Definitely not going anywhere near the comments section on that phoronix article. It’s guaranteed to be pure poison.
Tbh, what phoronix comment section isn’t pure neurological poison?
Should have never been merged into the kernel lol
Kent is such a dumbass. It’s a pitty because it’s a great filesystem.
I’ve never used bcachefs and only recently read about some of the drama. I wish the project the best but at this point it is hard to beat zfs
zfs is confusing as hell for noobs like me. I only really recently learned how to use btrfs. Is there any real reason to use zfs over btrfs on Linux anyway?
On top of being confusing, I had my whole proxmox node crash because the ZFS pool randomly crashed out multiple times 🤷♂️
Probably due to the consumer grade nvme I was using it on but… Still why?
Also used a lot of extra ram just to function
I think it’s just hardware optimization. You get a ton more pain and risk replacing a drive in zfs vs raid10, but it’s more space efficient and flexible to use zfs. This is all academic, because the goal of these systems is a certain level of performance, availability, and data integrity, but not data safety. You need backups (preferably off-site and even off line) backups for that.
There are some niche features, but if you’re not aware of them then no. It’s just licence encumbered btrfs for the majority of us.
No unless your doing raid 5 or 6 not there isn’t.
Friends don’t let friends run erasure coding on BTRFS.
Personally, I don’t run anything on BTRFS. I like having my data intact and I also want two parity drives in my pools.
Good 👍
Why?
The developer of bcachefs, Kent Overstreet, has repeatedly failed to abide by the expectations of kernel release schedules, particularly the rc (release candidate) stage, which is supposed to freeze new features until next release.
Kent has open-air arguments with Linus Torvalds about not being able to develop the way he wants to, Linus Torvalds does not like wasting time discussing it with Kent.
IMO, Kent created this situation himself. He’ll be happier developing outside upstream anyway.
It should be noted that while some folks have commented that bcachefs was not ready for upstream, several kernel devs have a lot of respect for the technical quality of Kent’s work, so I think the argument of whether bcachefs is good or not good is separate from Kent’s behaviour as a kernel contributor.
Additionally, Kent got most of his kernel changes needed for bcachefs merged already, so a dkms should be easier to manage now.
So if I’m reading this correctly, the program can operate fine as an external module because the kernel itself supports it well with those changes?
To be more clear, before he got his code mainlined, you needed to run h8s full fork of the kernel, with changes made not just to the cache code itself, but also to other parts.
Not all of his changes went in though; but the differences got sorted out enough that the vast majority of his newer changes were driver only.
That said, he was still ruffling feathers about wanting some fast moving kernel changes.
Thanks for the detailed explanation!
Not an expert though, but have been watching bcachefs for … what feels like a decade.
It was nowhere close to be mature enough to be in the kernel. The developer is nowhere close to be mature enough to be involved in the kernel. It’s better for everybody if it is developed separately and maybe integrated again at a later stage when the file system and tooling are considered stable and changes are smaller and less sensitive. CacheFS being in the kernel might mislead people to rely on a filesystem that is still experimental and under heavy development. Personally I am looking forward to see it mature because I’d love to run it on my file storage home server when it is stable enough.
I have been relying on the filesystem. It is excellent. It is mature enough.
Sadly, the lead dev for bcachefs is not mature enough.
I agree, on both statements.
It is easily stable enough for experimental use.
Not really why op said, though. It’s stable enough for
exeprimentaluseIt’s marked as experimental, hence the “experimental”
It was nowhere close to be mature enough to be in the kernel. The developer is nowhere close to be mature enough to be involved in the kernel
what independently verifiable condition(s) will satisfy these requirements?
That the developer himself finds it absolutely necessary to push new code outside the window for upcoming versions of the kernel is a pretty good indication.
Seriously?
No, comment is not true. You can use ZFS or BTFS, both of which are open source. ZFS just happens to be historically funded by Oracle, which is a good thing.
The reason is bcachefs has
majorstability problems (that don’t allow it to meet kernel release schedules). https://hackaday.com/2025/06/10/the-ongoing-bcachefs-filesystem-stability-controversy/“Major stability problems”. Hilarious. Get one person that actually uses bcachefs to confirm that. Good luck.
Kent has stability problems and drives me crazy but that is a baseless hit piece. Bcachefs is a solid fs.
