this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2024

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Btrfs should've been Wayland (lemmy.zip)

submitted 7 months ago by possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip to c/linux@lemmy.world

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I think the problem with btrfs is that it entered the spotlight way to early. With Wayland there was time to work on a lot of the kinks before everyone started seriously switching.

On btrfs a bunch of people switched blindly and then lost data. This caused many to have a bad impression of btrfs. These days it is significantly better but because there was so much fear there is less attention paid to it and it is less widely used.

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[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 15 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (24 children)

tbh the situation with Wayland was not too different, and wouldn't have been better. Compared to Wayland, brtfs dodged a bullet. Overhyped, oversold, overcrowdsourced, literally years behind the system it was supposed to "replace" when it was thrown into production. To this day, wayland can't even complete a full desktop session login on my machine.

So, if you ask me, btrfs should *definitively not * have been Wayland! Can you imagine if btrfs had launched on Fedora, and then you formatted your partition as btrfs to install Linux, but the installer could not install into it? "brtfs reports a writer is not available", says the installer. You go to the forums to ask what's going on, why the brtfs does not work. The devs of brtfs respond with "oh it's just a protocol; everyone who wants to write files into our new partition format have to implement a writer themselves".

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[–] lancalot@discuss.online 15 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)

Both Fedora and openSUSE default to Btrfs. That's all the praise it needs really.

With Bcachefs still being relatively immature and the situation surrounding (Open)ZFS unchanged, Btrfs is the only CoW-viable option we got. So people will definitely find it, if they need it. Which is where the actual issue is; why would someone for which ext4 has worked splendidly so far, even consider switching? It's the age-old discussion in which peeps simply like to stick to what already works.

Tbh, if only Debian would default to Btrfs, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You are welcome to start a movement to get Debian to switch. You will be swimming up stream but you are welcome to try. Debian has been the same for decades and people like that.

[–] lancalot@discuss.online 5 points 7 months ago (2 children)

You didn't get my point. Btrfs is one OG distro removed from being THE standard. It's doing a lot better than you're making it out to be.

It's not like Btrfs is dunking on all other file systems and Debian is being unreasonable by defaulting to ext4. Instead, Btrfs wins some of its battles and loses others. It's pretty competent overall, but ext4 (and other competing file systems) have their respective merits.

Thankfully, we got competing standards that are well-tested. We should celebrate this diversity instead of advocating for monocultures.

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[–] bargo@mastodon.tn 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

@lancalot @possiblylinux127 eh, also Garuda defaults to BTRFS, EOS does not default to BTRFS, but it has an option on their Calamares

[–] lancalot@discuss.online 1 points 7 months ago (8 children)

I wanted to stick to (what I'd refer to as) OG distros; so independent distros that have kept their relevance over a long period of time.

But you're correct, Garuda Linux and others default to Btrfs as well. At this point, I'd argue it's the most sensible option if snapshot functionality is desired from Snapper/Timeshift.

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[–] Sivecano@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 7 months ago

I think the main difference is that while a graphical session can work through some issurs, a file system is not allowed to fail under any circumstances. The bar is way higher and stability a lot more important.

[–] nanook@friendica.eskimo.com 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Wayland didn't work out networking, even to this day, which is why I'm still using Xorg.

[–] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 2 points 7 months ago

waypipe?

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 7 months ago (5 children)

Wayland as a protocol that apps use to talk to the desktop. It doesn't use network at all really.

You need something like freeRDP for network access.

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[–] hummus273@feddit.org 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

X's network transparency is overrated IMHO. Since ages most data on desktops is sent via shared memory to the X server (MIT-SHM extension) otherwise the performance would suck. This does not work over the network and so X over the network is actually quite slow. Waypipe works way better for me than SSH X forwarding.

[–] nanook@friendica.eskimo.com 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

@hummus273 It's overrated because you don't use it, I frequently do. If all you want to do is emulate Windows than Wayland is fine. If you need network functionality it is not.

[–] hummus273@feddit.org 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You assume I'm not using it. On the contrary, I use it a lot at work. We have some old TK interfaces. They take ages to load over the network. The interfaces load much faster when using Xvnc running on the remote machine rather than X forwarding (but it is not as convenient).

[–] nanook@friendica.eskimo.com 2 points 7 months ago (6 children)

@hummus273 Xvnc does not allow you to display individual applications only an entire desktop. I'm monitoring about 20 different computers doing different things and for me it is a significant advantage not to have to bring up a whole desktop but to be able to launch a single graphical application on my existing desktop.

I don't really understand the degree of emotional attachment people have to one solution or another. For me it's a simple application case, for me Wayland is not desirable, not only does it not network, but the embedded X-server as part of the kernel works very effectively by avoiding the kernel/userland switches an ordinary X server would require.

So for my use case, Wayland is NOT a replacement and so I have to object to people arguing that it is a full replacement for X, it is not.

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[–] nanook@friendica.eskimo.com 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

@hummus273 I have a 1gbit network connection at the co-lo, and 180mb/s cable and I don't have any lag using X tunneled through ssh.

[–] hummus273@feddit.org 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Not having any lag is physically impossible. You don't notice it maybe. But if I open Firefox with X forwarding on the same network (1gbe) it is very noticeable for me.

[–] nanook@friendica.eskimo.com 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

@hummus273 Perhaps not because I'm not trying to game, and I can't detect any changes faster than about 1/50th of a second anyway so fps faster than 50 is more or less moot for me.

[–] hummus273@feddit.org 1 points 7 months ago

Firefox is not a game?

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