Ubuntu 20.04 ZFS Includes apt Snapshots

By Jack Wallen

The next release of Ubuntu Desktop will include a handy new ZFS feature.

Ubuntu admins are about to get a real treat with the coming release of 20.04 LTS. It’s been well known that the Ubuntu developers have been making a push to bring the ZFS filesystem (and all of its bells and whistles) to the Linux desktop distribution. With the release of Ubuntu 19.10 the beginnings of that system was put in place.

But with the release of 20.04 (coming April 23, 2020) a new feature will be added to the ZFS file system. That feature will allow the Ubuntu Zsys daemon to trigger snapshots taken any time the APT system updates, installs, or removes a package. This would then allow admins to roll back a system should an issue occur because of an apt or apt-get action.

This new addition comes by way of Zsys 0.4.1, which has been promoted to the main Ubuntu package archive for the upcoming release. And although this concept has already been in place with the Btrfs-RPM/Yum combination for some time, it’s the first time for any Linux distribution using ZFS and apt. However, since Red Hat has deprecated Btrfs, the Zfs/apt solution is the only game in town for such a feature.

Original source: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-20.04-Zsys-APT-Snapshots