Slashdot has an article about it, but it looks like Apple is moving from HFS+ to ZFS for their harddrives, probably for Time Machine in OS 10.5 as the default file system. What does this mean? Support for OS9 is now gone, even on the PPC machines. Not a big shock, I have no applications in Classic anymore since QuarkXpress developed an OSX version. Also, it may help in indexing external hard drive arrays (for those of us in the video world) as well.

ZFS is a revolutionary filesystem given from Sun System/OpenSolaris to the FreeBSD community;
It has nothing to do with "time machine".
Time-machine is likely to have been implemented by apple with CVS or SVN:
they plan it far before ZFS was released...

Please stop relaying apple marketing news without understanding them..

ZFS : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS/
http://www.sun.com/2004-0914/feature/

FreeBSD: http://FreeBSD.org/ (the unix layer of OsX)

CVS : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concurrent_Versions_System


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Laurian.Antonia@caliopea.com

Okay, let's see what I understand, although now it's been probably confirmed no ZFS on Lepord, at least yet, why ZFS makes sense for the Time Machine feature.

ZFS, besides being a 128-bit file system, also allows copy-on-write. Which basically means that data is not really "over-written" as opposed to copied and any modifications added to seperate blocks on the hard drive. Since ZFS uses checksums to validate data, those checksums could be indexed and used to fetch the old data still archived on the other blocks.

Therefore it would not take a logical leap to see where folks would think "Hmmm...ZFS copy-to-write and time machine: they just go together".

And for the record, I've been using FreeBSD since version 2.7.

And Mac IS NOT a true BSD. While it maintains the core file structures and features of FreeBSD, Mac OSX is a MACH based kernel, not a BSD Kernel. Therefore, technically, MacOSX != BSD. The XNU-Kernel (which runs at the heart of MacOSX and Darwin) is what powers OSX.

So please don't confuse people by calling FreeBSD "Mac's Unix Core". The core is MACH, or moreover their implementation of MACH.

This post has been edited by unimatrix: Jun 29 2007, 06:36 AM

this is kind of silly because HFS+ works fine and nothing is wrong with it also i don't think alot of people will be happy to do a full install of leopard because no upgrade install is possible unless your hd is formatted to zfs+ which is just insane i hope all of the apple develloppers and happy when they get a ton of complaints from people who have lost files from the update and try to use timmachine to recover them or whatever other crazy things they might do.

ZFS is not being supported by 10.5. If they did, this would make sense on computers used in business making backups a little more redundant. (searching through old OS files versus old DVD/external HDD's.

Now in the video business, this would be a wast because our project files are large enough as it is ranging from hundreds of gigabytes to terrabytes. Copying that kind of data over and over again is only going to make storage cost even more than it does now. Yes, you can get a 1TB external for $500 now, but that still adds up quicker than you'd think.

That's quite true. Actually, MacOS X/Darwin doesn't even keep the file structure that's found in FreeBSD. They have their own directory trees and suffixes for their files. However, Apple uses FreeBSD as the userland for the operating system.

xboxrulz

Yeah I went Linux->FreeBSD->MacOSX. Well on a personal level. I also used OpenBSD and Solaris in work enviroments before too.

That's why this whole GPL3 thing I tend to ignore. Last group I worked as a programming consultant chose NetBSD as the platform for their device because there was no GPL issues on whether or not they had to release anycode they put in their embedded devices. Their idea was to develop a Tivo like box for DVR and knew these legal issues were going to become a problem in the future. Still I think there was some issues with GPL'd modules like samba etc. and they never got the funding to develop past the protype stage. The company created a number of devices like this when they saw potential problems in the future. Their plan was to have this stuff on the shelf and ready to go if XYZ faultered. Company still exists so I guess they sell or license enough products to stay in business.

I had always wanted a Mac since I was 8 and still do (even waiting 8 years later and it just keeps getting better). I don't really have an issue with GPL v3.

xboxrulz

You may not, but then again you aren't developing embedded devices.

Frankly I never really liked the GPL v2 to be all that honest. I've always fealt that if you wanted to release truely free code and don't care what others do with it, one would use a BSD-style license. Which the Linux crowd seems to forget how much code was taken from the BSD projects in the early days. To me the GPL 3 reaks of "We're going to stick it to the man, those evil companies that want to use our 'Free' products to make money."

Although I applaud Linus and his stance against Stallman. Now typically I deploy on Linux based servers because that is what most website hosting companies deploy. And Linux is a good backend server replacement for older Unix distros. But I use OSX on my desktop because I get the unix based development enviroment and lots of easy to use software without hassles.