ZFS and OpenZFS are not OSes, they are filesystems.

But yes, ZFS derivatives are based on v28 and then they diverge as they add features, which is marked with v5000. Solaris ZFS also adds other features. So OpenZFS and ZFS diverges. But, they all have v28 in common. As long as you stay on v28 and dont ever use new features, then ZFS and OpenZFS should be able to import all v28 disks and use them correctly. But that is not true. OpenZFS cannot handle v28 disks, as it destroys them.

If you create a v28 disk in OpenZFS, it should be usable by all OSes, including Solaris or Mac or Windows (when that development is ready). But that is not true. OpenZFS should remove "ZFS" from the name, as it is not compatible anymore.

Yes there are Linux distros that are stable. Ubuntu is based on Debian Unstable. If you want stability, without anything breaking because of updates, run Debian Stable. It does not change, and does not break. It doesn't have the latest and shiniest software, it's always a version or so behind, but the software is known to work, and does. Ubuntu takes a snapshot of Debian Unstable every 6 months and tweaks it until it barely runs, and kicks it out the door ready or not, for its users to debug. I am always amazed when people recommend Ubuntu to new Linux users. It would never be my first choice for anyone not very familiar with Linux.

Aha! Thanx, this is good information! I did not know this. I will surely try out Debian Stable. I hope it is much more stable than Ubuntu LTS. One of the things I like with Linux is that it has all software. If I read about a software, there is always a Linux version ready to download and install. When I use Solaris, there are great problems to install a software.

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Thank you very much. This makes things quite clear. They are now two separate projects.

I've been using Mint for 10+ years - no problems.

Your title is entirely misleading....

First, you tried ONE distro out of many available all with varying support for various things (including ZFS). ONE.

You also might already know this but there's a pretty damn good reason why ZFS is still maturing under Linux and it's because Oracle pretty much owns it and made it very risky for people to properly maintain it.

Linux isn't "fragile", you're using an unstable technology on a platform where it isn't 100% guaranteed to work for YOUR hardware and use case. Even Linus Torvalds says not to use it.

I wouldn't use any desktop running vanilla Gnome as a legitimate baseline for judging how well updates work compared to Windows of all things. Making bold statements like "Windows updates better than Linux" is far-fetched and not at all matches with the endless results you will find on Google showing exactly the opposite...

ZFS working better on a proprietary OS? Gee, I wonder why! (btw, Oracle also owns Solaris. Coincidence?)

If you know what you're doing, the system you're using appears "stable" because you're doing things it can do. When you don't know what you're doing and start messing with the system by running random things and start messing with things that it might not support well enough, well duh.... the system will APPEAR fickle. This is true for any os—not just Ubuntu (which is the only distro you tried).

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"Linux too fragile" seems to me too exaggerated and rather away from reality. We all know that Linux is perhaps the choice for the most demanding and critical IT systems that are the servers.

Quoting my post out of context and then posting a pedantic "correction" - when I had clearly posted that Oracle ZFS and OpenZFS are file systems isn't helpful. You seem to be asking for help, or are you (?), and then lecturing others on how things work, or don't, according to your own preconceived ideas.

You're talking about zpool versions. Read the link I posted. I'm no fan of iXsystems, but I can assure you that they know vastly more about ZFS than you or I...

It should be usable by OS which use OpenZFS, such as FreeBSD and Linux - it won't be usable by Solaris, because that is Oracle's proprietary diversion.

https://openzfs.org/wiki/Announcement
Considering Oracle didn't even develop ZFS, but bought Sun, then turned it proprietary and killed the openSolaris project in the process, then perhaps it is they who need to remove "ZFS" from the name?

You are, of course, entirely correct. Just like a dozen other users that got into it with this OP.

They seem to belong to a particular kind of troll that thrive in Linux forums.

They pose a question or a problem with a Linux system, often stating right from the start that "it works on Windows" (or some other OS - other than Linux, that is).
That in itself is not trolling.

But then they keep harping on this criticism of Linux "as a whole" instead of trying to solve their problem.

This works because Free & Libre Software zealots across the board are easily triggered by certain statements (and, at least for some of these statements, I am not an exception), giving OP the desired reaction.

