I want to learn more about file systems from the practical point of view so I know what to expect, how to approach them and what experience positive or negative you had / have.
I found this wikipedia’s comparison but I want your hands-on views.
For now my mental list is
- NTFS - for some reason TVs on USB love these and also Windows + Linux can read and write this
- Ext4 - solid fs with journaling but Linux specific
- Btrfs - some modern fs with snapshot capability, Linux specific
- xfs - servers really like these as they are performant, Linux specific
- FAT32 - limited but recognizable everywhere
- exFAT - like FAT32 but less recognizable and less limited
So, genuine question: why btrfs instead of zfs? Sounds like your use case would fit the latter.
BTRFS is zero effort on root, because it is included in kernel. ZFS on root is extra effort at least on Arch, due to licensing restrictions.
Additionally, at least for my use-case btrfs benefits me since it is less picky about drive sizes being the same and duplicating everything correctly - letting you essentially just throw additional storage at it as you acquire it.
Does ZFS handle data duplication on unequal sized volumes or heterogeneous pools? I don’t believe so, and BTRFS was a first class installer option.