I’m having trouble understanding all the benefits of BTRFS and how they’ll apply to me.
Copy on Write and auto-compression seem like they will free up a bit of space.
What other practical benefits will I see from using BTRFS? Are there any noticeable performance benefits?
I use my computer to dual-boot. I don’t need snapshots because I have a custom script for a fresh install. I use my PC for gaming and work. I’ve got an NVMe, two SSD’s and one HDD.
Thanks in advance!
I thought compression would not help much with disk space as well. I believe it depends on the use case. After switching to btrfs and enabling zstd compression, my Arch install reduced from 100GB to 60 GB in terms of used disk space. Most of the savings are from documentations of development packages.
Just for reference
spoiler
~> compsize -x / Processed 699693 files, 766975 regular extents (791577 refs), 360356 inline. Type Perc Disk Usage Uncompressed Referenced
TOTAL 57% 39G 68G 69G
none 100% 23G 23G 23G
zstd 35% 15G 44G 45G
prealloc 100% 69M 69M 104M
~> compsize -x /var/lib/flatpak Processed 340412 files, 115619 regular extents (256345 refs), 209687 inline. Type Perc Disk Usage Uncompressed Referenced
TOTAL 55% 6.7G 12G 24G
none 100% 3.6G 3.6G 6.6G
zstd 36% 3.1G 8.5G 18G
~> compsize -x /home/user/.local/share/Steam Processed 219633 files, 1097250 regular extents (1111566 refs), 57457 inline. Type Perc Disk Usage Uncompressed Referenced
TOTAL 84% 249G 295G 296G
none 100% 203G 203G 203G
zstd 50% 46G 91G 92G
prealloc 100% 36M 36M 36M
~> compsize -x /home/user/.local/share/bottles Processed 18582 files, 33406 regular extents (33406 refs), 2366 inline. Type Perc Disk Usage Uncompressed Referenced
TOTAL 53% 1.8G 3.3G 3.3G
none 100% 959M 959M 959M
zstd 36% 907M 2.4G 2.4G
So it’s 29G(43%) from / + /home, 5.3G(45%) from flatpak packages, 46G(16%) from Steam, 1.5G(47%) from Bottles, ~82G total out of 380G(22%) which is nice