On Mon, 31 May 2021 22:07:35 +1200
Robin Klitscher
After long resisting the idea, I hope to switch from ext4 to btrfs for my next installation, Leap 15.3.
The openSUSE norm is btrfs for / and xfs for /home, each in separate partitions, right? But, in contrast as I understand it, it seems Fedora’s default is for a single btrfs partition for both.
Why the difference? That is, why a separate /home in Leap? And why xfs rather than btrfs anyway?
Personally, I don't think it's important or even necessary to have a separate /home. What I believe is important is to have all of your data under your home directory in a different filesystem. So my home directory /home/dhoworth is in one filesystem, whilst all my documens for example are in /home/dhoworth/Documents/ and that is in a different filesystem. There is a symbolic link from my home directory Documents -> /another-filesystem/Documents and so on for all my directories. The point is that when I upgrade my system, or run another operating system, all my data is available but is completely safe from whatever the upgrade does.
And a supplementary question. What are the implications if I wanted to use additional data partition(s) besides /home? Should they be in btrfs? Or xfs? Or doesn’t it matter?