It is not acceptable that there is a range of time that people would
literally not be able to mount their file systems because the kernel
module would not build.
I would say that is a rather unlikely scenario to happen
given how engaged the OpenZFS developers are in maintaining Linux kernel support, and also
considering how many kernel developers there are that run Fedora. The time delay is more
with respect to OpenZFS releases rather than having patches available that make OpenZFS
work with the Linux kernel.
Fedora does not allow out of tree kernel modules to be packaged for
the distribution. This has been the case since Fedora 7.
That is a strong
argument. But obviously more a political rather than a technical one.
That does not change the fact that OpenZFS is a very *special* out
of
tree kernel module that would put a major crimp in doing a lot of
things Fedora does now, like testing and validating snapshots of the
Linux kernel as it is being developed. Fedora is a place where we
actively work with our upstreams, and we stay close to those projects
as part of maintaining software for them. Having kzfs in Fedora would
strain that immensely.
Well, Fedora could become the platform where OpenZFS
developers work closely with kernel developers. :)
All that said, I very well understand the hesitations of Fedora, and upstream kernel,
developers to accommodate ZFS. I actually agree that in the current situation with
licenses being what they are, and thus ZFS being an out-of-tree filesystem, it would not
be wise to have ZFS as the default root file system in Fedora.
I personally have my /home filesystem on ZFS, and keep the root filesystem on an ext4
partition, as I am confident that I can reinstall Fedora in a reasonable amount of time,
but I care about the data in my home/working directories and value immensely ZFS features
with respect to data integrity and backups.
Regarding the current proposal at hand, i.e. making btrfs the default filesystem, I am
actually in favour of that change. The next generation filesystems (i.e. btrfs and ZFS)
have many desirable features ([1] lists a number of them, and that article is already
quite old) and it's about time to switch also the desktop system to these filesystem
IMHO.
Just my two cents.
-Armin
[1]
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/01/bitrot-and-atomic-...