What's the best file system to install Linux? - what would you recommend!?

T

thedighubs

Member

Nov 21, 2024

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• Apr 6, 2025

• #1

good day dear Friends



What is the best file system for installing Linux?

I'd just like to hear some opinions and also why you should use a particular file system.

Ext4 is reliable and quite performant.
BTRFS offers some great features that make it better for some use cases.


What's the best file system to install Linux?

Look forward to a fruitful discussion.

 

K

Klingenberg

Member

Oct 29, 2012

56

11

71

• Apr 6, 2025

• #2

I'd go with ext4. It’s simple, reliable, and just works. Btrfs has cool features, but it's a bit overkill for most people. Unless you’re doing something fancy, stick with ext4.

 

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lxskllr

No Lifer

Nov 30, 2004

59,090

9,508

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• Apr 6, 2025

• #3

Second ext4. The main reason is because it's mature and I know it works. I never felt I was lacking anything, so I'm reluctant to try new things just to try them. Not at the file system level anyway. Breakage there is waaay worse than a broken window manager or something.

 

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Red Squirrel

No Lifer

May 24, 2003

69,726

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www.betteroff.ca

• Apr 6, 2025

• #4

I've always gone EXT4 as it tends to be the default and I never had any issues with it. There may be cases where another file system is more suitable, but never ran into such case myself.

Not exactly traditional file systems, but ZFS and Ceph are something I'd like to play with at some point too, they are for creating resilient storage, think of it like raid but more advanced, and it acts as it's own file system too.

 

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M

mv2devnull

Golden Member

Apr 13, 2010

1,519

154

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• Apr 7, 2025

• #5

lxskllr said:

Second ext4. The main reason is because it's mature and I know it works. I never felt I was lacking anything, so I'm reluctant to try new things just to try them. Not at the file system level anyway. Breakage there is waaay worse than a broken window manager or something.

Click to expand...

This.

Red Hat has XFS as the default for RHEL, but I always shift to ext4 (except for very large volumes). If RH had kept btrfs in RHEL, then I'd probably use it.

 

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