Re: F2FS file system is not supported in installer
Dear Marko,
On Thu, Jan 09, 2025 at 05:26:29PM +0100, Matej Marko wrote:
> I don't use Debian or Debian based distributions, because you don't support F2FS. Other distribution yes.
First a disclaimer: I am not part of the Debian project nor the LTS team, but
just a satisfied user.
You are writing to the Debian LTS mailing-list, which is the long term support
mailing list. I see no way how new software can be integrated in a LTS
version. There might be a better place to ask this, listed on
https://www.debian.org/MailingLists/
In general, Debian policy is that as soon as a version is marked "frozen", no
new software can be added. Then, a stable release is created. A few years
after that, the version becomes LTS-supported.
A stable release just gets security and, sometimes, updates to broken package.
In general, no functionnality updates -- with the notable exception of some
specific software such as clamav, etc (debian update) -- are added. This is
Debian policy, and some users find it very nice.
Some users don't like it, so they upgrade more often to a new stable release,
or even always use the testing or unstable distribution (the latter being the
most uptodate version).
They also can use Debian-based distributions with different focus, different
target users, as their option, of course.
So, first, you should check that Debian really corresponds to your use case(s).
While doing that, check if your needs are fulfilled by a ELTS (10 years with
commercial support), LTS (5 years), or stable (3 years), or if a testing or
even unstable distribution would be more appropriate.
> F2FS is most innovative and high quality file system with optimization with PCs with SSD.
For your specific request, Debian has a wiki page: https://wiki.debian.org/F2FS
It would look that Debian supports this specific fs for a long time now.
For example, on a LTS release (bullseye):
schaefer@reliant:~$ apt-cache show f2fs-tools
Package: f2fs-tools
Version: 1.14.0-2
This version even seems to support "compression" (which is not exactly what one
could expect, apparently).
schaefer@reliant:~$ uname -a
Linux reliant 5.10.0-33-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 5.10.226-1 (2024-10-03) x86_64 GNU/Linux
It even looks it supports newer ioctls.
Also, the required grub version to boot on it seems to be >= 2.0.4 which seems
also to be available on bullseye (LTS) and more recent versions.
Thus, it should be possible to copy an installation to a F2FS filesystem and
boot from it: https://howtos.davidsebek.com/debian-f2fs.html
Now, your question is more: may I install Debian on F2FS using the Debian
installer? It seems, yes, with this guide:
https://howtos.davidsebek.com/debian-f2fs-installer.html
Now, does the Debian installer natively support it? I would guess it does
not yet. Maybe you could ask them why not, or, even better, help them.
https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
> If you will not support F2FS, if you will refuse innovations, competing
> rivals distributions destroy Debian.
Some users may have differing needs than yours: for example, I am very happy
that the versions of Debian when last april's SSH attack through the lzma
libray was still zero day and unknown to the affected distributions/versions,
was never vulnerable(*). New it not necessarily better, if there is not
enough quality control.
Have a nice week-end.
(*) of course, I would love it Debian would diminush, sometimes, the
dependancies to third-party software. E.g. the systemd -> sshd dependancy
injects a lot of third-party software and augments the attack surface. I
understand there is current work in the linux distribution community to make
sure the pre-auth privilege separated daemon has as less code as possible.
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