Use Btrfs as the default journaling file system

Development
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Btrfs provide easy roll back snapshots compatible with timeshift or snapper.

Good explanation about it:

Atm it needs some manual work to make btrfs, good explanation can be found here:

Many suggest to not use swap since you are on SSD e.g:

(Suggest to use zRAM instead, known to be even faster).

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Getting Kicksecure to install with BTRFS is pretty easy, almost trivial. Getting a snapshotting UI is a bit harder since btrfs-assistant (the only good Snapper frontend I know of) isn’t available in releases older than Trixie. There’s other ways of managing BTRFS snapshots that are worth looking into though, so I don’t see why we can’t make BTRFS an option for now and then explore further developments with it later.

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Does calamares set up the needed subvolumes yet?

No problem. Worst case the snapshoting GUI will be introduced after we port to Debian trixie.

For reference:

Indeed.

How about

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Qutoe @arraybolt3 from calamares - change to BTRFS by default - including subvolumes:

  • Note that Calamares installs BTRFS with subvolumes on the root filesystem by default, so no special work was needed to make that happen.
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As of Offer BTRFS as a usable filesystem · Kicksecure/live-config-dist@b1d9959 · GitHub it’s

filesystem: "unknown"

Which will as I assume into asking the user if btrfs or ext4.

defaultFileSystemType: "ext4"

Let’s just change the default and avoid adding an extra question? Advanced users are free to use the partition too but I think for most users this is a too confusing, difficult question to decide.

Do we currently have “double swap” issue? swap-file-creator + swap sub volume created by calamares?

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filesystem: “unknown”

Correct, this means go with whatever the default.

Let’s just change the default and avoid adding an extra question?

BTRFS comes with significant additional maintenance needs and benefits from the user having some level of technical expertise. I would be leery of using it as the default. Lubuntu, Kubuntu, and Ubuntu Unity have been shipping with a multi-choice between ext4, BTRFS, and xfs for a while now and no one has reported problems figuring it out (presumably because they stick with the default of ext4 if in doubt). Those who know what they’re doing can change it manually, was my thinking.

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