5: Filesystems - So many choices episode artwork

EPISODE · Jun 28, 2025 · 1H 7M

5: Filesystems - So many choices

from Runtime Arguments · host Jim McQuillan & Wolf

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 notesThings to think about: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.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.Beware of the 'Year 2038' problem on linux filesystems before ext4.Links:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problemhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systemshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Unified_Key_Setuphttps://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dev-drive/https://www.ufsexplorer.com/articles/macos-file-systems/Hosts:Jim McQuillan can be reached at [email protected] can be reached at [email protected] us on Mastodon: @[email protected] you have feedback for us, please send it to [email protected] our webpage at http://RuntimeArguments.fmTheme music:Dawn by nuer self, from the album Digital Sky

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published Jun 28, 2025

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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: 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.For MacOS, the default is case-insensitive for filena...

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