5: Filesystems - So many choices

When setting up a new system there's many things to think about including choosing the filesystem. In this episode, Jim dives into all of the choices and describes the benefits of each. Wolf is here to ask the questions, and to fail at keeping Jim entirely on track.

Show notes

Things to think about:

1. For Linux, ext4 is the default for many distros and it's pretty good but btrfs has some really great benefits and you should consider using it.
2. For MacOS, the default is case-insensitive for filenames.  This can cause some problems when cloning some git repos because within the repo there may be two files with the same name, only different by case. In a case-insensitive filesystem, you'll have a collision. BUT, turning off case-insensitive can cause other problems for some applications. Maybe the best thing to do is create a separate case-sensitive filesystem on a volume and use that for your git trees.
3. Beware of the 'Year 2038' problem on linux filesystems before ext4.

Links:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Unified_Key_Setup
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dev-drive/
• https://www.ufsexplorer.com/articles/macos-file-systems/

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Theme music:

Dawn by nuer self, from the album Digital Sky