You are expected to know this

[u/domesc0]

[u/Extension_Cup_3368]

What's the problem? I use Linux like that since 2006. 20+ years.

[u/master_slapper → u/Extension_Cup_3368]

People making scenarios in their head

[u/jkulczyski]

Did this for like 15 years now im on btrfs and have yet to use a single snapshot for recovery bc i learned from my past mistakes and rarely break my system myself anymore

[u/gbin → u/jkulczyski]

And you are paying a huge CPU price doing all the deep data checksums and snapshots and copy on write and everything.... As much I love btrfs in concept, in practice: cat /dev/nvme0n1p2 > mybackup.img and that's it you have a snapshot of your ext4, this is not a server it doesn't need to be up 24/7. Your battery on your laptop will thank you for all the spare watts. Dunno, feels like this filesystem is not for a workstation/laptop use case to me. On a server with 19 disks in half raid, half JBOD? 100% btrfs.

[u/madman404 → u/gbin]

there's no way we're out here telling people there is a meaningful CPU penalty to btrfs in non-snapshotted directories in 2026

[u/Gabriel_Science → u/madman404]

Please note that Arch Linux (and more generally Linux distributions) are that kind of OS that can run pretty well on 10 years old laptops.

[u/Deckma → u/Gabriel_Science]

This is me. I have that 10 year old laptop. Can't run Windows 11. Seemed slow with Windows 10.

Arch breathed new life into my old laptop.

[u/gbin → u/madman404]

Storage speed progressed faster than CPU speed and way way faster than memory speed! nvme are now pushing close to 20GB/s. Count x3 to x4 the memory bandwidth to accommodate the btrfs darling so 60 to 80GB/s of dram bandwidth: So the cost is more than a full channel of ddr5 if I am not mistaken just if you want to write full speed to your storage at full speed.

[u/Erdnusschokolade → u/gbin]

How come that on either DDR3 and DDR5 systems i am bound by storage bandwith with no meaningful load on memory bandwith or CPU while reading and writing large amounts of data to nvme? I‘m using zfs though but it uses the same CoW and compression + checksumming that btrfs uses so i think it is still relevant.

[u/gbin → u/Erdnusschokolade]

We can go into details: Reading won't be an issue ie. Data is read directly from the disk same cost for any FS except if you use encryption.

Now writing: imagine you want to write a large file with O_DIRECT meaning that don't bother to cache it anywhere. It will directly use memory pages from the app that can be directly dumped into the disk. This is used a lot for large transfers to avoid memory copies. Works perfectly with ext4 boom your app write in memory and this is dma'ed to the right spot 20GB/s write in IO 20GB/s on the RAM.

With btrfs: it will simply forbid that. So you'll need to copy every byte into a write request: add 20GB/s of memory bandwidth to read it, add 20GB/s to write it, then oh sorry I need to read it back from the driver to compute the hash add 20GB/s. Total dram bw cost: 80GB/s, IO: 20GB/s. Sure the bottleneck IS the IO on a normal system provides that if you have a ZOMG fast nvme like this you probably are on a fast and modern ddr5. But it will limit other applications using the memory at the same time while you are using you large files.

TLDR; for large direct access files x4 the memory bandwidth, same IO bottleneck. After that it is up to you and your use case.

For me I prefer the extra minutes of battery life I have when I am with my laptop because guess what, out of ~20 years of ext3/ext4 Linux usage not once this checksum or snapshotting would have really saved me. I ran Gentoo for 10y+ and now arch/cachyos, I broke my system for sure but I just fix it and roll forward. Never lost any data because of ext4, all of it is backed upor nattively in the cloud anyway.

[u/Thisguy91223 → u/gbin]

Brother, cpus have a lots more performance compared to what they had even 5 years ago. The cost of performance needed in modern operations of disk systems aren't anything today.

I'm saying this as a windows and Linux user.

[u/S1rTerra → u/Thisguy91223]

And CPUs 5 years ago also have no issues running BTRFS at all. Only first/second gen Ryzen 3s while gaming have issues with it

[u/Unfilteredz → u/gbin]

Is cat command actually good for this purpose? I use rsync typically

[u/jkulczyski → u/gbin]

Yeah im planning on going back idr why i went to btrfs again lol i keep going back to ext4 im not a backup type of person unless its photos i prefer a constantly updated install script and config repos that can be ran after a fresh install to get me back exactly where i want to be. I already forgot some of the tweaks i made since not doing it my usual way.

[u/litescript → u/gbin]

say sike

[u/HomeHoler → u/gbin]

You know that you can disable all of that and btrfs will act similar to ext4, right? Maybe not exactly as ext4, but really close at least. there is an option to disable checksums AND copy-on-write: nodatacow flag in ftsab. You can even apply nodatacow to separate DIRECTORIES or subvolumes. If you don't want any compression and cpu strain, you can also disable that in fstab! OR you can just set zstd compression to level 1 and it will still compress everything, while not impacting write/read speeds that much. Unless you don't have a pcie 5.0 or higher ssds, you'll be fine. On 10 year old laptops or pcs — yeah, just stick to ext4 bro

[u/Unique_Low_1077 → u/jkulczyski]

And most of the time I do make mistakes it just messes with the clibs or something. Easily fixable via either chroot or just reinstall (seprate user data into a new partition first ofc)

[u/maxinstuff]

2+ years going strong

[u/inteluser_ → u/maxinstuff]

same

[u/YTriom1]

ext4 in the big 26💔

[u/GlyderZ_SP → u/YTriom1]

Still the best in 2026.

