Fedora 33 appears with a bang: The developers of the Linux distribution have switched from EXT4 to BTRFS decided as the standard file system of the Linux distribution. The installer “Anaconda” offered this file system as an option in earlier versions, but now new installations set up BTRFS on the system partition by default with automatic partitioning.

In addition to two other major changes, namely the switch to systemd-resolved and the decision to use Nano instead of Vim as editor, Fedora brings 33 but also many updates as expected with.

Tempting advantages with “residual risk” The suggestion that BTRFS with Elevating Fedora 33 to the standard, despite its scope, came late in the development stage, namely only three months before the first targeted Release date. The publication only on the second of the two previously mentioned release dates had another reason: The beta did not want to start under Secure Boot and required an additional week for error corrections.

When asked whether BTRFS is now “done” or not, the developers of the file system remain ambivalent in their status information on BTRFS. From the Fedora developers’ point of view, the arguments for BTRFS, namely transparent compression for directories and the easy expandability of storage space, outweighed the doubts about the maturity of the file system.

The BTRFS partition scheme in Fedora 33: The BTRFS system partition created by the installer is supplemented by a boot partition that has remained with EXT4.

(Image: Screenshot)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Cent OS, for which Fedora is often regarded as the “preliminary stage”, will probably not follow suit in terms of BTRFS: The systems favor XFS, which was already the case when Fedora chose EXT4 as the default filesystem.

Controversial changes … Another notable change in Fedora 33, which should not please everyone, is the change in name resolution for network connections to systemd-resolved from the conventional resolution via nss-dns, as documented in the Fedora Wiki. The Fedora developers cite a cross-program DNS cache and the cooperation with VPNs as advantages of systemd-resolved. A disadvantage that the change brings with it and which caused displeasure on Fedora’s mailing list, however, is that DNSSEC from Fedora 33 is no longer available.

Another change, namely the replacement of the preinstalled editor Vim by Nano, will probably not only meet with approval from Fedora users.

… and expected continuity In the overall package, Fedora 33 should provide a lot of discussion material, because the changes are far-reaching comparable to the switch to Systemd in Fedora 14 and the switch to Wayland as the standard for Gnome four years ago . Apart from that, Fedora Workstation delivers a familiar picture on the desktop: Gnome has been updated to version 3. 38, the KDE spin delivers KDE Plasma 5. with pre-installed Wayland option on the login page.

The kernel has arrived at version 5.8. 15 and, as usual with Fedora, will soon be an update see on 5.9. For the swap area, Fedora now relies on zRAM, which creates a compressed swap in the main memory and is supposed to use main memory more efficiently. All other, smaller innovations are listed in the Fedora release notes 33.

The We have discussed innovations in the above Gnome and Plasma versions in separate reports:

Gnome 3. 38 with improved multi-monitor operation KDE Plasma 5 . 20