partition yet.

openSUSE fanboi here

Answer 2

Besides openSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP2 provides support (not technology preview) for Btrfs.

Besides Btrfs, openSUSE 12.1 and SLE[SD]11SP2 also ships with the Snapper utility, which will help you manage snapshots. Both Snapper and its YaST plugin (yast snapper) provide the function to discover the content of a snapshot and the difference compared to another snapshot. The YaST disk partitioning module is also aware of Btrfs and will provide a recommended setup for subvolumes.

Answer 3

Debian supports it.

I've had it installed on a server of mine and running for about six months now. No issues, really.

Answer 4

Ubuntu support Btrfs as well, quote from official ubuntu Btrfs

As of 11.04-beta1,
 it is possible to use only btrfs file systems with the caveat
 that grub _MUST_NOT_ be installed to the boot sector
 of the btrfs volume containing /boot. 

Answer 5

I've been using Btrfs on KDE Neon User Edition for over two years and it has been faultless for me. I used it on a single HD, then created a RAID1 with two HDs, then converted back to a singleton with two HDs to maximize my free space. I use a third HD in my laptop (CDROM Cadddy) for using Btrfs send & receive to store backup snapshots.

Btrfs is offered in Kubuntu or Neon as a fs during the install. You can give it the whole disk (/dev/sda) or a partition (/dev/sda1). The partition is better. Based on Ubuntu, either creates the primary subvolumes @ and @home. Other distros, like OpenSuSE, create a dozen or so default subvolumes. Lines in /etc/fstab bind @ to / and @home to /home. Oshunluver on Kubuntuforuums.net explains how you can use Btrfs to install multiple distros, selectable at boot, and give each one access to all the available free space. There's no need to preassign sizes to subvolumens.

Using snapper and other automatic snapshotting apps can get you into disk space shortage very quickly unless your snapper.conf is tuned properly. After trying snapper I uninstalled it. The Btrfs snapshot commands are so easy that I open a Konsole and issue them manually, especially before an update or an experiment. If, while updating or experimenting, you break something, rather than taking hours or days to fix it just do a 3 minute rollback.

If you plan to run VirtualBox on a Btrfs system you have two choices: Use a fixed size virtual HD, or for dynamic virtual HDs, give the folder into which you will create your virtual HDs the NOCOW property first.

Because Btrfs makes it SO EASY to backup and restore I will never be going back to EXT4. ZFS isn't a default root fs on most distros yet, but when it does appear in that capacity I will give it a try.

Answer 6

Sabayon linux (Gentoo-based) has btrfs support too, is easy to install and is much more newbie-freindly than Gentoo.