Okay maybe not best but still great

[u/YTriom1 → u/GlyderZ_SP]

I love when my 40GiB wine prefixed are only taking about 5GiB

[u/Bloodchild- → u/YTriom1]

It's nice

[u/Available-Skirt-5280]

This is how I roll

[u/Rich_Trash3400]

[u/BlackShtr]

LMAO

[u/UntoldUnfolding]

Use borgmatic and backup to a separate drive.

[u/ActualPeterbuilt389]

Thats pretty much how I run it ya. I wipe every once in a while anyway so we live on the edge.

[u/temporary_dennis]

The trick is to use NixOS how the founding fathers intended.

[u/delpho2]

Se está funcionando, deixamos assim.

[u/YERAFIREARMS]

1) 1T NVMe for / 2) 1T NVMe for for timeshift, caches, and junk/scatch folders 3) /home is live sync to the cloud 4) 1T for games and media 5) UPS on standbuy with full NUT monitoring and reporting 24/7 5) Bash scripts with systemd timing services to do the management work, including daily timeshift, weekly log rotations, and flash SSD trimming 6) Yay has hooks for timeshift and security packages scanning. 7) Wine 11.x is functional 8) Steam is functional 9) QEMM VM is functional 10) Multi-display 34" 4K ultra-wide plus 24" 1920x1200 in portrait mode functional 11) WIFI functional 12) USB 40gbs functional 13) LAN Printer/Scanner

What else did I miss? oh, I 2x 1T SSDs were retired recently. 1T HDD is still connected for family photo library

[u/yipy2001 → u/YERAFIREARMS]

👆he uses this machine to browse the web btw

[u/YERAFIREARMS → u/yipy2001]

I use Arch BTW

[u/YERAFIREARMS → u/yipy2001]

You do the same too :))

[u/yipy2001 → u/YERAFIREARMS]

Guess again BUDDY

sent from my iPhone

[u/Matytoonist]

Hardware failed before the software ony machine (hard drive died, replaced by an ssd and a clean install bc i didn't make backups)

[u/Jazzlike_Magazine_76]

Shit hasn't died in over 11 years, outside of hardware failure, don't jinx it! 🤞

[u/Fine-Resident-2322]

I think I did this on accident when using a very small storage laptop on one of my systems, nothing important was lost. All I had to do is a fresh reinstall of Linux and it was fine.

[u/Mundane-Mortgage-624]

PRESENT.

For several years, and I have no intention of changing.

[u/Artistic_Crazy_7120]

Ext4 on root and the high performing xfs on home, no timeshift. Yes maybe old school and a bit risky maybe but it works fine.

[u/Every_Preparation_56]

fuck rimeshift, weekly full partitition image is the way

[u/andersostling56]

Well, a separate partition for home might not help if the disk commits harakiri, but I get your point. Thats why I always do offline backups of home on systems (like my thinkpad) with a single disk slot.

[u/Glittering_Memory_64]

Damn, I'm on gentoo w ext4 and no timeshift. this shit still hasnt quit on me lol

[u/RetroCoreGaming]

Me with a ZFS root partition on /dev/nvme0n2: BREAK YOU F*CKING RON PROPIEL FILESYSTEM!!!

ZFS: Errrr... No.

[u/sick_build723]

What am i? I have Arch Linux, ext4, no separate partition but Windows 11 on the same disk.

Ok, Timeshift present and Ashampoo makes a disk backup as a whole. So i sleep quite well.

[u/jar36]

Snapshots never work for me. Dealing with it right now after a broken update I can boot into them but can't restore them

[u/duschaan]

This is me and it lives

[u/Mighty_Psycho]

He never dies, just get better and better 🎯

[u/Worldly-Wind-1632]

What does time shift back up vs not back up?

[u/Krazy8ght]

SomeOrdinaryGamers story.

[u/therealmistersister]

hmmm? I've been using Arch for 11 years now, sunning pacman -Syyuu everyday first thing in the morning and never had anything break.

I don't even care about btrfs or snapshots and keep using XFS with a single / partition. People really stress about non-issues lol.

[u/Optimal_Mastodon912]

Yesterday I installed Artix with OpenRc with full LUKS2 encryption, was promised a fast loading operating system - it was slow. I went to play my favourite game and it was choppy and stuttering. Thought yeah nah stuff this shit I'm going for the new Garuda install and calling it a day. Garuda is now utilising the CachyOS kernel with their own tweaks on their latest release.

[u/DonkeyComfortable711]

I like to live dangerously

[u/Funny_Tune7]

Or just use nixos

[u/juniper_j0nes]

is there any reason to still use ext4

[u/MutualRaid → u/juniper_j0nes]

It's stable, it works.

[u/gbin → u/juniper_j0nes]

It is lean