Fedora 16 to skip btrfs by default

Btrfs misses Fedora 16 alpha deadline

One of the main features planned for Fedora 16 was a switch to btrfs by default. However, as the first alpha for F16 approaches, it looks like it will be another cycle before the filesystem gets its day in the Sun.

Josef Bacik has announced that btrfs won't be meeting the FESCO requirements set for the filesystem's inclusion in Fedora 16.

This probably isn't an enormous surprise given the number of problems that have cropped up so far. One of the big problems is the lack of a robust fsck tool for btrfs.

I'm actually encouraged by the fact that btrfs is being delayed for default for another release. It shows that the Fedora release process and objectives are working well. Bacik has also displayed a great deal of patience (as far as I've seen, anyway) with bug reports and complaints while working to get it up to speed.

That said, it will be interesting once btrfs is finally ready for prime time. The filesystem has a lot of features that look very interesting for Linux users. Note that users don't have to wait until Fedora 17 to try btrfs, though. The announcement that it won't be the default doesn't mean it won't be available at all — it simply means users have to choose btrfs on purpose when installing Fedora.

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