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> The whole point of filesystems is they present the same interface. ZFS and ext4 should just work the same for Dropbox.

This is unfortunately not true, especially with ZFS and ext4 that you mentioned. ZFS is different enough that you can't even use tools like `df` and `du`. You need to use the ZFS tools.

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ZFS is different enough that you can't even use tools like `df` and `du`.

I'm not as sure about df, but I've written a du or at least something approaching one before --- how does it not break every other application that relies on stat() and the file size that it returns?

One reason for du/df problems with ZFS is ZFS compression.

At least on FreeBSD, both those tools have been explicitly patched for ZFS. (See, for example, the -A switch to du.)

Your statement proves the point that developing for Linux means having to support many choices.

What patches will be needed for yet some different filesystem, or init system, or desktop interface? And how many hundreds or thousands of programs might be affected?

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