Support ZFS and encrypted ZFS

[NathanaelA]

Distribution (run cat /etc/os-release):
20.04 (Still broken as of POP 22.04)

Issue/Bug Description:
The base Ubuntu has supported ZFS for multiple versions now. And it takes a LOT of work to hack a POP OS to work properly ontop of ZFS.

Expected behavior:
Since the base Ubuntu supports it, I would expect that you would NOT disable support for it...

Notes
I would expect this to be a lot simpler and allow ZFS to be a easily usable file system. With its built in encryption it makes it the perfect FS for laptops to keep the data safe.

[thefossguy]

Ubuntu 21.04 Beta states ZFS-on-root support is stable enough as there is no mention of the word "Experimental" when choosing ZFS for the root partition. So I'm hoping this works on Pop 21.04.

[NathanaelA]

ZFS has been stable for a very long time and actual went to v2.0 in Jan of this year, I've personally been using it as root partition for many many years now (I don't trust BTRFS after several data losses with it, and Ext doesn't have the data reliability). ZFS (even on Linux) is now a very mature FS. As of v2 they finished the merging with the BSD branches and so both Linux and BSD are now running from the same code base, making the number of users using the same code base dramatically larger. So I would love to see this show up in PopOS since Ubuntu has supported it in its installer since I think 18.04.

[ShadowJonathan]

It's almost a year later from stabilisation, could this get a response wrt what a timeline could be to implement this?

I personally love ZFS for its reliability, i recently found out that some system files corrupted itself after overloading my SSD for a while, which took time and effort to manually fix, with ZFS these errors wouldn't have been silent, and i'd have been able to properly identify and fix the right file in time.

[pmarreck]

One possible reason why this may be difficult is that picking previous ZFS snapshots at boot, which is a very useful feature on the Ubuntu version (in the event an update hoses something like your graphics card support), may require GRUB, which pop_os doesn't use (I think it just uses systemd?). There may or may not be some tool that lets you select previous ZFS snapshots for systemd, I'm just saying that this may not simply be about "just not disabling zfs support from ubuntu"

There is also the legal threat, but ubuntu seems to have picked the "it's better to ask for forgiveness" route, there ;)

[spacekookie]

I've been running ZFS on root for many years now (not on Pop_OS) and can only speak highly of it. I wouldn't even mind partitioning my disks manually, but the fact that Pop_OS doesn't seem to package LTS kernels means that I might find myself unable to upgrade or boot after a bodged upgrade.

A bit more support from the distribution in this regard would be much appreciated.

[thefossguy]

Unrelated but I'm very interested for an option to install an LTS kernel as suggested by @spacekookie!

[MilesBHuff]

Unrelated but I'm very interested for an option to install an LTS kernel as suggested by @spacekookie!

You should open a separate issue for that, so that System76 can properly triage the request.
I'm with you though; being able to install an LTS kernel would be nice.