Community edition Linux distribution AlmaLinux recently announced that it has officially integrated Btrfs file system support in the latest version of AlmaLinux 10.1. Btrfs is a modern copy-on-write (CoW) file system that focuses on fault tolerance, repair tools, and easy management. In recent years, it has become the default choice for distributions such as Fedora and openSUSE.
AlmaLinux is a community-driven distribution that is binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). It provides enterprises and individual users with an ecological environment that is highly similar to RHEL without commercial subscription.
Btrfs has several key features, including snapshot capabilities for more reliable backups; built-in volume management; data and metadata checksums; transparent compression and efficient replication through reference links. These features enable Btrfs to deliver better performance under most workloads and effectively reduce the risk of hard drive damage and storage problems.
According to the official introduction of AlmaLinux:
"Btrfs support covers the enablement of kernel and user space. Now users can directly select the Btrfs file system during the installation process. Initial support mainly focuses on the installation program and storage management stack. In the future, support for Btrfs functions in the AlmaLinux software collection will be expanded."
If you want to use Btrfs, users can select a custom partition during the installation process and specify the Btrfs partition system. At this point, AlmaLinux will be installed on top of Btrfs instead of the default XFS-LVM structure. XFS is still suitable for high-performance, mature enterprise-level workloads, while optional Btrfs is more flexible and rich, especially suitable for modern scenarios that require data integrity and convenient rollback.
AlmaLinux 10.1 is a subsequent update based on the 10.0 version released in May this year. The former is the first version that is fully compatible with RHEL 10. It brings hardware support expansion, IBM Power architecture virtualization technology preview, full support for SPICE protocol, extensive adaptation of the Secure Boot function, extended support period for old hardware, and enables frame pointers by default to help developers conduct system-level real-time tracking and performance analysis.
For more details, please visit the official announcement of AlmaLinux 10.1:
https://almalinux.org/blog/2025-10-21-announcing-btrfs-support-in-almalinux-10-1/