Re: ZFS is for dedicated file-servers
For one, it eats memory like no other filesystem. The projects itself states that it can be used with 2GB, but 8GB+ is recommended for decent performance. The consensus among major users seems to be 8GB + 1GB per terabyte of storage.
To be fair to Ubuntu they are only experimenting with ZFS on the desktop at present. They must be pretty confident of striking a good balance between performance and RAM consumption. It's probably a safe assumption that those wanting to use ZFS for its features are in the "power user" camp, and likely have a stack of RAM installed already.
Also, wait a couple of years and 8GB is going to look like a surpassingly trivial amount of memory. This might mean that Ubuntu are doing this at the right time, when machine specs are moving into the area where no one would care. Ubuntu should be just about finished experimenting by then.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
