So, I was going through the BTRFS Settings on my new Garuda installation on an SSD, & was curious to know if everything was expected to look as such... (Defragmentation for example is NOT recommended on SSD hardware)
This is is not outright incorrect, but it is a very broad generalization and some use cases are more nuanced. Specifically with regard to Btrfs, this is not accurate.
The reason defragmentation is “not recommended” on an SSD is because it costs a write, and for many filesystems does not provide a benefit. It’s not inherently problematic, just not really helpful and somewhat wasteful since excessive writes is exactly why SSDs die.
For Btrfs, however, there is a benefit to defragmentation because the more the filesystem is used, the more numerous and complex all of the extents Btrfs is tracking become . If you never defragment your Btrfs filesystem it will probably still work, but it will be slower and more work for your CPU than necessary because even a small transaction can translate to a lot of IOPS.
The cost of adding a write to the disk may be less significant than in years past as well, especially for the typically modest use an SSD gets from an average user running a computer at home. Many people run an SSD for years and years before the disk needs replacement from excessive writes. Taking a CPU performance penalty for all those years just to avoid adding a write to the disk once in a while does not seem worth it to me.
Ultimately it is up to you how you feel about these various options, and the settings that are best for you are based on how you use your machine. For me personally, I set all three options to monthly frequency/all mountpoints and don’t really think about it much beyond that.