I’m using EndeavourOS with ext4 file system for daily usage and a dual bootable Windows for gaming. What I want to have right now is getting rid of Windows completely.

When I tried it before, I had to try multiple tweaks for a game and find which one worked on Linux. Therefore, I want to take a snapshot with BTRFS and try it until I find the right configuration.

While I have quite a bit of experience with Linux, I’ve never used BTRFS. Do you think it’s worth it?

I thought about keeping the games on the ext4 system, but I hate splitting the disk. I’m thinking of keeping the games in a non-snapshot volume.

UPDATE: I just re-installed EndeavourOS with BTRFS + snapper + BTRFS Assistant :)

  • VictorEnglish
    5•7 months ago

    Is the compression opt-in or is it enabled by default?

      • VictorEnglish
        1•7 months ago

        Ah okay, cool. It’s that easy? Does it compress all existing data after that or is it only for new data?

        What would I have to do to compress existing data?

        • @[email protected]English
          6•7 months ago

          It is only for new data.

          For example, you would have to defragment your filesystem again with btrfs filesystem defragment -r -v -czstd /. Where zstd is an algorithm and /, a root path. With this command, the default compression level will be used, which is level 3.

          Be careful, defragmenting the btrfs file system will/can duplicate the data.

          As for a mount point, if you decided to use zstd algorithm with level 1 compression, just add the compress=zstd:1 or compress-force=zstd:1 to the mount options (fstab or while mounting manually)

          • @[email protected]English
            2•7 months ago

            Reading the manpage (btrfs-filesystem), duplication can happen on some odd kernel versions, so no danger.

            Edit: that was my interpretation of breaking up reflinks of cow data anyway. Seems there’s more.

          • ThePancakeExperimentEnglish
            1•7 months ago

            So I set up my system with btrfs in the last days and I converted two external drives (from ext4) (mainly game) and run defrag and balance, because it was mentioned in a guide to compress the existing files. Was that a bad idea? Didn’t read anything about duplicates.