- How do I maintain this? Since ZFS is outside the mainline kernel, how do I know whoever compiles the ZFS packages will keep track of (distribution)'s kernel package?
The ZFS packages are not fully pre-compiled. The ZFS packages use the dkms system where the kernel specific parts are recompiled when the kernel changes. This greatly reduces the maintenance work and is a system that has been in use by other out of tree kernel modules for a decade. Its not perfect, but it does largely reduce the distribution specific maintenance burden.
Of course, when a new kernel version comes out, ZFS may have to make adjustments to support it and ZFS may lag a little bit. However, currently there are significant resources being dedicated to ZFS on Linux development and packaging and for the last 18 months they've kept up pretty well.
It isn't perfect. I wish that ZFS could be in the linux source tree. While I saw ZFS on linux being available, I wasn't ready to try it until last year. However, third party file systems do have a long tradition, such as AFS, vxfs, and numerous SAN file systems. ZFS on Linux seems to be doing very well.
- How do I install onto ZFS?
- How do I maintain this? Since ZFS is outside the mainline kernel, how do I know whoever compiles the ZFS packages will keep track of (distribution)'s kernel package?