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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Confused about the Write Zeroes command (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 1 year ago by swizzle9144@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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I'm shopping for a new NVMe SSD drive for my laptop and with the second deciding factor being Linux compatibility, I'd looked up the names of specific drives in the source code of Linux and discovered that their controllers have quirks that have to be worked around.

Now, I figured out more or less how quirks affecting one of the controllers impact its functionality under Linux, but there's another controller that I have a trouble understanding how disabling the aforementioned command limits the functionality of, if at all; therefore I'd like to ask you all, under what circumstances is the command used by a host and can disabling it lower the performance or power efficiency of an impacted controller/drive?

To be clear, the quirk workaround I'm talking a about is NVME_QUIRK_DISABLE_WRITE_ZEROES.

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[–] penquin@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree on the "nonsense" part, as I've had none of those issues for over a year using this drive. Shit has been amazing. Also, I appreciated the lecture. I didn't know any of what you said, so thank you. I did try xfs myself, but for my use case, I didn't see any difference at all. Like nothing. I'm just a casual user who gets into the terminal some times, but that's about it. So, btrfs works wonders for me with those sweet snapshots. Don't know if xfs has snapshots, too, but I'm familiar with btrfs and timeshift, so I stuck with it.

[–] yote_zip@pawb.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

XFS doesn't support snapshots, but it does support reflinking like BTRFS. Reflinks allow data to be shared fully or partially between two files, which means that technically with a lot of elbow grease you could probably write a snapshotting system for XFS built on reflinks. There's actually a "filesystem" named Stratis that takes vanilla XFS and layers a ton of modern features from e.g. BTRFS/ZFS onto it. Unfortunately it's not as fast as XFS because of these features so it's not a silver bullet yet.

tl;dr, BTRFS's features are useful for most users, and I wouldn't worry about filesystem speed unless you've got a very specific usecase like a database.

[–] penquin@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Nice. Thank you. I've learned a ton from just a couple of comments. Much appreciated