Btrfs v0.19 Brings Some Gains, Some Losses

Written By
ML
Michael Larabel
Jul 13, 2009

[ Thanks to Michael Larabel for
this link. ]

“This next-generation Linux file-system that has often
been compared to Sun’s ZFS has not really performed that well,
granted it’s still very much under development. Btrfs is far from
being the performance king and even its SSD mode has had little
positive effect. Just weeks ago we delivered EXT4, Btrfs, and
NILFS2 benchmarks, but now there is a new release of Btrfs
available. Committed to the Linux 2.6.31 kernel was Btrfs v0.19.
Does this release bring any performance improvements? Yes and no.

“The Btrfs v0.19 notes mention, “In general, v0.19 is a dramatic
speed improvement over v0.18 in almost every workload.” One of the
key changes in this new development release is the file-system has
changed the way that extent back references are recorded, and this
new way should be significantly more efficient. As a sign that this
new file-system is still not yet stabilized, there is a
forward-rolling format change where kernels using the older version
of Btrfs will be unable to read partitions created under this newer
version of Btrfs.”

Complete
Story

ML

Michael Larabel

Linux Today Logo

LinuxToday is a trusted, contributor-driven news resource supporting all types of Linux users. Our thriving international community engages with us through social media and frequent content contributions aimed at solving problems ranging from personal computing to enterprise-level IT operations. LinuxToday serves as a home for a community that struggles to find comparable information elsewhere on the web.

Property of TechnologyAdvice. © 2026 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.