I want to apologize if everyone except me knows the answer to this but is there a way to install Asahi-Fedora-Remix and choose ext4 for the root instead of ending up with the default btrfs installation?
I live in ext4 - too long maybe - but life does get in the way and btrfs frankly for me, is just too much effort to fight with, just overkill and added grief over possibly wiping out all of my ext4 files with just one hiccup happening.
Biggest fear is being backed into a btrfs-convert scene where my ext4 backup disks semi-bricked.
Thanks for any help and guidance. Want to stay alive in an old ext4 world.
Like you, I typically used ext4 or xfs for my / filesystems in the past and looked at btrfs with mild disdain (although I used ZFS for most other filesystems beyond /).
Fedora Asahi Remix forced me to get used to btrfs, and I’m very glad it did in the end. It’s brilliant, and I have no desire to go back. I find I often have to be forced to use new things
I know this may not be the answer you’re looking for, but I thought I’d share my impressions anyways in case it encourages you to explore btrfs to the depth I did and end up loving it.
Thank you. I imagine it’s both time as well as fear causing my hesitation. Your knowledge and thorough approach I am aware of and impressed with, and yes, I’ve previously installed the remix by following your flawless instructions way back there in August: Jason Eckert's Website and Blog
By way of an example, it would be an achievement at this point for me to even cover reading half of your knockout blog and wealth of interesting information. So “covering” (and not destroying my data) the btrfs concepts would take a great deal of time and effort as well. Time ain’t on my side.
What if I did something along the lines of this: 1) Do another wipe and install of the remix (yet again) on my wife’s M1 2020 Mini. 2) Just start “simply” copying my files over piece by piece into the new fresh and empty btrfs Fedora remix, thus “converting” them THAT way.
Then eventually, 3) Reformat (I like gparted) all of my external (and internal if I choose to) disks from ext4 to btrfs. And then, once all the smoke clears, at that point I can once again start to approach btrfs from the somewhat “working” dynamic that I’d be stuck rolling in, AND … bypass the use of btrfs-convert in the process.
Does that sound like clean backdoor way to “get in”?
There’s no supported way to install the Remix with a different filesystem. That said, btrfs is only used for the root filesystem of the actual install. Any other disks and partitions you might have (including USB / external disks) can keep using ext4 if you want to – btrfs and ext4 coexist just fine, and there’s nothing that will automatically attempt to convert ext4 to brtfs or anything like that. btrfs-convertdoes exist, but it’s something you’d need to explicitly run (and that I wouldn’t personally recommend using).
I’ll echo what Davide mentioned by adding that I like and use btrfs exclusively for my system partitions like /. The added flexibility in managing your local Mac SSD storage via subvolumes is great, especially if you allocate a lot of storage to Asahi like I did.
But for external disks of any kind, I still use whatever filesystem meets my needs for portability (e.g., ext4 for Linux-specific backups, exfat for files that I need to use on other OSes).
This is only a 500GB M1 with not much on its fresh install but FFox and Falkon so far, so lsblk -f shows only 5% full for btrfs / and therefore /home as well.
I’ve always been bits & pieces Linux and I’ve lived in Arch through both it and Endeavouros so pacman’s tweaks aren’t here. Getting bogged down with so many repositories and missing yay too but we’re fedora-fortified now, at least on this box. Have Mullvad running and the two above browsers bulletproofed.
The last 48 hours more or less have been sacrificed to this and they’ve been fun. Long way to go I’m sure. A lot of dnf tweaks to learn. Thinking of paccache, orphans, reflector, .pacnew/.pacsave … will figure out their dnf equivalents eventually.
Davide I think I swallowed you’re “coexist” comment totally!
More questions upcoming from me I think but that’s for another thread.