Linus has not pushed back on the quality of bcachefs other than to say it is too unproven to rely on (too new). What Linus objected to was the process violations and the attitude of the lead developer.
Given how much Linus and the other LKML devs wanted to get rid of Kent, the fact that it took so long to dump him tells us that they really wanted to keep bcachefs (the technology).
There may have been more data loss bugs in btrfs and even OpenZFS than bcachefs since it was added to the kernel. I have many bcachefs systems. I have one btrfs system. Guess which one has caused me problems.
Fair enough on “major”. Edited that. But it has stability issues that aren’t handled well enough for RCs, so it’s not a hit piece to state that fact. Those stability issues may come from it being new, but it’s still an issue. Saying it’s because they want to “get rid of Kent” is just as much of a hit piece, too.
The dev is unstable. And he made the kernel process chaotic. But the filesystem itself is pretty solid. Do you have a link to stability issues?
My understanding is the stability risks come from active development additions vs “fixes” during that stage of the development cycle.
https://linuxiac.com/torvalds-expresses-regret-over-merging-bcachefs-into-kernel/
Simply put, only small bug fixes are allowed after the post-merge phase to integrate changes into the current kernel cycle. However, Overstreet’s PR included more than just fixes; it continued to develop new features, which always carry risks. That’s why Torvalds was unhappy with it. As a result, the changes were rejected.
…
Currently, the file system is being actively developed. Although it shows great potential with impressive features and strong data reliability, it’s not yet stable enough to be adopted by major Linux distributions as a proven and reliable solution.
YMMV, but my production systems will stick with ZFS since it’s kernel release updates are clear when there are “upgrades” vs “updates”, as you do those manually when it alerts you.
“Stable” in this context doesnt mean “your PC will definately crash and you will lose data!”, bcachefs is well past that. It means that the development is too active to be considered production ready since the code changes are too large to confirm the scary bit won’t happen (as much as can be).
Even JC threw in the towel on
bcachefs-toolsdue to this: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Debian-Orphans-Bcachefs-Tools
Oracle funding doesn’t sound like a good thing at all since they’re basically CIA cloud ran by one of the most influential Zionists. But an unstable filesystem sounds even worse.
Everyone always says “Companies should fund FOSS instead of spending money on big corpos!”, yet then this.
It’s FOSS. It’s auditable. Funding is a good thing.
Google managed to backdoor Linux and Firefox with their “FOSS” libWebp. Took literally years until some security researcher not affiliated with any of them found the bug by chance and made a public report, and by then it had already been explited by NSO for ages. If they had worked for Google (or Apple/Microsoft/Amazon/any of the other corporations that just imported Google’s libWebp code without looking at it) they would have gotten silenced and the exploit would still be there as a gift to Israel. Turns out just because it’s auditable doesn’t mean it gets audited before it’s too late.
And so have countless closed-source developers/companies/applications. A vulnerability existing does not change the fact that FOSS projects should be funded more.
That’s true, but we also know that funding can come with stipulations. Oracle is an especially sketchy company.
But that counts for all big tech I guess.
In this situation it works well, IMO. For some more context, ZFS was created by Sun (FOSS). Oacle bought them and built Oracle ZFS out of it. OpenZFS forked at that point from Sun code, and that’s what we use in Linux/etc. The Oracle variant supplies support to the FOSS variant. So Oracle has no control over OpenZFS.
Yes I’m asking for the reason why you think this development is good. It seemed to me like it could have worked out if they talked it out and could have added something of value to the OS
Very easy to search, but you’re lazy so:https://hackaday.com/2025/06/10/the-ongoing-bcachefs-filesystem-stability-controversy/
It’s not lazy to ask someone who seems to know something about the topic within a discussion thread about said topic. You know more than I do on this.
I understand how you may not want to take the time to answer someone’s question but also you could have replied with the link you eventually did instead of saying “Seriously?” Within the context of calling others lazy you could also qualify under the same term since you took the time to respond but not with the answer.
With search being what it is nowadays I wouldn’t know if I am getting a good result to find out the answer since it is of a technical and specific nature I may or may not even know if I am familiar with to begin with. It could take me much longer to figure it out, or I will give up and not be interested in finding out more about a field you seem to have an interest and knowledge about and I am demonstrating I want to know more about.
I think it is fair to ask for more information from someone who shows more expertise in the topic before searching.
