Linux

If you’re just doing a vanilla Linux install, ext4 is the way to go.

In my opinion, it depends. If a distro has BTRFS configured to automatically take a snapshot when upgrading (like OpenSuse Tumbleweed), then BTRFS.

If not, for a beginner, ext4 + timeshift to take snapshots of your system in case an upgrade goes wrong will be fine.

Honestly, unless there's some specific thing you're looking for just use your distro's default. If your distro doesn't have a default I'd probably default to ext4. The way most people use their computers there's really no noticeable advantage to any of the others, so there's no reason not to stick with old reliable. If you like to fiddle with things just to see what they can do or have unusual requirements then btrfs or zfs could be worth looking into, but if you have to ask it probably doesn't matter.

ext4 has been battle-tested for many years and is very stable. Doesn't have the same fragmentation and data loss issues certain other filesystems like NTFS have.

Btrfs. Just format as one big partition (besides that little EFI partition of course) and don't worry about splitting up your disk into root and home. Put home on its own subvolume so that root can be rolled back separately from it. You can have automatic snapshots, low-overhead compression, deduplication, incremental backups. Any filesystem can fsck its own metadata, but btrfs is one of the few that also cares if your data is also intact.

I'm going to go against the flow here and say BTRFS. It's stable enough to the point of being a non consideration. You get full backups using a negligible amount of storage. Even using it on Windows is easier than using ext4 with the winbtrfs driver.

As someone who ran BTRFS for years, I'm personally switching back to EXT4. Yes, the compression and other features are nice, but when things go wrong and you have to do a recovery, it's not worth the complexity

ext4 unless you need features offered by another FS.

btrfs every day of the week. The only scenario where I'd even consider something else is for databases that would suffer from CoW.

I've been running it on my home server since 2010. The same array has grown from 6x2TB to 6x4TB, one disk at a time as they've failed. Currently sitting at 2x18TB+1x4TB. No data loss even though many drives have failed.

If you don't actually have an opinion, just go with the default, ext4 really is a very good file system, but if you want to have an opinion and not go with the default, zfs is truly a fantastic file system.

I personally use ext4 everywhere but it is recommend to have BTRFS for your OS partition if you take snapshots often.

Btrfs is cool because it supports snapshots, if you don't plan on using these, just go with ext4

I would recommend using btrfs on SSDs and ext4 on hard drives.

How about bcachefs. I'm waiting for it to support swapfiles, which seems to be in the TODO list, but so far doesn't work. If you use swap partition[s], or prefer not to have swap at all (I never fell for this, and besides swap is required for hibernation if that's a thing for you), then bcachefs is ready for you. It's already part of linux since 6.7, and on Artix, current linux is 6.8.9...

To me is the FS to use. I'm still on luks + ext4 (no LVM) and do entire home backups with plain rsync to an external device. I'd have to learn new stuff, since ext4 is really basic and easy to configure if in need, but I think bcachefs is worth it, and as mentioned, just waiting for it to support swapfiles, :)

Ext4 for most home users, because it's simple and intuitive. Btrfs for anyone who has important data or wants to geek out about file systems. It's got some really cool features, but to actually use most of them you'll have to do some learning.

Just go with whatever is the default of your distribution.

That said I've come to love the automatic snapshots OpenSUSE gives me with BTRFS. I think they use snapper to automate that. It does a snapshot before and after every packet install, update or removal. And it has some system to delete snapshots that aren't needed anymore but it always keeps enough to give you peace of mind, especially when you're experimenting.

I should look into keeping some snapshots of my ~ as well. And I should implement that especially for my family.

Btrfs. It was the default filesystem already when I used Fedora on both my personal and work laptops. Not a single problem. It is true I don't really make much use of most of its advanced features like snapshotting, CoW, etc., but I also didn't notice any difference whatsoever in stability compared to ext4 so I'm pretty happy with it as my new default.

For standard use, ext4. If you want to tinker and use fancy features, btrfs (or maybe zfs?).

I prefer using ext4 for stability. But if stability doesn't matter to you, you should use BTRFS.

I’ve been very happy with btrfs. Ext4 is basically rock solid, so you can’t really go wrong with it, but btrfs has some nice features that ext4 doesn’t have, like snapshots. And it’s fast. I have an extremely cheap SSD that’s too slow to run anything with ext4, but actually usable with btrfs.

Do what OpenSUSE Tumbleweed suggests, make a brtfs partition for your system and xfs/ext4 for home parition

Btrfs or XFS.

No idea why people are into EXT4. XFS is more performant by far.

ext4, just keep it simple.

Ext4: It's the most common used and most mature filesystem we have. You can use any rescue system without pitfalls, in case your system fails. Some other filesystems have edge cases or a special setup is required. I am not saying they are bad or so, just saying if you have to ask this question to a public forum, then it's probably more safe to just use the default Ext4 system. It's battle tested for ages.

BTRFS &/OR EXT4

If you don't care any will do. ext4 is fine but check the "use LVM" button during install if you do go with ext4 since it will give you better partitioning options later.

Ext4 is, afaik, the fastest as it's the most understood

Btrfs has compression and you can make snapshots to roll back to if something goes wrong (not necessary on immutable distros or NixOS tho)

There are many other options, but I've only ever had a need for those two

I love zfs. Started using it for my data storage pool and now I have it on root as well. It has some rough edges but overall it is very stable and has amazing features.

I have 3 drives in my pc. I have btrfs for root so I can do my snapshots, and the rest are on ext4. I've heard very good things about xfs, too, but I'm more familiar with btrfs and ext4

I don't know what's the brand neW meta pick, but at least BTRFS over Ext4. BTRFS is just more stable and less corruptable than Ext4. Heck, fedora changed to it as default

XFS. It fills the same role as ext4 but it's less likely to lose your data and that's probably the most important part of a file system. Not that ext4 is bad or anything, but XFS is good. The only downside to XFS is you can't shrink the filesystem size.