[gentoo-dev] Re: Gentoo-sources - should we stable?

[Duncan]

Mike Pagano posted on Fri, 02 Jan 2015 15:46:21 -0500 as excerpted:

> We have had a lot of stable kernels with a not-so-stable btrfs.  That's
> a whole conversation in itself.  There are pieces of the kernel that are
> in a, shall we say, less stable state than others.

On btrfs FWIW...

As a gentoo/~arch btrfs user myself and reasonably active on the btrfs 
list, I'd *never* recommend btrfs in anything like its current state to a 
gentoo-stable user.  Just tonite, before I switched to this list I was on 
the btrfs list, and I just got thru posting a reply to someone running 
ubuntu with a 3.13 series kernel, suggesting they upgrade to something 
newer than the paleolithic.

I'll repeat what I said there.  There are valid reasons to wish to stick 
with a tested stable system, but those reasons and the reasons one would 
choose btrfs in its current state simply collide, because it's anything 
but fully stable.  Thus, one must choose, either a different filesystem 
if one wants to run old and known stable, or btrfs, but do try to keep 
up, tho not necessarily the /latest/ stable series, one back and 
following the list so as to know if there's problems with the current 
stable before you upgrade, seems to be the sweet spot.

Regardless, btrfs is not yet any place for stable-arch gentooers to 
play.  xfs seems to be the commonly recommended stable alternative these 
days, while at least since data=ordered by default, I've had extremely 
good luck with reiserfs, which I continue to use for my own off-btrfs 
backups.  (FWIW I'm not the only one a bit leery of ext3/4.  I was 
surprised at how few folks recommend it as a stable alternative to 
btrfs.  For those interested in stability, xfs really does seem to be the 
best recommended filesystem out there at this point.)


So btrfs is really out of context for this discussion, centered on kernel 
stable keywording as it is.  If you've reason to stick with stable, 
you've reason to choose something other than btrfs, and that's likely to 
remain the case for, I'd say, another year at least, tho things /are/ 
getting better... slowly...

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman