On Feb 28, 2014, at 1:45 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam(a)redhat.com> wrote:
On Thu, 2014-02-27 at 23:16 -0700, Chris Murphy wrote:
> It's XFS vs ext4 and Server WG has agreed on XFS on LVM.
As a server WG member I voted +1 on XFS as I have no particular
objection to XFS as a filesystem, but I do think it seems a bit
sub-optimal for us to wind up with server and desktop having defaults
that are very similar but slightly different, for no apparently great
reason.
There are good reasons to use XFS by default for Server.
I wrote out a list of reasons in favor of plain ext4 for Workstation. [1] But then I saw
this little line in the Workstation PRD: "While the developer workstation is the main
target of this system and what we try to design this for, we do of course also welcome
other users to the Fedora Workstation."
So my little plain ext4 list is maybe ignorable if there's some good reason why
developers should have LVM by default. I see no disadvantage or advantage of developers
having ext4 vs XFS. So that part is a wash.
The way I'd decide this is if simplicity meets the requirements of developers, then do
that, and do it with ext4. If they need LVM, then I'd go with parity with Server and
do XFS on LVM (or LVMthinp if they do that).
Is xfs really so much
better for servers, and ext4 so much better for desktops, that it's
worth the extra development/maintenance to allow Desktop to use ext4 and
Server to use xfs?
There are advantages for server using XFS, even for the smaller percent (?) who may end up
using the default installation path. There's no negative I think of for Workstation
using XFS. So I'd say make them both XFS.
Basically, what I'm saying is that if Desktop would be OK with
using
xfs-on-LVM as default with all choices demoted to custom partitioning
(no dropdown), as Server has currently agreed on, that'd be great.
Yes.
Right now we seem to be sleepwalking into a situation where server
and
desktop diverge but no-one particularly *wants* that, which seems a bit
off.
Yeah. I pretty much see it as an LVM question. If not LVM, sure ext4 meets the
requirements and it's a very slightly simpler layout because we'd need an ext4
boot anyway. If yes to LVM, just do what Server is doing. Workstation isn't hurt by
it.
Chris Murphy
[1] Reasons in favor of plain ext4 for Workstation.
1. It's simple to install, test, and for the user to maintain and understand.
2. Most users, especially Windows and OS X users, don't grok LVM at all and don't
benefit from it.
3. It's the layout most users new to Linux are used to.
4. The anaconda team was going to use plain ext4 in Fedora 18 with newui.
5. Would simplify custom partitioning's "click here to create them
automatically" as a starting point.
6. It will in fact boot the computer. The only way to get any simpler is a single ext4
partition including use of a swapfile.