One of the features that we were promised for Ubuntu 19.10, did not arrive in its entirety and that should be one of the highlights in the Focal Fossa next April is the ZFS as root. At first, it offers us interesting options, such as the possibility of creating control points natively as in Windows, but according to Linus Torvalds' response to a Linux user who has complained ... the best thing is to keep waiting.
The story is this: a user complained to the father of Linux that using ZFS "broke" his operating system. Torvalds, who has been developing the kernel for almost 30 years, has responded in a letter starting by saying that they are not responsible for what happens to operating systems. Also, he advises all of us not to use ZFS on Linux until he receives an official letter from Oracle signed by your legal advisor, which would allow you to work better, more calmly and improve the support for this file system.
Torvalds cannot work with the ZFS as he would like
The reply letter that He has written Torvalds has no waste:
Note that "we do not separate users" is literally about user space applications and the core that I maintain. If someone adds a kernel module like ZFS, they are alone. I can't keep it, and I can't be bound by other people's kernel changes. And honestly, there is no way to merge any of ZFS's efforts until you receive an official letter from Oracle signed by your senior legal counsel or preferably Larry Ellison himself saying yes, it's okay to do it and treat the end result as GPL'd.
Other people think that it may be okay to merge the ZFS code into the kernel and that the module interface does it just fine, and that's their decision. But considering the litigious nature of Oracle and the licensing questions, there is no way I can feel safe doing so. And I'm also not interested in a kind of "ZFS wedge layer" that some people seem to think would isolate the two projects. That doesn't add any value to our side, and given Oracle's interface copyright claim (see Java), I don't think it's a real license gain either.
Don't use ZFS. It's that easy. It was always more of a buzzword than anything else I think, and the licensing issues just make it not a start for me.
The benchmarks I've seen don't make ZFS look that good. And as far as I can tell, it no longer has any real maintenance, so from a long-term stability point of view, why would you want to use it in the first place?
Also noteworthy is the last part of the letter, which says that the ZFS does not improve performance of the file systems currently used in Linux. Personally, this open letter from Torvalds has surprised me a bit, but I think I will listen to it and continue as before when Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa is officially released. Perhaps, when Torvalds receives Ellison's letter, he can work with the ZFS as it should and we can be sure that the operating system is not going to stop working, it is worth it.
What if Canonical says something about it?
Canonical is promoting ZFS as root as one of the star new features of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa, so it is certain that this post crossing is being examined by the company. Probably, if they think Torvalds is wrong or they think we are not going to have a problem, they will publish information about it by April. But we also have to take into account the part where he talks about Oracle and its licenses.
Following Torvalds' words, will you be using ZFS as root starting next April?
Obviously NO ……, Greetings friend, very good articles.
I do not change EXT4 for ZFS, I cannot complain about the performance of Linux on my home PC and my work laptop and as long as it continues like this I have no intention of changing for something that is not "reliable"
ZFS is geared towards servers for its ability to handle large volumes of space, something the pedestrian user (like me) doesn't need IMHO. And then there is the licensing problem.