
Linus Torvalds says “Don’t use ZFS”–but doesn’t seem to understand it - Analemma_
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/01/linus-torvalds-zfs-statements-arent-right-heres-the-straight-dope/
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washadjeffmad
Some miscommunication here. TFA doesn't distinguish between Oracle's ZFS and
the Solaris fork, OpenZFS. Linus seems to be making comments about the former
and is likely mixing up a few details about ZFSonLinux. His non-maintenance
comments also appear to be about about the fork and probably mean "not keeping
pace of feature parity with ZFS proper", which it doesn't.

I think he's just baffled by why anyone would expect the Linux kernel to make
a special exception to support ZoL when there are already great native tools
and the BSDs exist. And if you really need production ZFS, why not just buy
into the officially maintained version from Oracle because you're not getting
on-call support, paid or otherwise, from the open projects or Linux.

Largely, the article contains no impact or petition and reads like a click-
trap set with Linus bait by someone with a real interest in defending
(Open)ZFS's cult status as the pinnacle of all filesystems. I use ZoL at home,
but it's not something I'd expect to see above SMB.

~~~
kstenerud
> I think he's just baffled by why anyone would expect the Linux kernel to
> make a special exception to support ZoL

This isn't about special exceptions for ZoL. It's about removing FPU access in
what appears to be a swipe by Kroah-Hartman against ZFS (maybe it was
coincidental - we'll never know).

> And if you really need production ZFS, why not just buy into the officially
> maintained version from Oracle because you're not getting on-call support,
> paid or otherwise, from the open projects or Linux.

In that case, why use open source at all? Because you're not getting on-call
support, paid or otherwise. And yet almost all modern companies DO use open
source products in production.

> Largely, the article contains no impact or petition and reads like a click-
> trap set with Linus bait by someone with a real interest in defending
> (Open)ZFS's cult status as the pinnacle of all filesystems.

Really? So the part where he says that his gripe is about the public, well-
respected figure Linus, publicly denigrating and spreading misinformation
about another open source project while remaining willfully ignorant about it,
contains no impact or petition?

If Microsoft had done it, we'd all be crying FUD.

~~~
cesarb
> It's about removing FPU access in what appears to be a swipe by Kroah-
> Hartman against ZFS (maybe it was coincidental - we'll never know).

It wasn't Greg Kroah-Hartman:
[https://git.kernel.org/torvalds/c/12209993e98c5fa1855c467f22...](https://git.kernel.org/torvalds/c/12209993e98c5fa1855c467f22a24e3d5b8be205)

That commit has the real reason: "With EFI gone as the last user of
__kernel_fpu_{begin|end}(), both can be made static and not exported anymore."
So yes, it was fully coincidental.

------
mindslight
I already said it in another thread, but IMO Linus's comments are best seen as
a legal positioning to avoid Oracle's thugs going after him for copying ZFS
features or for developing code that he knows will be mingled with CDDL.

Having said that, I don't understand why ZoL can't just declare itself as GPL
to the kernel and get access to whatever symbols it wants. I thought the only
legal teeth that mechanism had is for showing willfull infringement. But ZoL
releases source and already bridges the GPL and CDDL by strictly delaying
their mixture until runtime, so I would think additional GPL objections by the
kernel would be moot.

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rvz
> Linus should avoid authoritative statements about projects he's unfamiliar
> with.

I'd side with the author here since he's shown to have experience and
researched his points with using ZFS here and is quite frankly clear around
explaining the background of ZFS enough to disqualify Linus's arguments for
telling those who agree with him "Don't use ZFS".

I may have not gone as far as the author to do the benchmarks themselves, but
the most misunderstood claim that Linus clearly went off the rails on what the
claim about ZFS being unmaintained. As a part time Linux/BSD user, using
Linus's own ranting language: This is complete B___S___.

When talking about "The" Linux kernel (no distros), Linus has his merits and
his most excellent and decorated highness is respected by software engineers
worldwide for the kernel. But as soon as he gets involved with topics which he
has done little research and a clear lack of understanding, then the real
experts will notice.

~~~
diffeomorphism
Isn't this completely irrelevant to the discussion?

Linus's only point was that ZFS for Oracle reasons can't be included in the
kernel (despite what Canonical thinks). ZFS may have some nice features but is
not worth the headache to rely on a possible copyright infringing, out-of-tree
model backed by Oracle.

I have thus far seen nobody who disagrees with this. Instead people seem to
got hung upon nitpicking or their own ego. E.g. but the features are important
to me and not buzzwords. Good for you, every non-BSD OS thus far lived without
them. Or "unmaintained". Of course it has maintainers, but *BSD switch to
basing itself on ZFS on Linux because they don't have enough.

TLDR: Hyperbole != wrong and nobody disagrees with the substance just with the
tone.

~~~
almindor
This is not correct. The api that was disabled was deprecated for over a
decade when disabled. It was an api that wasn't meant to be used. Zol folks
kept using it out of tree and when Linus finally removed/hidden them people
went apeshit thinking it was some sort of attack. It wasnt, it was 12 years
late...

~~~
rat9988
An api may not be meant to be used but what makes it important to hide it?
They could just let it be until there is a real need to delete it. Just going
out of your way to hide something is a bit hard to understand.

~~~
ncmncm
It is the next step leading up to deleting it.

There are very good reasons to delete unmaintained or hard-to-maintain code
that nothing important depends on, or should depend on. But just deleting it
creates hardships, so things happen in stages.

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vkaku
I agree with the author... The last few paras really explain what was supposed
to be conveyed:

\- If you don't want to use it, don't want to muck around with the license,
fine ...

\- But don't dis a FS that has been solving important problems for a few YEARS
in production even before btrfs was being written.

Perfect summarization there. As a tech person, we could get biased into
dissing other people's tech. But I feel that where it's due, one needs to give
credit.

Historic aside: ZFS is 14+ years old, launched in November 2005. It's sort of
a feature-parallel version of WAFL but eventually open sourced to the world
with OpenSolaris in 2008. I used to work in NetApp when it came out and I was
like, whoa. NetApp and Sun share a lot of history.

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nwmcsween
Has ZoL integrated with the page cache yet so I don't have two dueling caches?

