openzfs
OpenZFS on Linux and FreeBSD, and, macOS. This is where development for macOS happens. (by openzfsonosx)
zfs
OpenZFS on Linux and FreeBSD (by openzfs)
| openzfs | zfs | |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | 783 | |
| 171 | 12,244 | |
| 0.0% | 0.8% | |
| 2.4 | 9.8 | |
| about 3 years ago | about 15 hours ago | |
| C | C | |
| GNU General Public License v3.0 or later | GNU General Public License v3.0 or later |
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
openzfs
Posts with mentions or reviews of openzfs.
We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives
and similar projects. The last one was on 2022-04-27.
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Interactive, file-level Time Machine-like tool for ZFS
I've used OpenZFS on OSX (https://github.com/openzfsonosx/openzfs#readme) and it's been better to me for cross-os drive sharing than NTFS or UFS, despite their warnings about using it on USB devices
I hear you about a ZFS root partition, though
- OSX ZFS new rev: 2.1.0
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How to partition an external ssd for linux file system?
Maybe OpenZFS but you need to know what you're doing, my advice is to use a VM to access the EXT4 partition then use the VM to transfer data, use a friendlier' FS like exFAT/FAT32 or use a network storage protocol like SMB/NFS etc. (that needs an additional system like a pi4 or something.)
zfs
Posts with mentions or reviews of zfs.
We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives
and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-11-26.
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Understanding ZFS Scrubs and Data Integrity
Two examples that I can find are https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/7910, where very old versions of ZFS appear to have quietly written slightly incorrect ACL information, and https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/zfs-linux/+bug/190... where Ubuntu 21.10 shipped with a bug that created corrupted ZFS filesystems. I believe https://www.illumos.org/issues/9847 may be another example of this, although less severe, where ZFS leaked disk space under some circumstances.
- OpenZFS 2.4.0: Encryption Performance Improvements
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DIY NAS: 2026 Edition
Have you considered "reflinks"? Supported as of [OpenZFS 2.2](https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/pull/13392).
Haven't used them yet myself but seems like a nice use case for things like minor metadata changes to media files. The bulk of the file is shared and only the delta between the two are saved.
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We're (now) moving from OpenBSD to FreeBSD for firewalls
> Ideally I'd want a read-only root FS with maybe an /etc and /var managed by an overlay.
OpenZFS 2.2 added support for overlays, so you can have the main pool(s) mounted as read-only:
* https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/releases/tag/zfs-2.2.0
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Learning to read Arthur Whitney's C to become Smart (2024)
ZFS has a very nice set of macros that work very well:
https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/blob/master/include/os/freebs...
See P2PHRASE() and friends. They were inherited from OpenSolaris.
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Are Hard Drives Getting Better?
The 990 Pros have a temperature sensor issue. See https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/discussions/14793#discussionc...
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Bcachefs Removed from the Mainline Kernel
I was curious how OpenZFS worked around that and found [0]
[0] https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/pull/8965
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Speed7811's September 22, 2025 comment in "Unsuitable SSD/NVMe hardware for ZFS"
Here is the direct link to the September 22, 2025 comment by Speed7811 (GitHub): https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/discussions/14793#discussionc... (github.com/openzfs/zfs/discussions/14793#discussioncomment-14473635)
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A Deep Dive into Debian 13 /Tmp: What's New, and What to Do If You Don't Like It
ZFS /tmp is probably fine, but swapping to ZFS on Linux is dicey AIUI; there's an unfortunate possibility of deadlock https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/7734
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RSS Is Awesome
I just restarted using RSS recently. And I discovered I can also use it to track software releases (on github). The url is the release page with .atom appended. Eg
https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/releases.atom
What are some alternatives?
When comparing openzfs and zfs you can also consider the following projects:
openzfs - OpenZFS on Linux and FreeBSD
zeus - zfs backup tool
zrepl - One-stop ZFS backup & replication solution
far2l - Linux port of FAR v2
snapper - Manage filesystem snapshots and allow undo of system modifications