zfs

A file system is the part of an operating system that controls how data is stored on and retrieved from disks and other storage devices. OpenZFS is a file system and volume manager, meaning it handles both how data is organized on disk and how storage devices are managed together as pools. It was originally developed for Solaris, an operating system created at Sun Microsystems, and is now maintained by an open-source community. This repository contains the code for running OpenZFS specifically on Linux and FreeBSD.

The README notes that OpenZFS also targets other platforms including illumos, macOS, and Windows through the broader OpenZFS organization, though those are separate from this repository. The project's documentation site covers the full scope of features and use cases, while this repository focuses on the Linux and FreeBSD implementations. Conference recordings and community information are available at the main OpenZFS organization site.

On Linux, OpenZFS supports long-term stable kernel versions: currently 5.10, 5.15, 6.1, 6.6, 6.12, and 6.18. Supported Linux distributions include Red Hat Enterprise Linux and compatible variants such as AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux on full or maintenance support tracks, Ubuntu LTS releases, and Debian stable and LTS releases. On FreeBSD, all releases currently receiving security support from the FreeBSD project are supported.

Installation instructions are in the official OpenZFS documentation rather than in the README itself, which is brief and mostly a pointer to external resources. The project is released under the CDDL license, an open-source license whose specific terms are detailed in the repository's license and notice files.