Last updated March 4, 2020 By John Paul 20 Comments

One of the main features of Ubuntu 19.10 is support for ZFS. Now you can easily install Ubuntu with on ZFS without any extra effort.

Normally, you install Linux with Ext4 filesystem. But if you do a fresh install of Ubuntu 19.10, you’ll see the option to use ZFS on the root. You must not use it on a dual boot system though because it will erase the entire disk.
ZFS filesystem support in Ubuntu 19.10You can choose ZFS while installing Ubuntu 19.10

Let’s see why ZFS matters and how to take advantage of it on ZFS install of Ubuntu.
How ZFS is different than other filesystems?

ZFS is designed with two major goals in mind: to handle large amounts of storage and prevent data corruption. ZFS can handle up to 256 quadrillion Zettabytes of storage. (Hence the Z in ZFS.) It can also handle files up to 16 exabytes in size.

If you are limited to a single drive laptop, you can still take advantage of the data protection features in ZFS. The copy-on-write feature ensures that data that is in use is not overwritten. Instead, the new information is written to a new block and the filesystem’s metadata is updated to point to the new block. ZFS can easily create snapshots of the filesystem. These snapshots track changes made to the filesystem and share with the filesystem the data that is the same to save space.

ZFS assigned a checksum to each file on the drive. It is constantly checking the state of the file against that checksum. If it detects that the file has become corrupt, it will attempt to automatically repair that file.

I have written a detailed article about what is ZFS and what its features are. Please read it if you are interested in knowing more on this topic.