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by do_not_redeem 561 days ago
I admit I'm not fully up to date on whether it's actually "license issues" or something else. I'm not a lawyer. As a layman here's what I know. I go to the Arch wiki (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/ZFS) and I see this warning under the DKMS section (as you advised):

> Warning: Occasionally, the dkms package might not compile against the newest kernel packages in Arch. Using the linux-lts kernel may provide better compatibility with out-of-tree kernel modules, otherwise zfs-dkms-staging-gitAUR backports compatibility patches and fixes for the latest kernel package in Arch on top of the stable zfs branch

So... my system might fail to boot after updates. If I use linux-lts, it might break less often. Or I can use zfs-dkms-staging-git, and my system might break even less often... or more often, because it looks like that's installing kernel modules directly from the master branch of some repo.

As a practical matter I could care less if my system fails to boot because of "license issues" or some other reason, I just want the lawyers to sort their shit out so I don't have to risk my system becoming unbootable at some random inopportune time. Until then, I've never hit a btrfs bug, so I'm going to keep on using it for every new build.

2 comments

I've been bitten by kernel module incompatibility making my data unavailable enough times that I no longer consider ZFS to be viable under Linux. Using an LTS kernel only delays the issue until the next release is LTS. I really hope that bcachefs goes stable soon.
Its. Not. The. Lawyers.