This is a quick guide to get zfs up and running on Ubuntu server, it would also work on Ubuntu desktop.

I have not not tried running zfs on Ubuntu 12.10, as it have no reason to upgrade by n40l from 12.04 LTS.

From Ubuntu server I needed to install python-software-properties, so that i could run add-apt-repository ( You don’t need to complete this first step from Ubuntu desktop or Linux mint )

$ sudo apt-get install python-software-properties

Then install the zfs-native ppa, so that you can download and compile native zfs goodness

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:zfs-native/stable

Update your repo list, so it includes the new zfs-native ppa

$ sudo apt-get update

Make sure the the zfs packages in the repo

$ apt-cache search zfs

Install, Note: this might take some time as it compiles the kernel module for your kernel

$ sudo apt-get install ubuntu-zfs

Run the zfs commands to make sure it works

$ sudo zfs
$ sudo zpool

Create a pool

$ sudo zpool create data /dev/sda

Check the mounts

$ df -h -F zfs
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
data            229G     0  229G   0% /data

This will also work on Linux mint.