Often paired with a mulishly stubborn refusal to listen to counter-arguments, intent only on uttering the triggering statement, again and again. But you all know what trolls are, so I'll stop here.

Maybe you should tell Amazon, Twitter, Google to re-think their software platforms - they all use Linux

https://www.tecmint.com/big-companie...g-on-gnulinux/

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Yes, thanx for the link. But the link is strange. Someone writes in the comments that "Am I mistaken but I thought freenas added feature flags to their version of zfs which made their version of zfs incompatible with Linux versions of zfs".

The whole point of feature flags, is to distinguish between pools so you now which one is compatible with another. If you did not care about compatibility you would not bother with marking your zpool which features it support. If a zpool is v5000 you know it is different from v28. That is the reason you have feature flags.

In my opinion that is weird. It is like if ntfs-3g fuse driver renders ntfs disks incompatible with Win10 - wouldnt that be strange? People would complain and ask they to remove ntfs from the name.

For you Linux haters who can not accept that Linux is unstable on server grade hardware - I said I gave Linux a try for a couple of years. I ran Linux exclusively and nothing else for a couple of years. Have you tried out Solaris for a couple of years? No? Then I would say that it is you that are not willing to try out the other side - as I have done. I have server grade hardware and not weird hardware. I wanted to minimize the hassle and pain, that is why I paid for expensive Supermicro mobo, Xeon cpu, ECC RAM, LSI2008 SAS HBA, etc. And still Linux - on my server grade hardware - did not work well. I dont know why, I was expecting Linux to handle server grade hardware well, apparently not.

I will next install Debian Stable on bare metal as someone suggested. That should be more stable than Ubuntu LTS. If not, then Linux does not play well with my server grade hardware. And if you check out the forums, there are lot of complaints that people make an update, and then stuff stops working. I am not alone having these problems, there are many forum threads. Why are you not hating the other people that have problems with Linux updates? Is it just me that you hate?

I would be interested in knowing how they get a stable desktop. But they are most likely running a stripped down Linux kernel with a minimal install. Just like Supercomputers. For instance Blue Gene runs Linux, yes. Linux is used to boot the node and distribute the work load to each node. Then a special written kernel takes over and does the actual computations. Linux on supercomputers are far from desktop versions. They are minimal och stripped down. No gui, no nothing. Supercomputers are just a huge cluster with loads of nodes, just like Google server park. Google have millions of nodes all running stripped down linux. There are nothing else running on Googles cluster. In that case it is easy to keep them stable.

But why would you even need a graphical desktop on a server?

I hope one of those options works out for you, and I would be curious to hear back from you if you get what you like with one of them, so please let us know how it goes.

I agree with others here that this part of your thread title, “Linux is too fragile”, is misleading as a broad statement - and that is how you wrote it - but I wouldn’t argue that a statement like “Ubuntu has been too fragile for me” isn’t true, because how fragile is too fragile is a very individual thing, a value judgement rather than a statement of fact, based on your personal experience (regardless of the reasons for that experience of fragility)

Maybe Ubuntu has been so fragile for you that *nobody* would put up with it. Maybe every Linux would be. There’s no way for us to know if that’s so, or why. Several posters have made suggestions to help you, but you still don’t have what you’re looking for.

So I’m going to take a crack at this from another angle.

On rereading the posts, it seems to me that what you’re looking for is something that you’re at least a bit familiar with, that installs easily and runs with minimum fuss - you want to get on with your work and spend a minimum of time on system administration. That is not a criticism, in case someone might take it that way.

Assuming you don’t have hardware that just doesn’t play well with Linux (I did run into this once), and that your hardware isn’t failing or defective, the only thing I can suggest is distrohopping (or OS hopping) if the options you said you would try don’t work for you, until you find something that does.

I suspect it won’t be less work at the start to search for the “right” distro/OS than learning how to wrestle into submission what you already have, but once you find the right one, I expect you could settle into it with minimum system admin, at least until the distro/OS developers and maintainers do something you can’t tolerate, or stop maintaining it.

With no experience with ZFS, I don’t know if you can have the “right” OS *and* ZFS. That might be over specifying.

And if that doesn’t do it for you, then I don’t know if there is any solution that you will ever be satisfied with.

TKS

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