Linux Mint 10 is the first version of Linux Mint with built-in support for the B-tree File System (btrfs). Btrfs is one of the newest file systems in the Linux kernel.

Like many recent Linux releases, Mageia's installer supports btrfs, a copy-on-write file system with built-in support for subvolumes, filesystem-based RAID 0/1/10, online resizing, etc.

It is still under development, and not yet recommended for use in a production, but it is already the default file system on MeeGo, and is slated to be the default on Fedora 16.

The default journaling file system on non-boot partitions on Ubuntu 11.04 is ext4. Other journaling file systems supported are ext3, xfs, jfs, reiserfs, and btrfs. The journaling file system of interest in this article is btrfs, the B-Tree File System. Btrfs is an ongoing attempt to create a ZFS-like file system for Linux.

Earlier this week we reported that Ubuntu has plans for the Btrfs file-system in 2011 and 2012 by providing support for installing Ubuntu Linux to a Btrfs file-system. This information was based upon documents coming out of the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Brussels, but it turns out that Canonical may actually deploy Btrfs this year.

Ubuntu 10.10 beta is the latest Linux distribution release to have support for the btrfs file system. Btrfs (B-tree File System) is a copy-on-write file system for Linux. It changes how we manage disks on Linux.

This tutorial presents a step by step guide on how to install Ubuntu 10.10 beta on a btrfs file system.

ext3 and ext4 file systems can be converted to btrfs. For non-root file systems, this can be done online (i.e., without reboot), while for root file systems we need to boot into some kind of rescue system or Live CD. This guide explains how to convert an ext3 or ext4 root file system into btrfs on Ubuntu 12.10 and how to roll back to ext3/ext4 again if desired.

Recently when benchmarking the Btrfs and EXT4 file-systems we were left surprised that the performance of the next-generation Btrfs file-system had regressed against EXT4 to the point where the evolutionary file-system is measurably faster in a greater number of disk benchmarks.

Fedora 15, the latest stable release of the Red Hat-sponsored Linux distribution, is the first Fedora release to have btrfs as a file system option during the installation process. On earlier versions, you would have had to pass the btrfs option to Anaconda at boot time to install Fedora on a btrfs file system.

One month ago we provided benchmarks of the Btrfs file-system and found that while it contained many features to make it a next-generation Linux file-system, its disk performance was rather displeasing. In Btrfs there the solid-state drive mode can be enabled.